Messina Hof – Villa

First and foremost I was noticing an extreme lack of photographic information about The Villa.  I found a fair amount of outside pictures but only a couple of inside pictures and no pictures of the rooms other than the single shots on the official website.  So I was on a mission to at least completely document the room I was in.  I’ve decided to upload them to Flickr along with the cat photos since that’s where I found a majority of the other Messina Hof pics; so maybe that’d help someone else out who’s searching. See the pics here.  This is for the Lancelot & Guinevere room.

I totally forgot to take a picture of the “fire escape plan” in the room booklet, it had a great layout of the place with each room labeled.  And more importantly showed how the rooms aligned vertically, although basically the second floor was the exact same layout as the first (except for the office and “apartment”).

Looks like I also forgot to take the very last (or very first depending on how you look at it) pic that would’ve been in the sequence, the view of the door to the room.  It has a rather large stained glass window above it and I believe that’s what they’re referring to in the official description.  The thing about this window is that there’s a hallway light just outside it that always stays on and thus beams copious amounts of illumination into the room.

I can’t really think of a good way to organize all this information so I’ll just go with the random stream of consciousness approach.  My brain may not be fully functioning today due to the lack of sleep.  The following elements contributed to that: light from window above door, light from all the external windows (at least I knew that was coming), “17th-century hand-carved bed” = rickety, loud, and didn’t even seem like a full size queen, I was certainly hanging off both ends.  But by far the major contributing factor was the minimum of five sexual encounters that were very obviously occurring in the room immediately above (yes I’m talking about you, couple from Houston that was in the Thomas Jefferson room).  I clearly remember three bouts happening in the midnight to 1 o’clock hour, another at 4:45am and the wake up performance at 7am.  Obviously there must be a similarly constructed bed in that room as well, and I’m assuming the building’s been there for a while as the wood construction of the floor/ceiling acted as an extremely efficient conductor of sound.  Now let me take a moment to point out that I completely realize and expect that at a place such as this these things are going to happen, and rather frequently at that (it actually made me wonder if perhaps the housekeeping staff holds a weekly competition for “paraphernalia” found).  So I’ve got no problem with the midnight activities at all, hell getchya some!  But I could’ve done without the 4:45am performance in particular, then of course during the 7am encore I was awake for good since the sunlight had just begun streaming in towards the finale.  I’d like to give ‘em the benefit of the doubt, but with as creaky as my bed was just from any slight movement I certainly would’ve been concerned/considerate if I was in an upstairs room.

So continuing on that theme, did I mention the chick running the office was hot?  I was debating how much detail I wanted to go into but I think things are already getting a bit pervy as it is so I digress.  But the one thing I do feel obligated to mention is another random thought I had (as if the prophylactic treasure hunt wasn’t strange enough for ya already).  I did notice the ring on her finger, but considering where she works I still have to wonder how many times she’s been propositioned by a couple to join in the festivities.

I have separate write ups about the 5pm Wine & Cheese Reception and the Breakfast in their respective posts.  Although I suppose I’ll mention here that the chocolates that were waiting in the room upon arrival rocked.  They were different than the ones we made smores with.  The smores one were more of a slightly elongated Hershey’s piece format (thin, rectangular and sold) whereas the room chocolates were the more three dimensional Milky Way form factor where it was a hard chocolate shell filled with a less dense substance.

The office staff was very nice, courteous, and quite helpful with concierge type services such as booking tours (there was a special Trick or Treat tour going on that evening) figuring out how long that was going to take and making dinner reservations for after.

When you checked in you got a “charge card” that you presented whenever you needed to make a purchase.  This was convenient in that everything could be charged to the room then you just pay for everything all at once at the end.  I didn’t get an itemized receipt, but I do have the individual ones from each purchase so that’s fine.

Your stay comes with the breakfast and passes for a free tour with tasting. However due to the combination of trying so many wines the night before, already having a tour with the Trick or Treat tasting, the retail store not being open yet, having football to get back to, and being up so early and tired thanks to the upstairs shenanigans we were ready to head out once breakfast was over.

Here are some more general thoughts since I don’t really feel like making a separate fourth post about the overall experience (plus I think this one needs some more positive stuff anyway).  I still would actually say I’m glad I headed out there, all of the evening experiences were nice and time well spent.  I think if I were to go back it would just be for a day trip.  The surrounding scenery looked nice and going for a long walk around the place to take it all in would be enjoyable.  Perhaps going for one of the “events” they hold on occasion would be worthwhile and certainly provide extra activities besides the normal drinking, eating, and walking.  The retail store had quite a few products, a great wine selection of course, but other food items as well.  I’d be very interested in acquiring some of the various chocolate products such as the mini-bars from the room (if possible) and I think I heard something about a Port Fudge that was just made and would be available soon.  And then of course there is the sausage.  Not much is listed in the way of food on their website so I can’t really determine the exact names or styles of the chocolate or sausage substances so future research may be required there.

Dinner was nice, and I think it’s one of those things where it is what you make of it.  I certainly saw a wide variety of examples of that while I was there.  There was me of course just having a nice dinner, then there was the couple celebrating a birthday, some other folks that were fancying it up a bit, and then the large group of folks for which it is still a mystery as to what they were doing.  Some guesses were wedding party / rehearsal dinner but that didn’t quite seem to fit, plus why would you hold that at the same place (and they wouldn’t have been staying on site yet anyway).  Or it could’ve been some kinda frat / sorority mixer thingy given the relative ages of the attendees and the presence of the stereotypical “house mom”.  But anyway it doesn’t really matter, my point is that it is a very versatile place.

As far as the types of people you’ll see there goes there were all comers.  You had everything from your guaranteed presence of the old couples and your honeymooner types all the way to families with their grade school kids and the small gaggles of college age chicks.

So all in all it was a good trip.  The drive out there kinda sucked at times but now that I’ve done it I know what to look out for, or at least get in the right state of mind (bend over and just take it) before I head out.  It was definitely great to be able to try some of the wines I’ve been wanting to have especially since being there increased the availability dramatically, including some wines that they only have on-site.

Messina Hof – Food

Tapas @ The Wine Bar

Italian Meat & Cheese Plate – Assorted Italian meats, domestic and imported cheeses.  I don’t really know any of the names for the individual items, but many of them were standard issue.  There was your typical white and yellow cheese, ham, and round crackers, but then there was another white cheese with something like an herb rub on it that was quite good.  Then there was the “sausage”.  We’re still not entirely sure exactly what it was, but the closest thing I could equate it to is some of the duck sausage I’ve had.  However all the duck sausages I’ve ever seen have been no bigger that quarter size and are usually sliced very thin.  And since this was an “Italian Meat” plate it couldn’t have been chorizo either.  So the mystery continues but it was quite good.  Too bad the store didn’t open early enough so we could get some (that and some Port chocolate too).

Dinner @ The Vintage House

Initially we were going to go for the Chateaubriand Dinner for Two but we were so wined-out by this point (wow I didn’t really think that was possible after the last Napa trip, but I guess there were at least some small breaks in between venues there and today was fairly non-stop) that we didn’t want to go for a full-on package deal.  So we both decided to go with the Filet Mignon (Grilled 8oz filet of beef with bacon bordelaise and topped with hollandaise and a touch of Japanese horseradish) medium of course.  This actually comes served on top of mashed potatoes with some little onion rings on top   The cut of beef seemed to be rather generous as we’ve seen 7oz and 9oz steaks quite regularly; perhaps it was just the dimensions though as it was a nice thick cut but still cooked just right.  The tenderness was quite notable, and yes I’m aware I’m talking about a filet here, but I mean even for that.  Even more notable was the lack of any surgery-requiring bits.  Even on a filet there’s usually at least something I have to trim off, a little nub or a thin strip of fat or something, but nothing here at all, it was entirely edible.  On the first bite I definitely noticed a “lack” of flavor, but really that could be better described as a purposeful non-overabundance.  This steak had an excellent sauce over it, almost cherry-like in nature and obviously derived from one of the port wines here.  So after a couple more bites I could appreciate that the steak wasn’t seasoned in the usual “stand-alone” way and it allowed the natural flavors of the beef to be present and almost serve as the medium for introducing the bold sauce flavors to your palette.

For dessert we opted for the usual dual option attack and ordered up the Chocolate Flan Cake and the Cherries Jubilee.  The couple of (homemade) flan cakes I’ve had in the past have been very good but I could definitely see at the time the potential for non-greatness.  Unfortunately the streak has ended; not that it was bad, as of course the Independent Food Theory states, but it wasn’t stellar.  The cake was just cake, and the flan didn’t really have anything special going for it either (which at least means it wasn’t eggy).  The cherry dish wasn’t super fantastic either.  I suppose it could possibly be due to me maybe starting to get sweeted-out by this point although that didn’t seem to be the case at the time.  It had a lot of ingredients going on: butter, brown sugar, cinnamon,  orange juice, lemon juice, various liquors, rum, the port fudge, and of course cherries (and I could even be forgetting a couple).  It was prepared table-side in full-on flambe action then served on top of vanilla bean ice cream   I think what saved it was the fudge; every time I had a bite with a fair amount of fudge in it it was really good, all the others were just ok.

Breakfast @ The Villa

The “European-style champagne breakfast” had a table set out with a few meats, cheeses, and fruit along with milk, orange juice, and cranberry juice with some various pastries at the end.  There was also coffee and what appeared to be toast making materials off on another table.  Once you grabbed that and munched for a little while you were presented with the option of champagne or mimosas; I think pretty much everyone opted for the later (thus why I went for the cranberry initially, knowing that was coming).  Then the hot plate arrived with a decent sized solid hash-brown (so McDonalds format, not IHOP) and a quiche-like substance.  There was great debate over whether it was chicken or tuna.  I actually tried a couple bites and it was ok.  But that’s certainly not my style of dish so I really couldn’t rate it accurately.  Plus once the taunting of the possible tuna began my brain pretty much put a halt to any further consumption of that particular item.  So I had my mimosas, most of an apple turnover, part of a chocolate muffin, and a couple more pieces of that really good sausage to finish my meal.

Messina Hof – Wine

Wine & Cheese Reception

Riesling [pic] – Hard to remember exactly which one this was (twas the first of the evening after all, I’ll try to ask tomorrow [confirmed, regular Riesling]) I think it was of the semi-dry / semi-sweet variety as I don’t recall it having the harsh flavor and finish that a dry Riesling does but I also don’t remember it being super sweet either (and there are plenty of those around here, yeay me).  Given the discussions about having it with Thanksgiving dinner I’d say it was your fairly standard middle-of-the-road Riesling if not a bit on the sweet side of the fence.

Pinot Grigio [pic] – No.  Although I’ve pretty much never been a fan of any Pinot ever, so there ya go.

Cabernet Sauvignon [pic] – I liked this one a lot, although others didn’t seem to nearly as much.  Was definitely well representative of the Bordeaux style.  Was supposed to be “dry” and to a certain degree it was, but for a Cab Sauv no where near the levels of dryness I’ve experienced in the past.  Oak added interesting characteristics; was difficult to determine the type of oak, which on a later tour they revealed they reuse the (mostly American Oak with some French Oak) Port barrels for their other reds which would explain it.

Cabernet Franc [pic] – This one went over quite well with everyone, and was the server’s favorite, although I think I liked the other Cab better actually.  Lately I’ve really been favoring the more complex reds.  This one was smoother especially on the finish.  I didn’t experience the supposed very quick finish but that’s ok as I prefer my reds to stick around for a little while. Same oak characteristics, but perhaps slightly more subdued.

Tasting Flights

Before starting these we ordered: Italian Meat & Cheese Plate – Assorted Italian meats, domestic and imported cheeses. I was able to take tasting notes at the time for these (for all the others I threw together a blog draft at the end of the evening)

Texas Hold ‘Em White [pic] – Ok, not impressed.  Had the typical Chardonnay “bite” and had some pseudo-Grigio type flavors going on.  Cool, I’m definitely getting some good experience under my belt to pull from; now that I’ve looked at the label I was pretty much right on with my guess as to what was in it and the ratios.  And the 5% Gewurzt explains the extra slight bit of spiciness it had.

Mama Rosa Rosé [pic] -Just had to try this due to the name.  Figured it would be your typical rosé and it pretty much was.  Basically had your standard White Zinfandel type flavor.  Nothing too remarkable.

Sweet Chardonnay – This one was interesting and I really wanted to try it and I’m glad I did.  It was very similar to a late harvest Riesling but it had the distinct Chardonnay flavors.  Thankfully there wasn’t too much of that “bite” like in the Texas Hold ‘Em, but still enough of a different flavor to make it though the sweetness and certainly identify itself as a unique product.

Ebony Ports of Call [pic] -Now this I’ve had before and have always loved it.  A bottle does not last very long at all in my house.  I think I’ve even made it through some in the past and other folks didn’t even get a chance to try it   Simply awesome.

2005 Paulo Shiraz [pic] – I was very interested to see how the Paulo treatment would affect a shiraz.  I’m still trying to think of a good way to describe the unique flavor this possessed.  I’m rather familiar with Shiraz after many a Friday Night Fights with them, but this definitely stood out as something different, and for me that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  I suppose perhaps it could be that their style and my tastes differ that much, or perhaps I was in a much sweeter state of mind, but I just wasn’t fully feeling this one.  Or it simply could have been the alcohol content, it was a 13.5%  Not way off the charts by any means, but certainly not an eight or nine either.  Maybe the closest thing to describing that flavor would be “minerality” but not like any previous minerality experiences I’ve had, this had more of an earthyness to it.

Private Reserve Reflections – Similar to the Shiraz, but since this is actually a blend of three other reds (and no shiraz at all) it had a flavor all to its own of course.  But primarily I’m referring to the reappearance of the unique minerality/earthy flavor.  Although in this one it’s much more subdued.  I think due to the lesser “mystery flavor” I enjoyed it more than the Shiraz but I still didn’t think I’d be getting any for dinner like I was thinking before I tried it.

2004 Tawny Port [pic] – Ah the Tawny.  I’ve been meaning to try this one for a long time now.  I try not to fall victim to gratuitous marketing practices but that stained-glass (printed) label has taunted me from the shelf many a time.  So finally I got to try some and what I came up with was “you know that slightly burnt crust that forms at the edge of a freshly baked cherry cobbler, yeah it’s like that” but totally in a good way   This had a good level of sweetness to it too.  Starting to approach almost too much but still safely under the threshold, just how I like it.

Solera Sherry [pic] -Take the Tawny and bump it up yet another notch.  The server wasn’t kidding when he said “if you like the Tawny you’ll definitely like this.”  This had a very strong “burnt cherry cobbler” taste (still in a good way) and a very strong dark cherry finish.  I found that taking small sips really allowed the finish to take its full effect.  At the time I wrote down “very fortified” (which was my shorthand way of saying you could definitely sense the high alcohol content and very bold flavors), but get this, they actually don’t add any Brandy or other spirits to any of their Ports or other “fortified” style wines.  Due to their use of 100% locally grown Lenoir grapes (I got to stand amongst them) this allows them to achieve a 26° Brix at harvest and still have 10% residual sugar left over at the end!  And then of course there is the whole 18% alcohol thing

Trick Or Treat

Mulled Un-Oaked Chardannay [pic] (paired with fig-walnut scones w/ brie) – A very surprising let down; I have a feeling this may be due to expectations though.  I have typically really liked any unoaked chard I’ve come across, plus all the mulling experiences I’ve had thus far have been great.  However somehow combining the two were a dismal failure.  I almost didn’t even finish the glass, and if you know me you know that happens all of about *2* times a *year* if that.  I’m curious to see if perhaps it’s just their particular style of spices; I hope to research that tomorrow (nope, store opened too late).  Or maybe it’s just that mulling should stick with reds.  On the plus side, the scones kicked ass, and I’m not usually a fig kinda guy.

Barrel Reserve Shiraz [pic] (paired with carmelized onion goat cheese tartlet) – This was pretty good, didn’t seem to have the “funky” flavors that the earlier ones from the flights had.  I really need to figure out what’s up with that as I still don’t believe it’s solely due just to alcohol content alone.  I was a bit wary of this edible as me and goat cheese don’t tend to get along very well, it’s the bitterness that is always off-putting.  For the majority of the time this was actually ok, especially since the pastry it was contained within was somewhat “spank-o-pita” (the greek spinach thing, I just like calling it that) in nature.  I forgot about the onions initially and then ended up pulling out a long strand, that was funny.  But of course once I got towards the middle the cheese ratio really picked up and there were a couple bites I had to struggle through; but just getting a bit more pastry shell with those bites worked ok.

Merrill’s Vineyard Angel [pic] [actual product] (paired with skewered candied apple slice) – As expected this was a very sweet adventure, and I quite enjoyed it.  Also as expected there were those who couldn’t quite handle it.  If it was starting to get into the sweet overload range for me then that’s gunna happen for some folks.  I’m now even more intrigued by exactly what the difference is between Merrill’s products and all the regular stuff.  I hope to do some further research on this tomorrow as well (basically just seems to be where it’s produced, one vineyard or the other; and the soil/altitude/weather differences tend to make one better than the other for certain varietals).

Papa Paulo Port [pic] (paired with Papa Paulo Port truffle s’mores) – AWESOME, I was really looking forward to this.  The only thing I was a bit worried about is the always ambiguous use of the word ‘truffle’, especially so when dealing with both chocolate and a somewhat gourmet environment.  I didn’t detect any strange flavors so I’m gunna call this one as just straight-up chocolate, particularly since there was basically no explanation about the chocolate part of the do-it-mostly-yourself smores (they had to roast the marshmallows for you, oh noes fire!) other than the fact that it was an available component.  The port itself was very good as always, and of course since it’s very detectibly used in the chocolate they went quite well together.  Oh, and did I mention I won the random drawing for a bottle of this stuff?  Heck yeah I did; I’ll try to post a picture of the hand-signed bottle with custom Trick Or Treat label later.

BEHOLD!

Holidaze

I had a bit of a “moral” dilemma a couple days ago. It all started when the groceries at home were starting to dwindle. I knew I needed to go to the grocery store but really didn’t feel like going on the 2^nd. So then the sequence began; I knew it was rather futile to go to the grocery store on the 3^rd as all of the hotdog & hamburger buns would surely be gone. I tend to shop rather late (we’re talking 11pm timeframe) because of my “line disease” (that’s a whole ‘nuther post) so it’s pretty much a guarantee the “seasonal” items aren’t there when I am. I didn’t go on the 4^th either since they tend to have rather limited hours, if they’re even open at all; so it’d be a madhouse again and in all likelihood I probably wouldn’t be awake and ready to go (with time to shop) before they closed.

And so here it was, the evening of the Fourth of July, and since it’s been raining like crazy I hadn’t made any plans to blow stuff up this year, and I’m out of food. Now normally when one is “out” of food you can scavenge and usually drum up some semblance of a meal, but I’d already been doing that for two days. So came my dilemma.

I’m a pretty big stickler for time off. Vacation time is just that, there is to be absolutely no work during it. This is even more true when it’s a National Holiday. Personal vacation is one thing, but when there is a federal holiday going on, particularly one celebrating our nation’s independence, I pretty much expect the country to shut down. And so there is my dilemma. One of the things that makes this nation great are those very freedoms we’ve sought after from the beginning. If you run a business you should be able to do what you want with it. So here I am, in need of food, and have to decide if I really want to give my patronage to an establishment that is causing people to work on a holiday. In the end I was pretty darn hungry, and I figured at least the employees are getting double-time pay, so it was time to eat At least it was typical American fare.

They were pretty busy too, as they were one of the very few places open. I suppose you could say they had a chronopoly.

Cruise Photos

The photos are up!  I recommend the slideshow if you have a few minutes.

Coming soon, the food review.