Since Thursday, the Wine Road has taken me to a memorable dinner in Napa Valley, a pinot harvest in Mendocino county, and our wine bar's groundbreaking celebration in Santa Barbara county. In Napa for dinner with friends in Yountville, we awoke to take our gracious hostess Jan to breakfast at Gordon's, where you're as likely to sit next to Napa's famous as next to a tourist from Des Moines.
Leaving Jan's place we noticed neighbors milling about in the streets. "What's that, an ad-hoc homeowner's meeting?" she asked. Then we turned the corner and drove towards the Mayacamas mountains and saw what everyone was looking at. Smoke. Lot's of smoke. The photo at the right shows the view from Gordon's parking lot last Friday morning. Though it looks as if the fire is coming from the building across the street, it's in the mountains, several miles behind it. We speculated as to the safety of Mayacamas Vineyards and Mount Veeder Winery, decided they were too far south to be threatened, and went in for breakfast hoping we were correct.
Breakfast at Gordon's is an interesting mix of small town breakfast spot and tourist trap. Many of the latter stop in to see the former, and this may be the reason for much of its success. But in the opinion of one in our party, it is because of Gordon's great rough-hewn wooden tables, which make interesting lines when you color on them. I do, however, believe this to be the minority opinion.
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