On our recent trip up to Mendocino, Sarah’s parents wanted to go wine tasting. And they wanted to do it right.

So… they hired a driver from Mendocino Wine Tours.

As it turned out, the person that took the reservation didn’t realize it was going to be a family affair and assumed that the four people going on the tour (us) would prefer the extra legroom of a stretch Ford Excursion limo over the cozy comfort of a town car.

We were a little embarrassed at first… Our tour guide Tess (an ex forest ranger and botanist at UC Davis) took us to really tiny wineries where our giant car could barely fit down the driveway. But by the end of the day (after six wineries and one brewery), we had no problem sprawling out all over the limo.

The picture above is of one of the fermenting (?) tanks at the Toulouse Winery. (Hence the title.) I haven’t been to too many wine tasting dealies, but I know that I don’t need some pretentiously unpretentious "connoisseur" telling me about the hints of boysenberries and the oaky nose. At Toulouse, we sat on a pile of lumber on a concrete deck out in the sun while a fat old golden retriever begged for cheese crackers. If wine tasting was always like that, I’d have rosier cheeks!