A provincial wine.

Peju Provence is an interesting winery.  Situated right in the thick of things on Hwy 29 in Rutherford, Peju attracts an incredible number of tourists/wine-tasters on a daily basis (mainly of the type who never bother to get off the beaten wine-track).  The winery has a row of American Sycamore trees along the length of it's driveway that are intriguingly pruned, sans branches, that look spectacular every December when bedecked with red Christmas lights.  The tasting experience is expansive in that they produce a lot of different wines (a few which are quite, erm, unusual blends), and in that there are several different areas of the winery to taste in.  The lucky, visiting wine enthusiast may be treated to a tasting hosted by the Yodelmeister (and that's all I'm going to say about that).  One of the tasting areas has the most unusually coloured stone floor and tasting bar: a quartzite called Azul Macauba which, apparently, is only found in Brazil...all fascinating stuff, but it has absolutely nothing to do with wine.
The Peju, 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley) wasn't a bad wine, but it was a bit thin and a tad unresolved.  The wine had a nice amount of oak, balanced acidity and a pleasant fruit vibe, but it was still just a bit, well, blah.  This Napa Cabernet went fairly well with food (this poor wine simply couldn't overpower anything if it tried), but it just didn't have any wow-ability factor.  I was given this wine, so it mattered little to me that it turned out to be just so-so.  But then again, that's just my opinion - the hundreds of tasters that process through this place on the weekends, and are responsible for about 96% of this winery's entire production being sold direct-to-consumer, would probably beg to differ.