"Sonoma County Wine Trip

We travelled to California for a wedding in Marin County, and had decided to spend three days in Sonoma County on a wine tasting trip. We visited Sonoma Valley (specialities Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay), Dry Creek Valley (Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon), and Alexander Valley (Cabernet Sauvignon), visiting 6 wineries in all, as well as some nature spots for a chance to walk off the wine.

Our first stop in Sonoma Country was actually the day of the wedding, zipping up to Petaluma for a quick trip to Griffo Distillery, owned by friends of our daughter. Their first product is Scott Street Gin, a London Style Gin (the gin is distilled all at once without blending), produced with locally-sourced botanicals, except for the juniper berries which were not. We also tasted the white, american oak barrel-aged, and french oak barrel-aged whiskey, coming out in March. So a shout-out to this distillery.

We headed towards Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma Valley for our pre-arranged reserve tasting at 11:30 am, but made a stop along the way in the city of Sonoma itself. We walked around the main plaza, and picked up some bread and cheese (to go with the wine) for a picnic later.

During the Bear Flag Revolt, from June to July 1846, a small group of American settlers in California rebelled against the Mexican government and proclaimed California an independent republic. The republic was short-lived because soon after the Bear Flag was raised, the U.S. military began occupying California. The Bear Flag became the official state flag in 1911. (Not everyone agrees that the flag is appropriate. From the LA Times: a band of thieves, drunks, and murderers hoisted a home-made flag and declared themselves in revolt from a government that had welcomed them. Instigated by an expansionist neighboring power, the rebels aimed to take over completely and impose their language, culture, and mores on the land.)

Our first stop was a pre-arranged Reserve Tasting at Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma Valley. As with many of the wineries, there are different levels of tasting, the basic one usually walk-in. The reserve tasting was in Chateau’s Vineyard Room rather than the Tasting Room in another building. We had a wonderful tasting of both whites and reds, including the most recent Cinq Cepage (a blend of Cabernet and 4 other varietals), one of their flagship products, and an older Cinq Cepage. We ended up joining the wine club for a year, with a mix of white and reds, first shipment sometime in November. We ate our picnic on their patio (under cover as the day’s weather was iffy and things were still wet).

After lunch we stopped at the Jack London Historic State Park. Once known as Jack London's "Beauty Ranch”, the park's 1400 acres include the Beauty Ranch, Cottage (where he lived and wrote), House of Happy Walls Museum, Wolf House ruins, and more than 20 miles of trails.

House of Happy Walls Museum. The Museum was built by Charmian London, after London's death in 1916. The House of Happy Walls was designed to be a museum as well as Charmian's home.

Grave site. Jack’s ashes were laid to rest under a large rock on a small knoll overlooking the Valley of the Moon, and when Charmian died in 1955, her ashes were added.

The Wolf House. Jack started to build his dream house in 1911, nicknamed the 'Wolf House’. Jack and Charmian never got to live in their home because one hot summer night in August 1913, spontaneous combustion started a fire in the house. The Londons were sleeping in their cottage about a half mile away and were awakened by a farm worker who saw the red glow in the sky. Although Jack vowed to rebuild the house, he did not live long enough to rebuild.

We drove to Santa Rosa from there, and had coffee at the Flying Goat Coffee. From there we drove in the rain up towards Healdsburg, stopping at Merriam Vineyards (in the pouring rain). We once bought a bottle from Merriam Vineyards at a local boutique wine shop in Lincoln, NH, so decided on a whim to stop there. We had a tasting there and bought a merlot.

From there, we checked into the Dry Creek Inn Best Western Healdsburg, about a mile past the center of town. Dinner that night was at the Shed Café, a modern looking restaurant (with fermentation bar) combined with a market for kitchen, home, and garden food and supplies. Think Williams-Sonoma with open kitchen and restaurant. Larry had a lamb shoulder (with sunflower seed mole, radishes, pomegrante) and I had duck leg (baba ganoush, lentils, egpplant, pistachios), both excellent and beautifully plated.

Tuesday was Dry Creek Valley day, with many of the wineries mere minutes from Healdsburg. We planned to visit Dry Creek Vineyard – our cousins belong to their wine club and we have tasted the wines at their house many times – and decide on others as we went. We enjoyed a number of wines and ended up with two high-end cabernets (Mariner 2012, and Endeavor 2013), as well as a more commercially available fumé blanc 2015. We also walked their pretty insectary garden, where they have plants that attract advantageous insects.

It was time for a break again, and we headed up to Lake Sonoma Resort, a recreation area we spotted on the map. The closest point was the Visitor Center and Fish Hatchery.

The Lake Sonoma hatchery was built to replace and enhance salmon and steelhead spawning grounds. We wandered about, looking at the displays and the rearing ponds.

After a picnic lunch, we headed out to one of the vineyards recommended by our Dry Creek Vineyard host – Dutcher Crossing for cabernet. It was a tough choice but we bought their 2014 Proprietor’s Reserve Cabernet (blended interestingly with syrah).

We headed back to the Best Western for a break. A little later we drove to Ridge-Lytton Springs for zinfandel, as suggested by our Dry Creek Valley host. We bought a 2014 Ridge Ponzo Zinfandel.

We headed back to Healdsburg and the Best Western. The Best Western is about 1.2 miles from the center of town. Turns out there is a path that runs parallel to and between Grove Street and Healdsburg Ave, possibly originally part of the old railroad line whose tracks were alongside the path. We walked around and checked out menus from a number of restaurants, and ended up eating at The Wurst (while watching the Cubs), really fun and inexpensive restaurant that serves — yep — wurst, but along with other dishes like good salads that you can add a wurst to. After dinner, we had coffee at the Flying Goat in Healdsburg before walking back along the path.

We headed up to Alexander Valley Vineyards for a 10:30 tour of the vineyard and wine making equipment, the houses on the property, tastings along the way, the huge wine cave (including barrel tasting), finishing we lunch and some more wines. And yes, we joined their wine club also — actually their more expensive club with the red wines (cabs and zin) we loved and their reserve chardonnay.

We decided that after Alexander Valley Vineyards, we had bought enough wines and on recommendation was planning on going to the Armstrong Redwoods Natural Reserve. We stopped back in Healdsburg to buy a wine box at the UPS store for the 6 wines we were bringing home. Then on to Armstrong Redwoods Natural Reserve. We parked and did a loop walk that included the famous trees and a nice 2.3 mile walk overall, some of which was up and down switchbacks with about a 500 foot elevation change.

Then we drove to Santa Rosa, had dinner with Amy Holtz at El Coqui, an excellent Puerto Rican restaurant. We then drove to the Best Western near SFO, checked in, at which point Larry drove the rental car back and took the shuttle from SFO back to the hotel. We watched the Cubs win the world series, went to bed, got the shuttle to the airport and headed home. It was a wonderful trip.

Eileen and Larry Samberg

A log of our various hikes and travels

Sonoma County Wine Trip – Oct-Nov

Sunday, 06-Nov-2016