Will Write 4 Travel: sonoma

Feb 5, 2014

Sonoma Winter WINEland and Brewery Visits

We planned a trip down Northern Sonoma County's Wine Road on Sunday for the 22nd Annual Winter WINEland.

By the way, if you missed the previous posts on my recent trip to Northern California, check them out first:
- The Hills of San Francisco
- Sunshine, food and wine in Napa and Sonoma

Winter WINEland is an event, where you have the chance to visit any of the over 100 participating wineries, where you receive tastings, discounts and sometimes food pairings, all for one ticket price. We purchased Sunday only tickets, which were about $35 including service fee. Such a good deal!

Northern Sonoma County in itself is huge, so we pretty much stuck to the area around Healdsburg to make the most of our time.

We started out at 11 am at Wilson Winery, where we picked up our wristbands and tasting glasses. We sampled three different red wines by Wilson as well as enjoyed some barbecue brisket.

As you can tell, the weather was absolutely amazing. I hear that it can sometimes be dreary and rainy in January, but California is currently facing a severe drought and there hasn't been any rain to speak of.

Barbecue brisket at Wilson Winery

Our next stop was lunch at Bear Republic Brewing Co.

The restaurant served pub-style offerings, which were tasty but not amazing, and I felt I was led astray on the beer recommendations. I typically like lighter beers, and the waitress suggested the beer on the right for me. Yeah, that's not a light beer! I believe it was the Heritage.

Beers from Bear Republic

Our second Wine Road stop was the beautiful Truett Hurst Winery. The grounds were so gorgeous that we wound up spending quite a bit of time just chatting, sitting in the sunshine and exploring. Along with the vineyards, there are gardens and livestock, including chicken and sheep (which I did not see any of).

The gardens of Truett Hurst

The property butts up against Dry Creek, where there are salmon and trout, which I also did not see any of.

Not only was the setting magnificent but I also had some fantastic wine there. My favorite was the 2012 Black Sheep Pinot Noir with flavors of black cherry, candied ham and ripe berries. It was rich and tasty!

Next, we ventured over to Geyserville to visit Silver Oak, which specializes exclusively in Cabernet Sauvignon. The AFC Championship game was happening during our visit and the winery staff kept visitors updated on the score via a chalk board.

Silver Oak also had a food pairing for us to enjoy. Black truffle and mushroom pizza from their own wood-fired oven! It was so yummy and, of course, fresh!

We still had some more time, so we added one more winery to finish out our WINEland journey. We visited Geyser Peak Winery. Our day was pretty heavy on the red wines and one of our traveling companions prefers whites. Geyser Peak was recommended for this reason. I was pretty wine-ed out by this time, so I just had a taste of the offerings. I did confirm one thing over the course of the weekend though. I really really do not enjoy sauvignon blanc!

If you thought our day was over, we still had more tasting to do! We headed to Russian River Brewing Company, which we had tried to visit the previous night. I did not order anything to sample, but I had a couple of sips of the famous Pliny the Elder and Blind Pig. Unlike my friends, I do not appreciate IPAs so those beers were lost on me.

On our way back into San Francisco, we stopped by Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma for dinner and more beer sampling. I shared the "Around the World in 16 Beers" tasting with two other girls and we barely made a dent in it. Again, my beer palate is pretty limited, but they were fun to try and the setting was nice. There were large picnic tables in an outdoor beer garden. The food here was also very pub-ish, so it was nachos for me!

It was a fun weekend of catching up with old friends, eating delicious food, enjoying plenty of adult beverages and spending time outside in beautiful weather!

Until next time, San Francisco!

Jan 28, 2014

Sunshine, food and wine in Napa and Sonoma

After a short drive from the city to Napa, we checked in to our hotel and had a few hours to rest before it was time for our dinner reservations.

By the way, if you missed my first post on my Northern California Adventures, check it out here.

For dinner, we visited the very cute and very busy The Girl and The Fig in Sonoma. To start, we shared "The Works" cheese platter, which came with a selection of three cheeses, cured meats, seasonal fruit, house-made fig cake, spiced nuts and a baguette. I shared the duck confit with my friend, and it came with farro, roasted parsnips, kale and black pepper vinaigrette. It was amazing!

For dessert, we split the asian pear crostata with buttermilk creme anglaise and spiced caramel. Everything was so delicious and it was hard to decide what to order.

The next morning, we were up bright and early to attend a 10 am sparkling wine tasting at Mumm Napa. I'm not much of a sparkling wine/champagne person because I tend to get really bad headaches from drinking champagne, but I must admit that this tasting was a lot of fun.

We shared two different levels of tastings and some of the wines we tried included the Brut Reserve, Brut Prestige and the Brut Rosé.

We also got a couple of "bonus" tastings including the sparking pinot noir and Carlos Santana's Supernatural Rosé.

After our fill of sparkling wine, we had an early lunch at Bottega. I was so looking forward to dining here and tasting some of Michael Chiarello's food!

First off, the ambiance was amazing! I am completely obsessed with their brass water goblets.

Our party was seated in a private dining area, which just happened to be in the wine cellar!

I went all out and continued my day with a yummy peach bellini. My friend and I shared a bunch of dishes, and we also shared a charcuterie plate with the table.

To start, we had the polenta under glass with caramelized mushrooms and balsamic game sauce. Very rich and creamy! Next, we shared the shaved Brussels sprout salad with Meyer lemon dressing, toasted Marcona almonds, egg and Pecorino cheese.

For our entree, we had the most decadent dish: cavatelli with lobster and sea urchin. I want to eat this again right now!

As if we hadn't stuffed ourselves silly already, we had to head across the way to Bouchon Bakery. I was a good girl and only purchased a lemon macaron and an almond croissant for breakfast the next morning.

Next up was a wine tasting at Ma(i)sonry, which didn't turn out exactly as we hoped. Upon arrival, we were told that everyone in our party had to do the same tasting and that we all had to spend a minimum of $35 each. This is something that we were not told when we made our reservations. I found this to be entirely uncool. We decided to just order three bottles of wine to share.

Our first bottle was Lail Vineyard's 2012 Blueprint Sauvignon Blanc ($40). Over the weekend, I confirmed that I am not at all a fan of Sauv Blanc. Our second bottle was more my speed. It was Blackbird Vineyards' 2012 Arriviste Rosé ($25).

For our final bottle, we went up a notch on the price point and purchased Tor Kenward Family Wines' 2011 Tor Beckstoffer To Kalon ($150). It was the most expensive bottle of wine I've ever had and it was quite delightful.

Ma(i)sonry also is home to a gallery with the space filled with lots of pieces. I loved the sheep. Overall, I thought the setting was gorgeous, but I wasn't pleased with the situation I described earlier.

I skipped out on our final tasting of the day. I had already had enough to drink and I didn't really want to do another champagne tasting. I did, however, get to enjoy the beautiful terrace of Domaine Carneros. The building itself is styled like an old French chateau. So pretty!