Sonoma County

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Northern California wine country can be overwhelming, in the best possible way of course. One tip that I like to follow wherever I am traveling and especially in a place with so many unique areas, is to find a great home base from which to start your adventures. For me, in Sonoma, my home base is Healdsburg. It’s enchanting town common charms the New Englander in me, and the little town sprawls out toward the Dry Creek Valley, one of my favorite wine regions in all of wine country.

I’ve put together a list of favorites and helpful hints for the area. It is a great jumping off point for exploring both the Napa and Sonoma Valleys.

 

Sleep:

Bella Villa Messina You will feel at home in this gorgeously appointed bed and breakfast, and any need or question you have will be responded to with warmth and great attention to detail. While eating a fresh, gourmet breakfast you will get winery and restaurant recommendations from the B & B’s owners. It is truly a haven for relaxation.

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Eat:

Scopa This intimate little Italian restaurant on Healdsburg Square is the perfect place to cozy up to your significant other for a romantic meal or to gather with friends for a night filled with laughs and chatter. The food is top notch, the wine list includes many local wines in addition to wine from several regions of Italy, and the atmosphere is a sit back and relax kind of vibe.

Dry Creek Kitchen Definitely a special occasion restaurant, Dry Creek Kitchen serves upscale “neighborhood” food that is artfully prepared and made from fresh, local ingredients. The service is impeccable, and the people watching from their wide open windows is unbeatable. Dry Creek Kitchen allows you to BYOB and does not charge a corkage fee for Sonoma wine, so stop by Big John’s on your way for a bottle to have with dinner.

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Sip:

There are so many wineries in the Dry Creek Valley, and I have only had a chance to visit some of them. That said, I highly recommend the following:

Michel-Schlumberger Call ahead to make an appointment for a tour and tasting and learn about Michel-Schlumberger’s organic winemaking efforts and the unique, balanced ecosystem that they maintain at the winery. Then sit back and sip on a chilled Pinot Blanc while taking in the mission-style architecture.

Amista Come for the warm hospitality and airy, artsy tasting room, and stay for the killer Syrah. Amista sells tiny tasting kits that you can even take in your carry-on to enjoy the Sonoma experience in your own home.

Zichichi A picturesque view and some of the best Zinfandel I have ever had, Zichichi is a small, must-visit winery in the Dry Creek Valley.

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Breathe Healdsburg is minutes from the beautiful Lake Sonoma, a great place to hike, boat, swim, and picnic. It is a breathtaking site and a nice break from wine tasting if you have the time on your visit.

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Wherever you decide to stay in wine country, make sure to at least make a visit to Healdsburg. I promise that with its variety of wineries, downtown tasting rooms, restaurants, and shops, you too will fall in love with this little gem.

Tags: Bella Villa Messina, Dry Creek Kitchen, Healdsburg, hotels, Sonoma County, Travel, vacation, where to stay in wine country, wine, wine country, wine travel, wineries

Now for an amazing dinner recap. Once again, the awesome Chef Robin White helped us to plan our wine country stay, and she suggested a meeting with some of the folks from TasteLive!, Cailyn and Joel.  One of Cailyn’s suggestions was zazu, and after I checked out their website and found that Monday nights were their farm dinner, I was in.

Zazu Restaurant and Farm

From zazu’s website:

zazu is a roadhouse restaurant surrounded by 150 of sonoma county’s acclaimed wineries. At zazu, we are playful Americana and rustic Northern Italian inspired.

Russian River Valley Wine Growers Zazu Santa Rosa Farm Dinner

Located amongst the vines in Santa Rosa, zazu’s property includes a garden where some of the restaurant’s food is grown. The rest of the food is grown/raised at a farm just a few minutes away. The animals on the farm are fed vegetable scraps from the restaurant, making good use of anything that goes to waste. They have a really cute photo on their website of a pig eating yogurt. Check it out, trust me, it will make you smile.

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I am not sure if the above cat belongs to zazu, but it was friendly and kept us company for the few minutes we waited to go inside.

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zazu doesn’t open until 5:30, but Cailyn and Joel were able to get them to open a little early for us to have some wine at the bar.  Joel chose a delicious Rochioli Chardonnay which was pleasantly crisp without any buttery or oaky flavors at all.  Chef John Stewart also sent out a pork terrine with delicious grilled bread, grainy mustard, and pickled watermelon rind.

Rochioli Chardonnay

We loved meeting Joel and Cailyn and learning more about TasteLive! Joel and Eric also discovered that they may have some long lost relatives in common back in Ireland.

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TasteLive! is bringing wine lovers around the world together through live online tastings with people in the know. You no longer need to travel across the country to “meet” and taste with winemakers, you can just log on to TasteLive!

TasteLive!’s “About” Statement:

Our platform leverages the increasingly powerful social media tools of Twitter, Facebook, Posterous and other services to create a community that brings together consumers, bloggers, press, suppliers, brewers and winemakers across the world together to share in their favorite beverage. TasteLive! is a direct link between consumers and winemakers, no filter, no middle man.

Cailyn and Joel are also working on a fabulous event with the Russian River Valley Winegrowers, Grape to Glass. Lee, who is the Marketing Director for the RRV Winegrowers, stopped by to give me some information on the event, and if you are going to be in Sonoma August 20-22, you should go so I can live vicariously through you! I REALLY wish we had known about the event sooner, because I may have saved our trip to CA just to attend.

Cailyn, Joel, and Lee, all had to run, so the hubs and I enjoyed the farm dinner for two. We started with some fresh bread and butter.

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And then moved on to a grilled Caesar salad with an enormous crouton. I love grilled salads and have seen them a lot on our visits to California.

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The second course on the regular menu was a brisket sandwich, but I asked about a vegetarian option and they were more than accommodating presenting me instead with a beautiful, flavorful bowl of Israeli couscous with sweet corn and zucchini. The couscous had a light, lemony flavor, and I have been thinking about it for the past two weeks. I was literally laying in bed this morning thinking about how I can recreate it.

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We were too full for our own desserts, and I may have made our reservation a little close to our flight time, so we shared this gorgeous berry and peach crisp with brown sugar gelato. It was the perfect portion to get a few bites of juicy fruit, crumbly topping, and sweet, cool gelato. Yum.

While we were eating, Chef Stewart came out to say hi, and I wish we had more time to talk to him. He and his wife, who was out of town at a training, seem SO interesting and are incredibly accomplished in the food and wine industry, not to mention I love their commitment to local food and humanely raised animals.

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During dinner, we also took part in tasting their “Blind Wine” and failed miserably at guessing what it was. As I was sprinting out the door to get in the car to head back to Oakland, our very sweet waitress disclosed that it was a Chenin Blanc. I never would have guessed that, apparently I need to do more wine tasting 😉

Dinner at zazu was the perfect way to end our visit to Sonoma, and it is a restaurant that we may have missed otherwise.

Don’t worry, although zazu was our last dinner in Sonoma, I still have plenty more wine country posts coming up!

Now that blogging is done for the day, I am off to volunteer at the MSPCA and then for a massage!

What are you up to this weekend?

Tags: Dining out, restaurants in wine country, Sonoma, Sonoma County, Travel, wine

Happy Bastille Day! Many of the wineries in Sonoma held celebrations this past weekend, and we were lucky enough to celebrate with some delicious food and wine at DeLoach Vineyards.

The first half of our day, however, was spent celebrating my husband’s birthday on Lake Sonoma. If you ever get a chance to go boating on the lake, please do yourself a favor and go for it! What a relaxing and magical day. . .

We started with a hearty breakfast at our Healdsburg bed & breakfast  and then drove North to get to the lake, passing exquisite scenery all along the way.

Dry Creek Valley

Lake Sonoma

We grabbed sandwiches and drinks at the marina and after getting a quick overview of the boat, we were on our way.

Lake Sonoma

After some speeding around, we found a cove and tied up the boat so that we could swim, sun, and eat lunch. It was quiet, the air was SO clean and fresh, the sun was strong, and I was with my favorite person. The perfect getaway.

Lake Sonoma

After some rest, we decided to explore the other side of the lake (which was actually once a valley that was flooded to form the lake!)

Lake Sonoma bridge Lake Sonoma

My photos don’t do it justice.

Lake Sonoma

When the sun started to get to us, we drove back through the valley to Bella Villa Messina to cool off, shower, and get pretty for our visit to DeLoach.

On our drive through the Russian River Valley, we stopped for a quick tasting at Arista Winery . . . more on that later! Then it was on to DeLoach, a winery we visited and loved last fall.

DeLoach Winery traveleatlove Healdsburg

DeLoach had a beautiful spread of picnic foods as well as wine by the glass.

DeLoach picnic

fruit

quiche

The winery grounds were the perfect place for a summer picnic. We wandered around as we listened to the band and sipped on our wine. One of the coolest (literally) parts of the evening was watching a massive front of fog move into the valley, rapidly cooling the air. You can see the fog in the photo below on the right. By the end of the evening I was freezing! The Pinot Noir grapes of the Russian River Valley love this diurnal shift though, so I suppose for the sake of the wine it’s okay 🙂

DeLoach winery DeLoach winery

We ended the night with a glass of Boisset champagne. Boisset Family Estates is the parent company of DeLoach, and I really enjoyed a bit of their bubbly.

After an hour or so we may have gone to a taqueria in Healdsburg for a little bit of this:

chicken tacos

hot sauce, salsa, guacamole

Mexican food is SO good in California! Just another reason to move there. . .

Our early Bastille Day celebration was a perfect day. There are so many incredible winery events going on in wine country, and paired with the natural beauty, it is simply amazing.

If you could move anywhere right now, where would you go? Or would you stay where you are?

Tags: Bastille Day, California, DeLoach, Food, Lake Sonoma, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, Sonoma County, wine, wine country, wine events, wine tasting, wineries

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