Northern California: Exploring Old Wineries and New!

David inspects grapes in Rockpile at Florence Vineyard

In June we took Emily and the girls to San Francisco and Ella had her belated 10-year-old trip to Safari West. THIS was our "grown-up trip"! We looked forward to wineries, art galleries, aquariums, and surprises! We timed our trip to coordinate with Five Vintners 20th Vintage Release Celebration. When we landed in San Francisco, we realized that we were in "our concourse". On the last trip, due to delays, we spent the better part of a day and night with Ella in this playground. (She was a trooper!)

 

    

The drive up to Sebastopol was exhausting especially for David in rush hour traffic.  Boy!  Did we miss Ruby's "driver assist"!!  By the time we got to our great VRBO we were happy to have a supper of the breakfast muffins and juice that the hosts provided for us in the morning!  Our accommodations were a basement apartment in this couple's home.  It was very comfortable and just the right size for us, and the sheep provided great entertainment from our deck!

 

On Thursday, we decided to explore the Rock Pile appellation.  And though there are MANY grapes grown there, most of them are sold to wineries and no wineries exist in the AVA.  We went by a dwindling Lake Sonoma, and up the mountain.  We pulled off the road to find a place to take a picture and a guy walks up.  We were in his driveway and we struck up a conversation.  He grows grapes for several vineyards but has started making his own (75  cases of Petit Syrah and 250 cases of Zin).  We ended up tasting his wine in his front yard under a sprawling live oak and bought half of a case (3 petite and 3 zins).  He set a high bar for our other tastings.  We have found it is always better to be served by the owner or winemaker.  I hope it makes it back to Charlotte. We drank one in our lovely VRBO and I opened a 2nd one to write this!! 

Lake Sonoma Suffers from the Drought

We've discovered live oaks are not just in Charleston:  California and Texas too!

John Florence serves us in his front yard!

Down the mountain, we explored Hearldsberg by following the "Fairy Door" map around the square.  It was similar to finding the "Mice on Main" in Greenville SC.  I teased David and said these were experiences you only have married to an Early Childhood major!  The first one was the tiniest, on the side of a flower pot.  The rest varied from 4-6 inches high.  We ate our best hamburger ever at Journeyman Meats in Hearldsburg!  It was probably because we had existed for 2 days on English muffins, juice and coffee!

We went to Mauriston Winery on a recommendation and found most of their Rockpile wines were all sold out, though we did taste 2 Rockpile Zins.  The wife of one of the pair of brothers who owns and runs it was there and she was very knowledgeable.  When we said Krisi Raymond had sent us she feigned ignorance.  I said, "Well you need to get to know her because she sent us here."... We read her the email, and she said, "Oh, she must know my brother-in-law, Clay"... beep, beep, beep backing up!

We are deliberately taking this trip leisurely and NOT trying to cram in as many wineries and activities as possible.  We are finding this pace suits us and we are savoring each activity more.

On Friday, we just did one tasting at Schrauberg.  Krisi suggested we do the cave tour and it was a lot of fun.  The cave was built in the 1860s and was almost 2 miles long, taking almost 10 years to carve.  The pick axe marks could still be seen on the roof.  The winery was reinvented as a French "bubbly" producer after prohibition.  We tasted 5 "champagnes" and had a cheese plate to accompany them.  While we thoroughly enjoyed the tour and tasting, we did not buy any, as we seldom serve champagnes and they were very pricey!!  It was a Schaumberg wine that Nixon served in the "Toast of Peace" when he opened diplomatic channels with China.

Can you find the missing bottle?  It blew out! 
The cave was lined with these bottles!

Along the way back we found a wonderful sculpture of a wolf for Ella... or is it a coyote?    The head rotated around.

Several folks told us we should check out the Barlow in Sebastopol.  It is in a warehouse district and similar to Camp North End or Optimist Park.  Unfortunately, our bellies were still full of cheese, crackers, and bubbly that we weren't interested in the food and breweries and the shops were pretty sparse.  It seemed to be more potential at this point than fully developed.

On Saturday we made our way to Napa and St. Helena.  We ate at Gott's Roadside Diner in Napa and again enjoyed great burgers.  The art studios were having an "Open Studio" day and the best one we found was Zlomke woodworks.  David enjoyed talking with the artist in his workshop beside his house and many of his pieces were FLWright-like.

Hall Winery was written up as a great place to view art.  We got roped into a very expensive tasting there and it DID NOT include a tour of the art and access to some of the areas where it was displayed.  The wine was mediocre and served by a preppy server who had memorized the "notes".  The "quilt" in the foyer made from costumes and "bedazzled" sweaters and the bunny with the Ukrainian flag were fun, but overall it would have been better as a "drive-by".

Tamber Bey, on the other hand was a delightful find.  Their rose was delicious and we enjoyed it in the courtyard, part of which included half open horse stalls.  The owners met and married over their love of horses and racing in 100 mile cross country races - like marathons for horses.

We sat here and the horse stall were down the allee to the right