Sonoma County Sunday

Last sunday my daughter came up from The City and we went wine tasting at some of my favorite places in Sonoma County. Despite the fact that she was raised in Sonoma County for a goodly portion of her childhood, lately she's been playing the turncoat and taking friends on the traditional straight up the valley tour of Napa and beyond. On Christmas Eve I gave her a "good talking to" and suggested that she needed to check out a few of the places in her old homestead, if for no other reason than the fact that she grew up here.

So... Sunday around 11:00 am we headed off from Petaluma to try out a few places in Dry Creek with an almost obligatory stop at the quintessentially youthful Roshambo just outside Sonoma. My goal for the trip was to show her a few of the places that I've been to recently that represent what I thought of as "her kind" of winery. To that end, we started the day up on Independence Lane at the new Coppola Rosso & Bianco winery where I recently joined as a wine club member. We were celebrating my daughter's birthday ( a week late) and so my goal at this stop was for her to taste, and for me to buy for her, a bottle of their Sofia Blanc de Blanc, a lovely sparkling wine with a light body, a perky taste, a lovely golden color (in a clear bottle with pink wrapping); s perfect birthday wine! On this trip we also picked up a bottle of the winery's R&B Sauvignon Blanc, a crisp cirtusy number with lots of spiciness, another playful birthday kind of wine, and a bottle of the Diamond label Syrah-Shiraz, a terrific "every day" sort of red with good body, nice crispness, and a truly reasonable price. There are some other amazing wines at R & B, particularly in their Director's Cut (complete with Zoetrope labels) and their Reserve selections, but I'll save my raves for thos wines for another blog. Suffice to say, Rosso & Bianco was a perfect kickoff to our Sonoma celebration Sunday.

The only problem with the whole day was that due to poor planning on my part we ran straight into the massive Winter Wineland celebration and were thrust deep into large crowds of people who we had not anticipated. Jen and I were not inclined to do the WW package because we only had four wineries we were planning to go to and we weren't looking to partake in all the extra foodstuffs (my daughter being a vegetarian there wasn't a lot for her to try anyway) that the $50 ticket allowed.This only proved a problem at one location, Wilson Winery, our first stop on Dry Creek Road. At Copolla, where we first discovered our inconvenient truth, the folks were all very friendly and accommodating, happy to see a wine club member even on a busy day like that. At Wilson it was a different story. Walking into the place we were confronted with a relatively hostile wine server who glared at us when we said we weren't "Winelanding" but that we were members. I was informed that we would have to buy a ticket for the wineland event anyway or come back another time. On the one hand, this didn't seem ALL that unreasonable (it was a busy day and Wilson has a pretty small tasting room) but I was particularly interested in having Jen try some of their really wonderful Zins as they are the reason I joined the club in the first place and because she was going to be bringing a whole collection of friends up to the winery on the following weekend and I wanted her to be able to tell them something about it. No such luck! Unlike Copolla, the folks at Wilson were NOT happy to have this wine club member and so we turned around and moved on to friendlier territory. It's unfortunate though, because I think the folks at Wilson missed out on a big opportunity to interest and entice a whole collection of youthful wine lovers this coming weekend.

Our next stops in Dry Creek were the fabulous Preston Winery - a fairly recent discovery for me and a place that I knew my vegetarian daughter would love for their organic farming and their attention to all things food and good - and the beautiful Bella, where, as wine club members, we were again welcomed with open arms and glasses despite the fact that they were inundated by Winelandians.

I'll save the details of those two stops (and our final drop down to Roshambo) for next time.

Cheers!