Feb 28 2009
The Trip to California Wine Country
This is the 15th installment find the 1st one here
A couple of years ago, my nephew and his lovely bride were to be married in Palo Alto, California and my wife and I were planning to attend. Naturally, I took a few extra of my vacation days to travel to “wine country” seeing that we were so close and June was a great time to be there. We had hit on the fact that we both really like the “Russian River Valley” pinot noirs and would like to visit wineries in that area around Santa Rosa and Healdsburg for a few days and really enjoy ourselves. Great idea!
All of the trips that my wife and I have ever taken for personal vacations have been mostly planned (always planned) by her as to where we would stay, eat and visit local attractions. She announced that this wine trip was up to me to plan and set up the itinerary! OK, I can do that!
I went on the internet and located the wineries in and around Healdsburg, the Russian River valley and Santa Rosa. I plotted out the trip based on their tour times, prices and made reservations for tasting wherever I need to. I came up with 14 different wineries to possibly visit in 2 and ½ days. I figured we would not make it to all of them but we’d give it a shot and see what happened, so long as we had a good time.
We arrived at the first winery in the Russian River valley in the early afternoon. It was beautiful there and we were lucky to have a tour through a small “hand crafted” winery where a young man took the time to really explain what they did, what we were looking at and also shared some great wine with us. We actually made it to 3 more tasting rooms that afternoon. I looked over at my wife and she declared, “I need a greasy cheeseburger and some rest, NOW! I obeyed!
The next day we paced ourselves a bit better and did some driving through the magnificent countryside and stopped a couple different wineries in the morning, had a great lunch and did a couple more tasting stops in the afternoon and one in the early evening in the town of Healdsburg itself. All the wines were fantastic and the people were gracious and fun to talk to. We spent the evening in the park at a “bluegrass” concert in the town square with the locals. What a great day!
The next morning, we left and headed through a few more wineries in Santa Rosa and on to Sonoma toward the San Francisco Airport for our return trip to Florida the next day. What a beautiful trip! I had no idea what amazing structures, vineyards and facilities there are in the wine producing region of the Sonoma and Russian River Valleys. The trip was wonderful, the wine was great and, would I recommend it to anyone else? You bet I would! Would I do it again? I will, and my wife will too!
PS We made it to 12 of the 14 wineries on my list!
Jim Albinger (Andrew’s dad) grew up in smalltown northwest Iowa in the 1950’s. He has been writing down his experiences looking back at all that has shaped his current wine tasting hobby. Expect to see more of Jim’s writings here at offthecork.com.
