Wine Country - Tour Day

I'm not normally the one who posts on here. Okay, let's be honest, I don't post ever, but I thought in honor of Joe's birthday and also the fact that he's asleep and I'm up and at 'em, I'd guest blog. (Is it really guest blogging if it's your own blog? Discuss amongst yourselves.)

Anyway, yesterday we arranged for a limo to drive us up to northern Sonoma county to visit wineries in the Dry Creek and Russian Ri

ver Valley areas. That's about as far away as one can get from Sonoma city, but we figured when paying for a DD we should take full advantage.

We started our day at Ferrari-Carano, a winery with beautiful grounds and tasty wines. It's over an hour north of Sonoma city, but we had a nice drive up there and the limo driver brought us champagne for the trip up.

We arrived at Ferrari-Carano and enjoyed a few zinfandels and some chardonnay off their tasting menu. As this was the first tastin

g of the day, we were all a little unsure of exactly what we were doing. We did okay though and apparently, it's normal to dump out the wine if you don't like

it or even if you do like it but don't want a full tasting. This was a good lesson to learn and it served us well throughout the day.

After purchasing a couple bottles of the wines we liked at Ferrari-Carano, we went on to Bella - a smaller winery nearby. (Actually, in between we got really lost up in the hills of Sonoma, but thanks to Sprint Navigation and the iPhone with Google Maps, we made it to the next winery eventually.)

Bella was amazing. Casual and beautiful grounds

with extremely friendly and knowledgeable staff who shared their love of wine with our little group. My personal favorite was their Late Harvest Zin, a dessert wine that is sweet and light but without the fortification of cognac or brandy. I had to have a bottle and I think it will be amazing with some Shatto vanilla ice cream. Joe picked out a couple other bottles and we decided it was lunch time.

Lauren had come up with the great idea of hitting up the grocery store and packing a picnic lunch. Sal, our awesome driver from Beau Tours, brought along full table service and set up our picnic on a table in the shade. We dined on bread, cheese, pesto, turkey sandwiches, and artichoke jalapeño dip and enjoyed a bottle of the Bella Rose. Delicious and very relaxing just to sit around with good friends talking and enjoying the vineyard.

After lunch were preparing to leave when we saw that they were working on making wine around the side of the building. We stood and watched and the proprietor brought over a bunch of grapes for us to try and explained the process we were observing. The CPAs of the bunch (yeah, everyone but me) were asking questions about product and inventory loss, hobbies as viewed by the IRS, and other tax related topics. It was all very interesting - for a group of accountants. The proprietor got quite a chuckle when the Christina asked about weighing bad grapes to take a loss or something like that.

Here's a picture of the wine-making process. The machinery removes the stems, but the leaves and any unacceptable grapes have to be pulled out by hand. We watched for a while and then it was time to leave for our next winery.

After Bella, we headed to J Vineyards in the Russian River Valley, an area further south of Dry Creek where we started our day. J Vineyards was a polished, modern winery without the character of Bella. It was the first place we were able to try sparkling wine though, which was something Joe and I had really been looking forward to.

When we'd finished tasting at J, there was time for only one more vineyard - Gary Farrell. Sal mentioned to us that Gary was known for his Pinot Noirs, a wine that both Joe and I really enjoy. And Sal was right - their Pinot was amazing. Apparently, there are 3 wines from Gary that are widely distributed (aka we can get it in MO) and 10+ other kinds that are only available from the winery. This was a wine we'll definitely be looking up at home and we purchased quite a few bottles to have shipped back to KC.

Overall, winery tours are really interesting and we learned that we liked the smaller, family-owned vineyards better than the big "corporate" ventures. I'm looking forward to going home and having wine show up at the house! Now we just need to finish the bar remodel and get our purchases into the new wine fridge.

Cheers!