adventures in california wine country, part 1

There is no shortage of information on touring California wine country.  If you’re heading to the popular Napa Valley or Sonoma region, you could dig through endless lists of wineries, restaurants, and advice.  I could write post upon post in a feeble attempt to cover it all, and I still wouldn’t do it justice.

You could weed through travel guides, magazines, and books, deciding on where to stay, eat, and taste based on the snippets of information you read.  I did that myself the first time we visited Sonoma over 10 years ago.  And you know what?  You will have a great time.  After many trips, I have come to the conclusion that there is no wrong way to do wine country.

But if you’re like me, you appreciate some guidance.  A way to narrow it down a bit.  And perhaps most importantly, a way to look past the obvious three-Michelin-starred restaurants, thousands-of-dollars-a-night luxury resorts, and big name winemakers, and find the less obvious diamonds in the extremely pretty rough.

My stories of wine country are long, so this is part one of a series of two posts on the topic.  This week I’ll cover the basics of planning a trip to wine country, and the tips I’ve rounded up over the years.  Next week comes “the lists” — restaurants I love, and of course, vineyards.

Do some research.  Alright, so I probably came down a little hard on those troves of information out there on wine country.  Before you book a flight, hotel, or any other element of your trip, you should check some of them out.  Here are my personal favorite resources on the web for up-to-date recommendations on the best wine country has to offer:

The most important outcome of your research should be a general area of wine country you want to “circle” around.  Wine country is big, and you’re not going to be able to see it all.  Pick a town you want to stay in, considering the vibe you’re looking for, the money you want to spend, and perhaps most importantly, the proximity to the kind of wines you want to focus on.  More about that next week.

Book a tour guide.  I highly recommend that for at least one of your days in wine country, you book yourself a driver.  And I don’t mean uber — in fact, as of our last visit in November 2016, uber was still a little challenging to execute in the more rural Calistoga.  I mean a proper local tour service, who will not only drive you around [read: allow everyone in your party to drink], but help you plan and give you some local color along the way.  We’ve done this every time, and some of our favorite experiences were the ones the guide books didn’t do justice, but the tour guide knew were not to be missed.

Consider your length of stay and overall agenda.  As much as I hate to admit it, you can’t taste wine every day, all day, for multiple days in a row.  You just can’t.  I like a four to six day visit:  arrival day, with perhaps one vineyard stop, a full day of tasting with four to six stops, a day off, another half or full day of tasting, and done.  On the “day off”, consider detoxing activities like a spa, a hike or bike ride, or shopping.  For our next visit I’m eyeing the cooking, baking, and tasting classes at the Culinary Institute of America.

Arrive, drive and relax.  Wine country is a minimum of 90 minutes north of the San Francisco area airports, and up to three hours if you venture north to Mendocino and beyond.  To maximize our time and relaxation, we like to take an early flight from the east coast that lands us in California mid-morning. We are in wine country for a relaxing late lunch, and can begin our trip with our absolute favorite new tradition:  oysters, wine, and sunset in Jenner, at Rivers’ End bar and restaurant.

photo by jenn kosar