I am baaack with a continuation of yesterday’s post!
I spent this past weekend visiting my friend Alex out in the Bay Area, and after a day of exploring San Francisco, we decided to end our weekend with a trip up to Wine Country.
We had originally planned on doing Napa Valley, but decided to do Sonoma instead because we didn’t plan far enough ahead to make reservations (turns out, most wineries require them now due to COVID), and Sonoma is a little less stringent with planning ahead.
I spent Sunday morning Googling wineries in Sonoma and oh my god. I did not realize there were LITERALLY EIGHT HUNDRED (800) (!!!) wineries in this part of the state!
Like. How do you even pick one to visit?!
Luckily, Alex picked for me. (I’m a Libra, I don’t do decisions well.)
She called ahead and found a winery in Kenwood that not only allowed walk-ins, but also offered cheese pairings.
I was, quite obviously, sold.
We started the day at Kunde Family Winery.
Our tasting was really great! We started with a rosé and tried a few whites — including a chardonnay and a chardonnay reserve — before moving on to the reds (my favorites).
We also got to try a few wines that weren’t on the pre-drafted tasting menu, which was a nice surprise!
Our pourer was so nice and knowledgable. And — I know it’s a little aside the point — the cheese board was incredible. We had about five different cheeses, but my favorites were the cheddar and aged gouda. All the cheeses were from Marin.
When we finished our wines at Kunde, we went across the street to Deerfield Ranch Winery.
Deerfield was night-and-day difference from Kunde. At Kunde, we sat outside in the sun for our tasting. We were next to a gorgeous pond and had the hillside vineyards in site.
At Deerfield, we were actually in the wine cave for our tasting. I found out that the wine cave was actually a former mining facility.
It was actually really cool. The entire cave was a giant maze, and you had to walk through seemingly endless hallways filled with wine barrels to get to the bathrooms.
The acoustics of the wine cave were incredible, too. We ended up joining in on the conversation with a table of visitors from Seattle on the other side of the cave, just because we could overhear their conversation perfectly.
(I had to try really, REALLY hard after that to make sure my conversation with Alex was publicly appropriate. Um. It wasn’t.)
The pours were very generous, and we were treated to a few wines that weren’t listed on the tasting menu.
Afterward, we went a bit down the street for dinner at Salt & Stone. We had several oysters (we picked some from the Bay Area and some from Washington) and a charcuterie board before calling it a day.
I had an absolute blast in Sonoma. I bought a bottle of merlot from Deerfield to bring home to Ryan, and I really wish it was possible to feasibly and responsibly do more than two tastings in one day.
I’m definitely nowhere close to being an amateur sommelier or anything since I’ve typically preferred craft beer over wine (Midwest problems!) but it was definitely fun to visit Wine Country and at least pretend for a day that I have a sophisticated wine palate.
(Cause… I don’t.)
Regardless, I had a blast! And I’ll definitely have to come back, because one day is not NEARLY ENOUGH time to try the thousands and thousands of wine produced here by the 800-plus wineries.