Karen’s knee injury meant that we had to head home. We did get to spend one night at one of our favorite hotels anywhere. Vintners Inn in Santa Rosa offers a great wine country experience with outstanding rooms, excellent dining and an on-site vineyard to stroll through. We had to skip the vineyard stroll and our dining was limited to the room-service burgers we ordered [which were excellent by the way]. Hotel staff was caring and accommodating; and we were very grateful under the circumstances to be able to switch from an upstairs room to a downstairs one with no trouble at all.
As we sadly had to hit the road the next morning, we were already planning our next, hopefully extended, stay.
This week, I want to share with you the places we had planned on visiting. We had done a lot of research and planning, so we know these places will be on our list for our next trip back up to Northern California.
In Santa Rosa, we were planning on spending a few days at Vintners Inn. While there, we had a few winery visits planned.
In the Dry Creek Valley, my favorite wines from Mauritson Wines are Clay Mauritson’s outstanding Zinfandels and Petite Sirahs. Bella Vineyards was on our list as well for its great Zins.
During our last trip to Sonoma County, we visited Jake Bilbro’s Limerick Lane winery. Jake has two brothers who also make wine. Sam Bilbro’s Idlewild specializes in Italian varietals while the winery that started it all in the Bilbro family, Marietta Cellars is now under the care of Scot Bilbro.
While in the area, we were looking forward to return dining experiences at Healdsburg SHED and Café Lucia.
Heading south to San Francisco, we had booked our stay at Hotel Diva, great looking hotel within walking distance to Chinatown and couple of restaurants we wanted to check out: La Marsa and Bota.
The last leg of our trip was going to be on the Monterey Peninsula. We were really looking forward to our stay at the Monterey Bay Inn.
White Monterey County is known for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, we had planned on visiting two wineries that did not fall into these categories.
Pierce Ranch Vineyards is known for Portuguese and Spanish varietals, along with Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel and Rhones.
In addition, we had not visited Boete Winery in many years and were really looking forward to their Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.
There are lots of great dining choices on the Peninsula. Fifi’s Bistro Café in Pacific Grove is an old favorite, Passionfish is legendary and we were excited to try a new find for us – Jeninni. Not to mention the grilled oysters at Monterey’s Fish House.
We’re looking forward to Karen healing from her injury and heading back up to really report on all of this for our Eve’s Wine 101 readers. At least this time we won’t have to do a lot of advance research.
Michael Perlis has been pursuing his passion for wine for more than 25 years. He has had the good fortune of having numerous mentors to show him the way, as well as a wonderful wife who encourages him and shares his interest. After a couple of decades of learning about wine, attending events, visiting wineries and vineyards, and tasting as much wine as he possibly could, he had the amazing luck to meet Eve Bushman. Now, as Contributing Editor for Eve’s Wine 101, he does his best to bring as much information as possible about wine to Eve’s Wine 101 faithful readers. Michael is also Vice President of Eve Bushman Consulting (fka Eve’s Wine 101 Consulting) http://evebushmanconsulting.com/ and President of MCP Financial. Michael can be contacted at michaelthezinfan@aol.com or michael@evebushmanconsulting.com
