Santa Rosa in Sonoma County is very diverse. There are many high end hotels and restaurants if you are looking for that but there are other options as well. In what is known as the SOFA arts district are two places you should know about. The area is known as SOFA because it is South…
Karen and I often extol the virtues of staying at a winery when visiting wine country. Nothing beats the ambience of waking up to a vineyard scene. But, maybe you are looking for more than what a typical winery may have to offer. What about staying at a property modeled after a Southern Mediterranean village,…
Karen and I were planning to revisit Santa Rosa / Sonoma County just a little over a year removed from our last ill-fated visit. While working on scheduling appointments, I started thinking that maybe last time turned out the way it did because we were somehow being punished for not visiting our good friend and…
THE GRAND TASTINGS Of course, the HdR event wasn’t all “work” [I use this term very loosely] at the seminars that I wrote about in last week’s article. Friday afternoon was the Opening Tasting and the Closing Tasting was held Saturday afternoon. The participants were the same at both, with the opening tasting focusing on…
My most recent two-part article was devoted to whining about our trip to NorCal that had to be cut short when my wife Karen fractured her knee on the second day. As the first of that two part article hit our site, we were at the end of the week of devastating fires in Napa…
Reading news articles and watching film clips of both the #SonomaFire and the #NapaFire tells only one part of the story, over the last few weeks I found myself more drawn to social media – and especially to posts from friends – to grasp the full weight of what has happened. One such friend, Gary…
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…
A few days prior to attending Ian Blackburn’s wineLA Elevating Zinfandel event with my wife Karen, I happened across a video that had been posted on Facebook by ZAP [Zinfandel Advocates and Producers – the organization “dedicated to advancing public knowledge of and appreciation for American Zinfandel and its unique place in our culture and…
Nearly 200 Ciders from across the globe were judged at the second annual Dan Berger International Cider Competition with the “Bittersweet” from Sea Cider Ciderhouse winning the Sweepstakes Award (Santa Rosa, California) Bittersweet from Sea Cider Farm and Ciderhouse in British Columbia took the Sweepstakes Award for best cider at the Second Annual Dan Berger…
SANTA ROSA, Calif. – More than 25 of the Russian River Valley’s top wineries will converge in San Francisco on November 3rd and then in Sacramento on November 10 during the Russian River Valley Winegrowers’ (RRVW) Single Vineyard Night tastings. Attendees will have the opportunity to taste small-lot wines stemming from single vineyards across the…
