There are tons of wineries in the Sonoma area, and seem to be broken down into Sonoma, Glen Ellen, and Kenwood. Kenwood has half a dozen wineries all within about a 2 mile stretch of road that are very easy to get to, so we decided that would be our best bet rather than spreading out across the whole area. We got some recommendations, gathered some coupons and went off.
I must say the Kenwood area is a bit more scenic than downtown Sonoma, and the wineries are a bit different. A lot of the ones we went to are VERY beautiful and everyone there is SUPER nice! We told people we were on our honeymoon and they gave us free tastings! :o
The first one we went to was St. Francis.
This place was very cool, and we ended up liking a lot of their wines. The good thing too is that many of their common ones are distributed to Texas! We ended up actually buying a wine here because it was so delicious - their port! Very smooth and tasty and $30 for a full size bottle. We will probably let that one sit for awhile before opening it.
These wines are very common in Texas as well, but I am so glad we stopped by this winery! We both especially liked their pinot noir and zinfandel. They only taste their reserve wines here, so they are not the ones you would find on shelves in Texas sadly. We did end up loving a wine here that is almost a dessert wine and tasted like a moscato, called Malvasia Bianca. Very sweet, 12.5% alcohol, and we got a few bottles for family since we knew they would love it too. I think we are going with the idea of checking a case of wine on the airplane. Apparently it's done all the time!
The next place we went was literally across the street from Blackstone and turned out to be one of the most delicious wineries so far! It was Chateau St. Jean (no pic of the sign :( ). This place was amazingly beautiful...
We were recommended to skip the regular tastings here and go directly across the courtyard to the reserves. We had a 2 for 1 tasting and we upgraded it to reserve, and then it ended up being free so it was quite a deal!
We shared a tasting of 5 wines and they were all beyond amazing. This was probably the most consistent winery we had been to so far. Unfortunately they were all beyond our price point ($40 - $90), but if we see the lower end ones in Texas, I would definitely be willing to give them a try! Another thing I loved about this winery was that they served cracker sticks...
Most of the wineries out here don't have any food whatsoever, which is annoying because then my taste buds are shot by the end of the tasting.
Look at all these wineries!
The next place we went to was just a tasting room, as the wineries are very small. It was for Muscardini and Ty Caton, both of which were really good. I LOVED their barbera, too bad it was $44, and actually all their stuff was pretty good. We had a really nice guy working there who knew a lot about wine.
We almost didn't go to the next place, but passed it by and were like whoa! We have a bottle of wine from there! It's Deerfield Winery, and the tasting room is in a cave! Here we are walking among tons of barrels...
I'm getting exhausted by this point and almost fell asleep :/
Deerfield had some crazy wines. They had a delicious dessert wine that tasted like tea and honey and the highest percent alcohol wine I've ever had (not a port). It was a zinfandel, coming in at an amazing 17.2%! Dang! (It was not good lol).
We made it to our new place, the Blackbird Inn, just in time for afternoon wine and snacks! Again, they had the delicious veggies and cheese and crackers.
They also have a cookie jar which is out all the time!
We checked out our room, which was pretty cool.
We have our own little patio also.
After a nap in the car and a short nap in our place, we were ready for dinner! We decided to go to Sushi Mambo on a recommendation and it turned out to be just ok.
The sushi was probably alright, but we could barely taste it under all the freaking sauce!
After sushi, we thought it would be fun to go to a pool hall, something neither of us has done in a long time!
Neither of us is very good, although we had a blast and got better as we played!
I even happened to find a red currant cider there!
That was pretty much all for the night! We went home and fell asleep!
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