Kenwood Wineries

We started our day again with a delicious breakfast (no running for us this time!) and tried to figure out our plan for the day.

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.

Most people may recognize the next place we went to... Blackstone!

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! 

Sonoma Wineries

This morning we woke up and decided to go for a 5 mile run around the town area to get a sense of where we were. Here is the hotel we are staying at, I finally got a picture of it. It's actually like a mix between a hotel and bed and breakfast.

The run around the main town area was so beautiful. There are vineyards everywhere, hills in the distance, and the weather is simply amazing. When we left this morning it was a cool 50 - 60 degrees, which is such a difference from Texas weather. When we got back, there was a delicious homecooked breakfast waiting for us!

After breakfast we showered and planned out our day. To avoid any wine/driving mishaps, we are taking alternate forms of transportation to and from the wineries. Our hotel has 6 bikes they lend out and there are about 6 wineries within biking distance so we thought we'd give it a try.

I'm not going to lie, I haven't ridden my bike in probably 5 years or so, so it took some getting used to at first but was VERY nice! Biking was very relaxing and fun! About 10 minutes later we came upon our very first Sonoma winery...

Yay we were here!

Not only does our hotel have complimentary breakfasts, but they give out wine tasting coupons to some of the nearby wineries. We got a bunch for the day, and most of them were like a buy one get one free thing, which really helped with our costs. The tasting fees appear to be about $10 - 15 per person. Sebastiani had a regular tasting menu and a reserve one, but since it was just our first place (and had no coupon), we stuck with the regular one. Another reason is that those are the wines we can find in Texas, the reserve wines are at the winery only. Here I am drinking my very first glass here!

We tried 2 chardonnays, pinot noir, merlot, cabernet, and a red blend which were all pretty good. My favorite was the 2006 Cabernet, which I gave an A-. I am learning so much about wine here already! I thought wine all from the same region was pretty much the same, yet I am learning there are definitely subtleties and differences depending on where in the Sonoma valley it's grown. After we tried all those wines, we tried 2 sweeter ones and I LOVED the 2008 Symphony, which is like a moscato. It is sweet, refreshing, and at 12.5% alcohol, still enough of a wine for me (some moscatos are like 7 - 8%)! It was amazing and only $13 but we were on bikes in the sun, so had to pass it up for now. We still need to find a way to ship wines back to Texas. The lady here recommended we buy a secure wine box and check it as a bag on the plane and said she does it all the time... this makes me nervous though lol. Ok, on to the next place!

Our next stop was Ravenswood, where we had a very generous pourer who apparently "can't count" the number of pourings he gave us lol. This place is really known for the zinfandels and I think we tried like 5 or 6 different ones there. They are VERY delicious, especially their higher end ones.

There were a little too many reds for me, and they all started blending together after a while. Again, my favorite one here was the sweet dessert wine at the end they call "party in your mouth", which was 2008 Moscato Leggero. SO DELICIOUS!

Here we are looking at actual wine grapes!

Ok now this next place was my FAVORITE!

When we went in we were the only 2 tasters there, and got to talking to the people behind the counter about jobs. I mentioned that I would LOVE to work at a winery, and the guy invited me back behind the counter to try it out :o. I'm describing the wine to the customer (Stephen) ...

I got to see what's back there, and even practice talking about the wine and pouring it! SO FUN! He said I did a great job and obviously know a lot about wine lol!

They had decent wine there, but it wasn't my favorite. The best thing was their sauvignon blanc, which was the only one we had today I think. Their zinfandel, merlot, and cabernet were all pretty good too. The people here were really what made this winery so fun, I loved every second of it!

Bartholomew Park and Buena Vista are very very close if you take a shortcut, but a few miles apart if you have to go on the roads, so we attempted the short cut. The gate was closed, so we attempted a round about short cut, which ended with us being somewhat lost in the woods for a while :( with bikes :( oh well, we got back on track but by that time were mad at Buena Vista for being so complicated so decided to skip it.

On to the next place, is this not amazing?

We had QUITE a trek to the next place, and I had a scare as my camera, ID, room key, and $20 tumbled out of my pockets onto the ride mid bike ride! :( I got them all back though.

This place is pronounced Gun Lock Bun Shoe lol. They had some pretty good stuff here - their zinfandel was pretty good (not as good as Ravenswood), and we liked their mountain cuvee red blend. It was also getting to be around 4pm and we hadn't eaten lunch yet so we grabbed a cheddar cheese to eat, which was yummy. Unfortunately you can't eat WHILE you drink, which is a bummer. Apparently the wineries need an extra permit to do that.

Beautiful lake

Ok almost done for the day. We called Tin Barn and they were closed for some reason so we decided to go BACK to Buena Vista since we had talked to lots of people and they said it was so good. I was so tired I forgot to get a pic of the sign, but here's the place.

This place had the best Syrahs. The 2005 Ramal Vineyard Syrah and even the Rose of Syrah were both excellent. Unfortunately I also gave 3 out of the 8 wines Ds. Look they have my aerator!

Ok done with the wineries! We bike back to our hotel just in time for wine and snacks, which we promptly devoured since we were starving. Weren't too interested in the wines, but tried them anyway just to taste.

After a 2 1/2 hour nap, we headed out to dinner at a place called The Girl and The Fig, which I didn't end up liking too much.

I got a really weird corn soup that tasted like corn milk, but Stephen liked his burger and we had some amazing smoked salmon.

No wine lol! That was the end to an amazingly fun, exciting, and BUSY day! :) BTW Stephen mapped out our bike route and we ended up biking 15 miles!

California, Day 1!!!

Nobody wants to get up super early the morning after their wedding, but we were up like 6am this morning to catch our 9:15 flight out to San Francisco. I wanted SO badly to sleep on the 5 hour flight, but just couldn't find a comfortable position. :( Anyway, a 5 hour flight and about 2 hours of public transportation later, we were finally in Oakland to pick up my friend's car to use for the week (thanks Kris!). Starving, we got a recommendation and went to Lois the Pie Queen which turned out to be fantastic!

I got the grilled ham and cheese which turned out to be overflowing with delicious cheddar and amazingly delicious.

On the way up to the restaurant I had seen an enormous flea market, so asked about it. Turns out its a little shady, but we were redirected to another closer and smaller one just around the corner. After getting lost for like 20 minutes we finally found it.

There were so many cool booths with jewelry, purses, clothing, food, books, and just decorations. One of our favorites was a lady from Kenya who had a bunch of hand painting wooden animals. I also got like 10 used children's books for $3 at a stand after I mentioned I was a teacher! We found some delicious ginger juice, and I contemplated some other things but passed them by. On our way out we saw a really cool drum circle.

We were eager to get on our way, so started driving back up north to our bed and breakfast. We got to preview some of the marathon course and found some interesting places. I will definitely be coming back here later this week...

And we were really excited to see this...

OMG we are HERE!!! We checked into our place and then seriously 5 minutes later as we were bringing bags in we got locked out! Stupid auto locking hotel doors. Frantic, we had to call the manager (everyone had left for the day) and find a hidden key. Whew! We actually had congratulation balloons waiting for us in our room, such a nice touch!

We were both completely exhausted and it was pretty late so we just decided to go out for some dinner and call it a night. We went to a place called the Red Grape within walking distance from us and it turned out pretty good. We got a really weird pizza with goat cheese, figs, and arugula which turned out to be a very weird yet yummy combination.

And here is me drinking my first glass of wine in Sonoma. It was a sangiovese from Imagery winery and was delicious!

That's all for our first day! We are planning out our wineries for tomorrow and I can't wait to check them out!!!

HONEYMOON!!!

When picking a place for our honeymoon, going to the Napa and Sonoma valleys was almost a no brainer. We both love wine and have always wanted to go and I am SO excited to say that we are finally here!!! Along with our wine tasting we are running the San Francisco marathon Sunday July 25th. Most people may not think wine and massive amounts of running go together, but we do! :) So in honor of all the wine and cheese here and the special occasion, Im going to make an effort to blog EVERY DAY about all the deliciousness I am enjoying here! Many pictures and posts to follow!

Fog Bank Pinot Grigio

Yay for wine again! I haven't opened a bottle in a really long time, but decided that tonight would be a good night for some. This is somewhat of a random wine, I think I bought it a few months back at a Specs tasting but didn't remember too much about it. Apparently it was about $10 and I guess I bought it because I liked it at the time!

Drinking it now, I can see why I bought it! Its very refreshing, with flavors of lemon and lime and a bit of grapefruit. I'm not usually a fan of pinot grigios because I think they just taste like watery nothing. This one is pretty good though. Although its not my FAVORITE wine, I like it ok. I give it like a 6/10.

4th of July!

I had a fantastic 4th of July! My day started out with a humongous run - 20 miles! I am training for my first marathon and its only 3 weeks away now, so we actually woke up super early and burned about 2,000 calories. Later in the afternoon, my family and Stephen's family all got together at my parents' house and had a blast! We ate lots of food, flew kites, watched some old videos, set off fireworks, and basically chatted and hung out. It was very relaxing. Of course the 4th had to involve some kind of wine, and my mom had the great idea to try to make a peach bellini! So she had bought some prosecco and frozen peaches and we made up a recipe lol.

Here is my mom trying to blend up some frozen peaches, which did NOT work very well until we added some orange juice. We also had to add some sugar because the peaches were way too sour. FINALLY we had some peach puree and poured in the prosecco.

I tried the prosecco by itself and it was pretty dry and not really my thing. The mixed drink turned out pretty ok, but not great. We needed some more ingredients, and I wonder what else they put in those delicious peach drinks! All in all, the day was really fun and relaxing!