Week 16: Wine Tasting in Sonoma

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the 16th post in the series, when I went wine tasting in Sonoma, California, with my family. Here you can find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

While I lived in California for nearly 25 years, I don't think I've ever been wine tasting in Sonoma. I've sampled wines in Lodi, Santa Barbara, Livermore and of course, Napa. But never the neighboring city of Sonoma! Not to mention all the wines I've sipped in Europe ;)

So during my second-to-last day here in California, my family and I did just that!

We kind of stopped at the bottom of the Sonoma County wineries trail and made our way up to the plaza in downtown Sonoma. First up, Cline Cellars and Jacuzzi Family Vineyards. Two wineries across the street and owned by the same people.

Earlier in the morning, I voiced my opinion to hit up some places with sparkling wine, so we drove a few feet up the road to Gloria Ferrer Winery. Once there, all five of us split five different flutes of sparkling wine, peppered salami and a demi-baguette. Since seating was so limited (or should I say since everyone and their mom decided to go wine tasting today!), we made friends with a couple from Colorado who invited us to sit at their empty table.

It was at this point when I couldn't help but make comparisions to my wine tasting trip to Provence with my dad back in April of 2008 -- when we both lived in France. We visited Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Orange and Avignon, eating our way around the pays. That was one of my favorite birthday presents :) I'll share this year's goodies with you all in an upcoming post.

Back to the Sonoma trip. After sampling sparkling wine -- whose bottles contained 40,000 bubbles! -- we drove across the street and stopped at Cornerstone, an collection of wine tasting, restaurants, boutiques, art collections and gardens. Oh yeah, and a sweet giant chair I wanted to take pictures on immediately.

This was the result of an inside joke between my sister, her boyfriend and myself. Can we say, new Facebook picture?! Way too much fun.

After playing around on the Cornerstone grounds, we left for the plaza to grab some lunch, and of course, more vino. We ate lunch at the Plaza Bistro, my mom and I split moules-frites (mussels and fries) and salmon poached crepes with saffron creme and poached asparagus.

After lunch, the exploring began. And I you should be proud to learn I FINALLY caved and bought pastry bags/tips. Be prepeared for some baking to take place once I'm back in Arizona! ;)

Lastly, I snapped some pictures of the mission in Sonoma (that took me back to elementary school when I had to build a replica of Mission San Luis Obispo in fourth grade), City Hall and some cute little ducks :)

It was so worth it to make the hour drive up to wine country with my family! In my opinion, Sonoma wineries are much more fun than their Napa counterparts. And hardly any of the wineries in Sonoma charge for tasting. Way more my style.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some packing to do. Easter with the family tomorrow and then they ship me back off to the land of 90-degree temperatures. Happy Easter :)