winecountryblog

Top Sonoma County Things To Do - Translation, No Wine

clok — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:13:51 +0000

I know there are some of you out there who wonder what my top things to do in Sonoma County are that don’t have to do with wine and are mostly free. Welllll, thanks for asking because I’d love to tell you what my list is and you know what, just to be fair, let me know what you think. Our beautiful Sonoma County fall weather is just around the corner so you have plenty of time to visit and mark a coupla things off the list.

1. Mrs. Grossman’s Sticker Factory Tour - www.mrsgrossmans.com

2. Lagunitas Brewery Beer Garden and Tour - www.lagunitas.com

3. Birding, walking and loving the weather at Schollenberger Park - www.petalumawetlands.org

4. Screamin’ Mimi’s Ice Cream, handmade - www.screaminmimisiscecream.com

5. and 6. Joe Rodota Trail, SR to Sebastopol 2.8 mi, bike, skate, walk. West County Trail, Sebastopol to Forestville, bike or run, 5.5mi one way - www.sonoma-county.org/parks

7. Petaluma Creamery, Springhill Cheese retail outlet - www.springhillcheese.com

8. Marin French Cheese, they have a lake spot for a picnic - www.marinfrenchcheese.com

9. Sonoma County Farm Trails, visit a farm, see what’s locally produced and sold - free guide at both our hotels

10. Luther Burbank Gold Ridge Farm, self-guided tour - www.wschsgrf.org

11. Della Frattoria Bakery/Cafe, wonderful pastries and bread - www.dellafrattoria.com

12. Crane Canyon Regional Park, sits up on a hill top, small - www.sonoma-county.org/parks

13. Helen Putnam Park, also on a hill, great work out - same link as Crane Canyon

14. Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company - www.rareseeds.com

15. Pacific Coast Air Museum - www.pacificcoastairmuseum.org

Sowing Your Seeds II

clok — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:48:44 +0000

hi ho everyone, in a previous post (Sowing Your Seeds) I hearlded the fact that the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed company had bought an old unused bank building in downtown Petaluma and opened it last year as their only western outpost for heirloom seeds of all kinds.

Well the NYT wrote a great little human interest article about the husband and wife team responsible for reviving the heirloom seed business and I wanted to share it with you.

So take a break! http://nyti.ms/9iLuHH

From The New York Times:

FOOD: FIELD REPORT: The Evangelists for Heirloom Vegetables

A young couple preserve seeds for future generations.

Sonoma Wine and Food

clok — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:54:33 +0000

This past Sunday in the Chron’s Food & Wine section was a special tabbed section called “Wine Country” with emphasis on the town of Sonoma. Now, I know some of you are tired of reading about or listening to what are the best wineries blah, blah, blah. But hey, you gotta admit there are new wineries and restaurants opening all the time while there are also the tried and try which you never got around to trying. So bear with me this time, follow the links and see what you think about the wineries and restaurants listed for the town of Sonoma. Which reminds me there are those of you who still get confused with the town of Sonoma, Sonoma Valley and Sonoma County, what’s up with that?

The following link is for the restaurant recommendations:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/07/25/FDV91EDJNA.DTL

This link is for the wineries:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/07/25/FDKG1EE92I.DTL

Something to Ponder

clok — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:51:46 +0000

“I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” H. Belloc, writer/historian

Can you tell me, have you wandered or have you travelled, where and why?

Local Brewery in Petaluma

clok — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:03:58 +0000

I’ve talked about Lagunitas Brewery before, it’s just right down the street from the Quality Inn. But last week the NY Times had an article on domestically made pale ales and Lagunitas was rated - not at the top but it got on the list. Here’s the link:http://nyti.ms/93YmDD

Wine Not

clok — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:36:58 +0000

Oh I think I made a joke, get it - whine not. What I’m trying to say is that both our hotels are in the wine country of Sonoma County, Northern CA, but there is a whole lot of other non-winery, family, group, couple, dog kind of stuff to do. If you just came from one of our websites, winecountryqi.com or winecountryfi.com and you didn’t notice all the recommendations for things to do and see - then go back, yes go back and read the site carefully.

Oh, and then try this - visit www.costtodrive.com or www.fuelcostcalculator.com and figure out how much gas and the cost of that gas to get to us and back home. So, you’ll not only have the info on what to do where but you’ll know how much to pay to get here.

Let me know if any of this works for you because it’s summer time and you know and I know you want to go some where and not just stay in your zip code until August.

Stomp!

clok — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:25:46 +0000

Well not exactly stomp, but stroll, saunter, maybe even run, on a self-guided tour through four different wineries. Every wanted to walk among the vines and learn about what it takes to get those puppies growing and producing the grapes. Right now there are four participating wineries, Mantanzas Creek, Paradise Ridge, Balletto Vineyards and Mauritson Winery each route is less than a mile long and the self-guided tours emphasize sustainable farming. Just show up at the tasting room, ask for a laminated vineyard guide and away you go. Make it a long slow informative jaunt or whip through it and end in the tasting room. With the weather being so agreeable now, there’s no better time to be outside and get your share of vitamin D, exercise and education . www.sonomavineyardadventures.com or 522-5860

I Gotta Good Jook to Tell

clok — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:16:23 +0000

My weak attempt at a little Chinese humor. Jook is actually rice porridge, maybe you remember what Oliver Twist asked for more of ? Unfortunately because of that memory association - it was a great movie musical though - rice porridge has a terrible reputation.

Anyway, the reason I bring jook up is because at our Fairfield Inn & Suites last Sunday we had a group of 23 “mainland” Chinese stay. Wow, we thought, here’s a great possibility of a group tour lead. As it turned out as we dug deeper as to who and why these people came to Sebastopol of all places to visit, a business in town actually has something manufactured in China where these people work. And the American business owner decided to bring his Chinese employees over to the US for short tour of the Bay Area and his headquarters in Sebastopol. What a great boss - all expenses paid for 23 employees.

So, because our family is Chinese and we have traveled extensively to Mainland China, Hong Kong etc - we know about missing recognizable food from home. So we made a large soup pot of jook and brought it to them to have for breakfast the next morning. Jook is very versatile because it can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, when you’re sick, late night snack - anytime really. Well, they loved loved loved it and ate every bit.

Lastly, we added something extra to our jook that a Chinese person will appreciate, preserved scallops - phew, very stinky, fishy smell - but yummy in the jook. Which brings me back to Oliver Twist, that fishy smell will uphold the negative memories of rice porridge as much as the association with it being the gruel that Oliver ate in the orphanage.

Oh and finally, sometimes a hotel will go the extra mile to put a smile on a wary traveler’s face especially if they’ve travelled over 13 hours to get to us.

Your cup of Tea

clok — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:14:12 +0000

On Easter weekend, we took my mother in-law on Saturday to Macy’s on Union Square in SF to view their annual spring flower show. The flower arrangements were lush and colorful and an uplifting symbol to entering spring. Afterward, we mosied over to Grant Ave and walked into Chinatown where my brother in-law wanted to try out a tea tasting shop that had just reopened as a clean, bright, modern hole in the wall place set among the t-shirt shops and the busy main street of Chinatown - Red Blossom Tea Company, www.redblossomtea.com. In the past few years that tea has become the new coffee, I’ve passed over being lured into these shops but because we were with my brother in-law this was an opportunity to see how the tea tasting process worked. Much like wine tasting, you are able to select from a wall of tea containers any number of teas you want to taste. I pot is brewed with the precise temperature of water and you taste until you find your cup of tea. The proprietor told us that many wine enthusiasts are tea enthusiasts, tea leaves taste are affected by region, weather, elevation, oxidation etc. Pricing, well it’s not your mother’s pricing - leaves can start from $4 per ounce up to whatever for that one of a kind leaf that they only carry one time and only have 7lbs of. A person could quickly become a tea snob - just like I know that I’m a decaf nonfat Mocha, no whip fan, I now know I’m a Formosa Oolong Tung Ting fan - who da thought.

Here’s another pithy quote…

clok — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:21:10 +0000

Proust

” The real voyage of discovery consist not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” from good ol’ Proust

It’s time to not take people, places and things for granted