![\"\"](\"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/chateau-st-jean.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nChateau St. Jean.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Sonoma County Tourism.<\/em><\/p>\n Whenever we wanted to visit Sonoma County, we would take a day out of a trip to Napa Valley and traveled across the Oakville Grade to the southern end, known today as Sonoma Valley.\u00a0 Our experience there was limited to the wineries right along Route 12 (Sonoma Highway) so that later on we could get back easily to the Napa side.\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t very restrictive because there were some pretty good places to taste wine.\u00a0 A typical visit would start at B. R. Cohn, move on to Arrowood, then Kenwood and finish at Ch\u00e2teau St. Jean.\u00a0 (Come to think of it, that\u2019s not a bad selection even today.)<\/p>\n But Russian River? Alexander Valley? Dry Creek?\u00a0 We seem to remember that we had heard of them, maybe, but we had no idea where they were or what they produced.\u00a0 Then, some time in the 1990\u2019s, we thought we\u2019d spend an entire trip in Sonoma County.\u00a0 Friends looked at us quizzically.\u00a0 \u201cWhy go there? Why not just stick with the good stuff in Napa?\u201d they would say.\u00a0 Ever adventurous, we took off across the Golden Gate and along Route 101 only getting a little lost around the town of Sonoma<\/a>.<\/p>\n The view across Dry Creek Valley.<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, we discovered all sorts of wonderful wines and wineries.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t as many then but there were lots of well-established wineries, without any of the fancy-schmancy buildings and tasting rooms that were then being erected in Napa Valley.\u00a0 What some might have called rustic<\/em> we interpreted as authentic<\/em>.\u00a0 Instead of fighting the traffic on Napa\u2019s Route 29, we were traveling along beautiful country roads, lined with vines.<\/p>\n However, there were some drawbacks.\u00a0 It was hard to find a meal.\u00a0 There were no restaurants at all along those country roads, and even on Route 101 all we could find were fast food joints.\u00a0 Hotels weren\u2019t a problem; we stayed at the Hilton in Santa Rosa, now sadly lost to the 2017 fires.\u00a0 But as recently as the year 2000, we pulled into Healdsburg at midday and had trouble finding a restaurant where we could sit and enjoy lunch and a glass of wine.<\/p>\n Today, the best of Sonoma County is still there while the shortcomings have been eliminated.\u00a0 The scenery is till ravishing.\u00a0 There are quite a few wineries that make world-class wines.\u00a0 Chards, Cabs, Zins and Pinots to be sure, but also wineries that specialize in grapes native to the Rh\u00f4ne and to Italy, as well as California\u2019s own Petite Sirah.\u00a0 And there is no longer any difficulty finding a good meal, we can assure you.\u00a0 In recent trips, we\u2019ve dined excellently in Sonoma, Santa Rosa, Windsor and of course in Healdsburg, the culinary mecca of Sonoma County.<\/p>\n We miss a bit of the anything-goes nature of the Sonoma County of yesteryear.\u00a0 The rough edges have been knocked off, and there are some full-fledged palaces for tasting.\u00a0 But Sonoma County\u2019s charm and quality have persisted and even improved, so there\u2019s really no comp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sonoma County has unique attractions for wine lovers: an enormous variety of, well, varietals; beautiful scenery; great restaurants; and of course some very fine wines.\u00a0 But earlier in our years of wine tasting, Sonoma County was often viewed as simply an adjunct to its more \u201crefined\u201d neighbor across the Mayacamas range. Chateau St. Jean.\u00a0 Photo … Continue reading Wine Tasting in Sonoma County, Only Yesterday<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1650,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions\/1650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n