{"id":1965,"date":"2021-10-29T19:39:51","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T19:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1965"},"modified":"2021-10-29T19:39:51","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T19:39:51","slug":"californias-route-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1965","title":{"rendered":"California\u2019s Route 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some fabled roads in America.\u00a0 You can get your kicks on Route 66.\u00a0 Ten cents won\u2019t even shine your shoes on Broadway.\u00a0 42nd<\/sup> Street is naughty, haughty, gaudy and sporty.\u00a0 There are no songs about California\u2019s portion of US Route 101.\u00a0 It runs mostly south-north from Los Angeles through San Francisco all the way to the state border and up to Seattle.\u00a0 Interstate 5 runs parallel to it and it\u2019s much faster.\u00a0 The Pacific Coast Highway is much prettier.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Map courtesy of MapQuest.<\/em><\/p>\n

But if you want to be serious about wine tasting in California, at some point you\u2019re going to deal with Route 101.\u00a0 It is the main stem for almost every wine making area in the state, with the very notable exception of Napa Valley.\u00a0 It will take you to Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Paso Robles, near to Monterey, and Sonoma County.\u00a0 If America had a route des vins<\/em>, this would be it.<\/p>\n

As you drive north, you have the Pacific Ocean on your left and the mountains on your right.\u00a0 Mostly you can\u2019t see the ocean; take the pacific Coast Highway if that\u2019s your objective, but be prepared to crawl through towns.\u00a0 But you can see the sea for a while as you approach Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Around Pismo Beach, Route 101 skirts the coast along some rather impressive cliffs.<\/p>\n

The road heads inland through as you get to Paso Robles where, surprisingly, the mountains appear on your left.\u00a0 Route 101 divides the vineyard areas of Paso Robles.\u00a0 On the west side, in those mountains (well, maybe they\u2019re just foothills at that point) are the artisanal wineries that have raised this region\u2019s reputation.\u00a0 On the left are the mass production vineyards: endless, endless vistas of vines.\u00a0 There are some quality vineyards these days on the east side of Route 101, but if you\u2019re driving through you are overwhelmed by the quantity.<\/p>\n

As you get closer to San Francisco, the endless vista is brutally modernistic office buildings in Silicon Valley, followed by the dreary traffic from the airport to the city.\u00a0 Then, suddenly, the highway disappears and you are on city streets.\u00a0 Use your GPS or your roadmap because it will take you to an American legend, the Golden Gate Bridge.\u00a0 If the weather is good, you will offer you a glorious view of the City by the Bay.\u00a0 If that famous fog rolls in, you\u2019ll just have to take it on faith that the city is still there.<\/p>\n

Once over the bridge, you\u2019ll soon come to Sonoma County and one wine tasting region after another.\u00a0 Petaluma and the Green Valley.\u00a0 Santa Rosa and the Russian River.\u00a0 Windsor and the Alexander Valley nearby.\u00a0 Healdsburg and Dry Creek.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that you can spend days there; you can spend years visiting Sonoma County and you won\u2019t see it all, because it changes all the time.<\/p>\n

You can keep going and find more vineyards, but if you\u2019ve made it from Santa Barbara to Healdsburg, you\u2019ve seen the best of the Route 101, in terms of wine tasting, anyway.\u00a0 Maybe they should write a song about it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are some fabled roads in America.\u00a0 You can get your kicks on Route 66.\u00a0 Ten cents won\u2019t even shine your shoes on Broadway.\u00a0 42nd Street is naughty, haughty, gaudy and sporty.\u00a0 There are no songs about California\u2019s portion of US Route 101.\u00a0 It runs mostly south-north from Los Angeles through San Francisco all the … Continue reading California\u2019s Route 101<\/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":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1967,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1965\/revisions\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}