Day 9 Sonoma Valley and more wine

  Sonoma, California, United States
Saturday, May 24, 2008

Day 9 - Sonoma Valley  
Woke up this morning to clouds and a light rain. Glad to see here in the US is the same as the UK - as soon as a holiday weekend comes along the weather turns to poo! Hopefully it won't get too bad otherwise there will be a lot of soggy jazz festival goers this weekend.

Benziger Wine tour

We first drove up to Benziger Winery. They are one of the few wineries that practices biodiversity and wholistic farming. They use all natural products, recycle all of their water, grow plants to attract natural good insects etc. 

By this time it wasn't raining - it was chucking it down! We plumped for the VIP tour which was $40 each (1115 and 1415 each day, limited to 10 people). This tour took you through the vineyards on an electric buggy as well as a visit to the caves where they store the wine. There was also a private tasting in a room in the caves sampling wines which are not available outside of the Estate.

Benziger Wine tour in the rain!

Overall it took just under 2 hours and I feel was well worth it to see how the Estate maintains its vines and the process of how the wines are produced is done. The tour also gives you two free tastings at their sister winery Imagery. You also get a 5% discount on anything you purchase on completion of the tour.

After the tour, we were then invited to another tasting where you could sample any of the wines the produce. Pity Catriona was driving today as I had to finish all her wine for her :) 

Benziger Wine tour private tasting room

We bought a couple of bottles, Obsidian White Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 and 2005 Sonoma Valley Port. $92. For the Benziger tour, I would highly recommend that people try and visit this as part of a tour or at least with someone else driving. You end up drinking about 3 whole glasses of very fine wine and it would be a shame not to be able to drink it because you are driving a car. 

We then headed off back to Loxton to buy a bottle of their Chardonnay. The rain had eased off to a spit by then, and we went to Imagery Winery. There we got a free sample using our coupons from Benziger and tried their wines. They were a bit more down market compared to Benziger but still very nice as we bought a 2007 Pino Gris and 2007 Muscato Dei Canelli , $45.
We stopped at this point and had our lunch which was the remainder of the olive bread we had bought yesterday and a chicken Caesar salad.

It's interesting to note (well, interesting for my bank balance!) that when we are at home, for a normal bottle of wine we usually pay about £4 ($8). Here, were are paying $30 ($15). Some of the wines have been very good but some of them are, well, so-so or poor. Just goes to show you do not need to pay a fortune for a bottle of wine. You either like the taste or don't.

Schugs place!

After lunch we headed down to the Schug Carneros Estate SW of Sonoma. We mainly went there because of the name. In Scotland, anyone called Hugh is automatically called Shug. No idea why. 
Anyways, another tasting in Schugs and we bought a bottle of Roige De Noir Sparkling wine ($30). We now have 9 bottles of wine plus a bottle of port to drink in the next 8 nights as we cannot take any home as we already have 2 bottles of Morgans Spice we bought on the way out and Customs wont allow anymore back in. 

If its rubbish weather in Yosemite these should do us nicely!

Back to the hotel about 5pm, Catriona started packing away for tomorrow while I typed up the blog. 
The evening skies cleared and sunshine appeared. We walked into Sonoma Plaza (about 15 mins walk from the El Pueblo). As we were early we stopped in the wine bar next to the Della Santina's and had a couple of glasses of fizz.

8 pm we went to the restaurant, it was busy and noisy (as most Italian restaurants). It was a few minutes before anyone came to greet us and led us to our table which was out in the area that is normally the entrance but with the iron gates closed (obviously to make more room for tables at weekends). 

We appeared to have Odd Job as our waiter for the evening. We started with Anitpasti Misto (mixed cured meats and cheese) and Pork and tuna with capers and salad.
Next we had Tortellini in Brodo (tortellini pasta in a light chicken broth), followed by our main courses of   Gamberoni Dorati (prawns in egg batter with a lemon butter sauce) and Coniglio allo Spiedo (spit roasted rabbit with fresh herbs).

To finish we had Torta De Chocolate and Delizia. We chose a bottle of 2006 Incognito Viognier. Total cost was $146 with tip.

All in all it was a nice enough meal, but the restaurant is aimed at the same level as The Girl In The Fig. Therefore it is fair to judge the two. And in this case The Girl in the Fig comes out well above. It was a nice enough meal but it was missing any special zing. It was OK but not exceptional. I would rate the Girl & The Fig well above this.

We walked back to the Inn for our final night in Sonoma and had a couple of Benziger 2005 Sonoma Valley ports in our room before retiring. 

Tomorrow we head on down to Yosemite to the Wawona, but Internet access in Yosemite is not as good so the updates may take longer to be posted.