For my wife and me, it’s wine. It’s a passion and a hobby we share. It has a regular place at our table, and it also provides us with our preferred destination for kid-free rest and recharge getaways. On this visit, we gave our usual wandering M.O. a twist — we bought tickets to the 2011 Passport to Dry Creek Valley.
About 60 or so wineries in this Sonoma Valley region participate. Your $120 passport gets you food and wine tastings at all the participating venues for the Saturday and Sunday of the event (you can get a Sunday-only pass for $70). The ticket price is steep as an up front cost, but two days of tasting would set you back about that amount anyway these days (ah, I remember the old days of complimentary tastings). And, during the festival, every winery we visited was serving food of some kind or another, so no need to buy lunch!
The generalization you often hear is that Sonoma is the casual, slightly hipper cousin to the elegant and somewhat stuffy Napa Valley. What we found was an entire range of experiences in Dry Creek, some elegant, some raucous, but, in general, the diversity had a wider range than what you might find in Napa.
Dry Creek wineries can flat out do elegant in a way that would make Napa proud, as amply demonstrated by Mauritson, Pedroncelli and Ferrari-Carano. No surprise that a well known and widely distributed label like Ferrari-Carano would put on a multi-course tasting that wound through the winemaking bowels of the operation and the stately barrel room. Yet Pedroncelli offered a similar experience of multiple stations with several different food and wine parings — the surroundings were perhaps not as grand, but the food was really outstanding and paired very thoughtfully. The crepes were awesome.
Mauritson also offered the station to station tasting experience, and was was perhaps our most pleasant surprise. We’ve driven past the winery many times, never before tempted to stop in. But with the Passport, there is little downside risk to trying a new spot. Our reward for adventuresomeness was a great tasting and a bottle of their Rockpile Zin to save for later.
Not every winery went for “elegant.” The other school of thought for Passport events: throw a hunk of meat on the grill, splash around some tasty wine, and have a bash. This was the story at our perennial Sonoma fave, Wilson. The place was packed, live music blared, the zin flowed. The views from the deck were as lovely as always (see above). I didn’t mind the crowd, but I did appreciate the separate area for wine club members where we could taste in a more leisurely way.
At Talty we were greeted by the winemaker himself. A great sloshing glass of red in one hand, slapping backs with the other, this guy was obviously all about having a good time. The grilled lamb tacos qualified as my single favorite food offering. Because of the limited availability of these wines, we are taking a long look at the wine club here. As soon as we can figure out a club to drop, we’re signing up.
Honorable mentions for their fine wines, friendliness, commitment to their themes: Michel-Schlumberger (ballpark, gourmet hotdogs) and Dry Creek Vineyards (Parrothead, jerk chicken).
The only slightly sour note was at Frick. We thought we were clever when we picked this far-north winery as our Sunday starting point. It was also the recommended starting point in the event brochure. We hadn’t noticed, and neither had the winery, evidently. The place was packed, but none of the food for the pairings was ready on our arrival, and the wines were a bit tight and tannic for me.
We dropped in to a couple of other places for partial tastings or just to check the scene. I won’t list them all to avoid sounding like a lush.
Hampton Inn Windsor was perfect. Affordable. Windsor was cute. We really dug the Himalayan food. And I found a gorgeous 8-miler running route that was only slightly marred by gastric distress (what could have possibly caused that?).
You can probably guess who planned and paid for this adventure (Hint: not a DadLabs employee). Other than helping pick a few wineries, I was just along to tote wine boxes. Thanks to my wonderful wife for her generosity and companionship on this adventure.
