In the spirit of trying new things (my new year’s resolution) I decided to participate in Winter Wine Land this year. For those of you that don’t know, this is an annual event in the Healdsburg area, put on by the Wine Road, where you can by a pass to visit a good majority of the local wineries. These wineries generally offer food, specials, and pour wine not always offered. We have guests that come every year specifically for this event, and absolutely love it! I figured I should see what it was all about.
We started promptly at 11:00a.m. at Hanna in Alexander Valley. They had a “Grease” theme, with Pink Ladies costumes, music and decorations, which was great! I had a couple favorites here, their Sauvignon Blanc (which I’d had before), and their Jasmine Vixen, a red blend. Not only was this very tasty, but has a great name too!
Next was Alexander Valley Vineyards, just down the road. Great wines and it was wonderful to taste their wines with some an excellent beef stew, which was very welcome as it was a fairly cold and rainy Sunday.
Next to White Oak, a completely new winery to me. The property was beautiful, especially the fountain out front. Here, another amazing Sauvignon blanc, but what lingers with me still is their Syrah paired with pork sliders and streusel! We stayed here for quite awhile, enjoying the atmosphere, wine, company and space heaters!
We moved onto Stryker Sonoma, a personal favorite. The views from their tasting room were amazing, cloudy skies only adding to the vistas. We were able to taste a couple wines here from their Monte Rosso vineyards, which I had not tried before. These are something you must ask to taste the next time you visit! They paired their 2003 Monte Rosso Cabernet with an excellent chocolate bark, with amazing results!
After Stryker we headed over to the Dry Creek Valley. I’d been intrigued for days by facebook and twitter posts from Michel-Schlumberger about their ‘Winter Wine Land Olympics’ and ‘Jamaican bobsledder’, and had to check it out. Greeting us at the entry was, in fact, a Jamaican bobsledder, and by following the twitter instructions of saying “ya mon” to him (actually Jim Morris, the director of sales and marketing), we were permitted entry to their reserve tasting, which was an array of amazing Cabernet vintages from their cellars! This was a really fun winery to visit. The staff were all dressed as various winter Olympic athletes, (Picabo Street, etc), and the winery was decked out in fitting decorations. The rain put a stop to any actual games they may have had planned, but it was a lot of fun in spite of that!
No day of wine tasting is complete without dinner in Healdsburg, so off we went to Willi’s Seafood. First we made a quick stop to check out Thumbprint Cellars new tasting room, getting in just minutes before closing, so weren’t there too long, but managed to pick up a bottle of my favorite Viognier! At Willi’s we had some of our favorites; calamari, sourdough bread, and lobster rolls. Fully satisfied, we called it a day!
I was a little skeptical at first, afraid that there would be too many people in the area to really enjoy myself, or the wines. However, I was pleasantly surprised that it was never overly crowded any where I went. The fact that so many wineries participate probably spread out the visitors between the three valleys. There were people around of course, but it was great to chat with them about the wines and the event. If you are the type of wine taster who likes to spend their time talking to staff and wine makers, this is probably not a good time to come to wine country. However, if you want a fun, easy going weekend of wine tasting, this is a wonderful event that I highly recommend!
