After work last Friday, we packed up the car and headed north to Santa Rosa. Before I knew anything about California wine country, I only really thought about Napa and Sonoma. The "wine country" is more complex than that and spans a large area. There are wineries all over the place, and many are outside the actual towns of Napa and Sonoma. 

We decided to avoid Napa for the most part because there was a big music festival going on, so we planned to visit a couple of wineries in Sonoma and then one in Santa Rosa. 

After checking out Santa Rosa a bit, we drove to Sonoma (20 or so miles away) on Saturday and walked around downtown. Sonoma is easily the cutest town we have been to in California at this point. If I can go visit places like Sonoma on the weekends, I don't know if I'll even need to see much more of San Francisco! After gawking at how adorable everything was, we bought some picnic supplies and headed to our first winery, Bartholomew Park. 

Pretty much every house on the way to the winery was my dream house. The area is just incredible, and I can't wait to go back. Bartholomew Park sits on 21 acres and is a small, family owned operation. They only sell their wine at the winery and through their wine club. The tasting was fun and informative, and then we headed outside to a picnic table on the grounds. Many wineries allow picnics (but usually no outside alcohol, though they will lend you wine glasses to drink their wine with), many allow dogs, and you can pretty much freely walk around the grounds. Bartholomew Park also had a lot of hiking trails. 

Baby grapes

Our plans weren't set in stone for the day until our server at Bartholomew Park gave us a 2-for-1 tasting card to one of their sister wineries, Gundlach Bundschu, which we had considered going to anyways. Plans made! We headed to "Gun Bun," which was a bigger winery and is the oldest family-owned winery in CA. 

Entrance to the tasting room at Gun Bun

After Gun Bun, we were planning on heading back to Santa Rosa for a third winery, Matanzas Creek. They are known not only for wine, but also for having beautiful lavender fields, which are at their peak in June. It was getting kind of late and honestly, 2 wine tastings in the middle of the day was enough for us, so we didn't end up visiting Matanzas Creek. 

On Saturday night, we went to the famous-among-beer-drinkers Russian River Brewery for dinner. They are known for their Pliny the Elder IPA, which has a score of 100 on Beer Advocate. They are very selective about distribution, so this was the first time either of us had tried their beer. 

When we got there, a long line had formed along the sidewalk. We were told it would be about 30 minutes until we got in. We didn't really know what would happen once we actually got in. Probably 40 minutes later, we got in and were then told it'd be 30-45 minutes until we could be seated! We were too far in at this point, so we stayed. When we were seated, we ordered the sampler of all 18 of their beers, shown below. This was, by far, the biggest and most ridiculous flight I've ever seen. It was the best way to sample their beers, but we definitely could not finish it!

I doubt we would go back to Russian River because of the long wait times, but we probably will buy some Pliny the Elder since it's available in Livermore. 

Sunday, we headed a little ways west to Guerneville, a small town on the Russian River. The town was cute and had a very hippy vibe. The main attraction we came to see was Armstrong Redwoods state park. We had seen some normal-sized redwoods already around Santa Rosa, but this park had bigger, older trees.

It was very cool to see the redwoods! There are bigger ones further north that we plan to visit later, but these were amazing. 

On the way home, we took the long way and drove through Calistoga, St. Helena, Yountville, and Napa. I hope to return to Calistoga sometime - it was a very small, historic town with a picture-perfect main street. St. Helena was also cute.  Yountville, which I had heard of before, was basically a planned resort. They are famous for having The French Laundry restaurant ($295+/person) and other really high-end accommodations and restaurants. 

All along this route, we passed winery after winery after winery. The last stop before we headed home was the actual town of Napa.  It was like a big city compared to these other towns! There were a lot of restaurants, wine bars, and tasting rooms. 

I am definitely more inspired to try out some of the tasting rooms in Livermore now. Neither of us are experts on wine, but the experience was fun and I'm glad we can do it locally. I do hope to spend at least another weekend or two in wine country before we leave!