Sonoma Visit

Our friends Pete & Teresa, aka Wine Rock Stars, are both retired now and ready to have some fun during the weekdays. It's fabulous to head up to the Wine Country during the middle of week...no crowds! We've been talking about visiting the St. Francis Winery in Sonoma for some time. They have a friend that just stared working at this winery and they've been trying to get up there for the food and wine pairings...which is a big deal at many of the wineries now. We were all over this, it sounded like fun...and it was...

There's a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, who disclaimed his wealthy family to become a hippie...well he was a big holistic earth environmentalist and loved animals, a few centuries ahead of his time

Here we are ready to begin the wine pairings

First course is a sea bass with a Chardonnay and chorizo slider with a spicy Zinfandel

Mushroom with a Merlot and steak with a Cabernet

Bleu cheese and chocolate dessert with a red dessert wine....are you salivating yet? You should be!

We stopped at Artesa since it was recommended to us by our new friends from Tampa that were at the wine pairing with us....

This place was set up in the side of a hill...set up for big buses to visit. Dave HATED the modern styling. We walked up the big hill....

Took some photos

Enjoyed the views

Gawked at the weird sculptures

Entered the building....used the toilets...and left without tasting the wines...it was a bit of a bunker feeling, but there were several balconies that we walked out on and enjoyed the views

We then decided to visit Domain Carneros because we were passing by on our way home. We do not pay for tastings and we thought we might be in a bind here....but Pete and Teresa have a friend that's a member here so they made a call to Canada and get his permission to deputize him so we could use their membership. This involved Pete pretending to be Mike....Olga, our hostess, really put him to the test, but Pete gave a great performance and the entire tasting was comped....we're getting pretty good at this! Here's the awesome view from the patio at Domain Carneros where we had a cheese and sparkling wine pairing.

It's good to live in California.....