A West Sonoma Road Trip

Tasting rooms and dining rooms in our favorite slice of Northern California wine country

By Lessley Anderson

10 a.m. - BREAKFAST

WILLOW WOOD MARKET CAFE

9020 Graton Road, Graton
707-823-0233

When Matthew Greenbaum and his partner opened this popular restaurant in 1995, the tiny town of Graton didn’t even have a sidewalk. Now people wait 20 minutes for a table on weekends for the cafe’s specialty: brunches like soft polenta, pancetta, and over-easy eggs served with a side of sesame toast with melted Cambozola cheese, as well as homemade pastries. The décor is not-cutesy country farmhouse, with an old wooden bar that’s inviting to sit at and lattes served in colorful bowls. The restaurant also sells British products like Marmite, McVitie’s digestive biscuits, and Cadbury chocolate. The Underwood, across the street, is the same owners’ more metropolitan, bistro-style place, serving lunch and dinner. Go here for a meal of steak frites and wine on the deck (and then play bocce on their court).

11 a.m. - TASTE WINE

IRON HORSE VINEYARDS

9786 Ross Station Road, Sebastopol
707-887-1507

If you’re only going to one winery, go here. At the end of a rural road, on a hill overlooking undulating hills of grape vines, the “tasting room” is a simple wooden shelf, constructed outdoors. CEO Joy Sterling or winemaker David Munksgard may be pouring their sparkling wines, Pinot Noirs, and Chardonnays. This informality is especially delightful when you consider that five consecutive presidential administrations have been drinking Iron Horse wines at state dinners. (No word yet on whether the Obamas have sampled the winery’s wares, but they did receive some bottles.) The entire Sterling clan (brother Laurence and parents/owners Barry and Audrey) lives on the property, and their warm enthusiasm for the family business is infectious. For a $10 tasting fee, you can try incredible wines like the earthy, velvety 2007 Estate Pinot Noir; the unoaked, lime-y, fresh 2007 Chardonnay; or the surprisingly dry 2005 Brut Rosé sparkling wine that would make an excellent summer hostess gift.

12 p.m. - RELAX

OSMOSIS DAY SPA SANCTUARY

209 Bohemian Highway, Freestone
707-823-8231

The village of Freestone, with its bucolic meadows and weathered Victorian buildings, looks like the movie set of a Stephen King movie, before something supernaturally horrible happens. In one of those old buildings is Osmosis, a rather unusual spa featuring something called Japanese cedar enzyme baths. For $85 ($75 if you do it as a couple), you can be buried up to your neck in exceedingly warm, fermenting, enzymatically rich cedar wood chips and rice bran (sort of like a mud bath, but much better smelling). Before and after your treatment, you can hang out in one of two phenomenal Japanese gardens on the spa’s five acres, with lily-pad-strewn koi ponds and shaded meditation areas with wooden decks and cushions. Afterward, pick up a loaf of bread from the excellent Wild Flour Bread across the street (it’s only open Friday through Monday).

2 p.m. - PICNIC LUNCH SUPPLIES AND COFFEE

MY FRIEND JOE coffee kiosk

1691 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol
707-829-9267

ANDY’S PRODUCE MARKET

1691 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol
707-823-8661

Recharge with an iced coffee or try one of the varieties of peanut butter milk shakes at My Friend Joe’s coffee kiosk. Then cross the parking lot into local favorite Andy’s Produce Market for picnic supplies. Inside you’ll find everything from ripe 99-cents-a-pound local peaches to homemade jams, wine, beer, good-looking granola, seed-y loaves of bread, cheese, and an olive bar. Bring said supplies out to the beach before driving back into town for drinks and dinner.

3–4:30 p.m. - TASTE WINE

MERRY EDWARDS WINERY

2959 Gravenstein Highway N., Sebastopol
888-388-9050

Image courtesy of www.merryedwards.com

Merry Edwards, one of the country’s top Pinot Noir makers (and one of the first female winemakers) has a tasting room that’s so new it’s not even on the wine country maps yet. It’s a little sterile-feeling, but what it lacks in picturesqueness it makes up for in off-the-charts-amazing wines. Drop-ins can try (for free, no less) five wines, including the award-winning Pinots and great Sauvignon Blancs. But if you call ahead, you can arrange to have a longer, in-depth, private tasting of many more, also gratis. Although you can find Edwards’s wines at great restaurants around the world, none are available through retail, so visiting the tasting room is a special opportunity to take home a few bottles at a fraction of the cost.

LYNMAR ESTATE

3909 Frei Road, Sebastopol
707-829-3374

Turning off the road into Lynmar is like entering a rich hippie’s dream home: An artsy, sort of ’70s Gothic-style wooden building houses a tasting room with a giant picture window overlooking vegetable and flower gardens on multiple levels. There is a chef on staff at all times, and for $25 (no appointment necessary), you can get a flight of four of the winery’s very expensive, very delicious wines (the two Pinot Noirs, in particular, are lush, sexy, and redolent of blackberry) paired with an amuse-bouche from the kitchen (I was served duck breast crudités and sweet corn soup). You may choose where in the garden you wish to sit. (Lovers take note: There are many nooks and crannies.) This is as classy and over-the-top as this area gets, but it’s still on a bohemian, craft-y wavelength. Almost all of the produce the chef uses is from Lynmar’s gardens. On the recurring pizza-and-wine-pairing nights (check the website for details) the chef uses a pizza-dough yeast that was captured by the head gardener from the winery’s grape skins.

5 p.m. - DRINK A BEER

BARLEY AND HOPS TAVERN

3688 Bohemian Highway, Occidental
707-874-9037

The Russian River Valley not only produces top-notch wine, it’s also home to several great microbreweries (Moonlight, Russian River Brewing Company, Bear Republic). You can get a sampling of local brews, along with a great selection of imports including Belgians, at Barley and Hops. It also serves good beer-drinking grub like killer soft pretzels and fish and chips in a renovated Victorian house in the nearly-as-pretty-as-Freestone village of Occidental. The young owner, Noah Bolmer, is very excited about beer, and serves all of it in its correct, special glass (my Belgian La Chouffe came in a glass with the brewery’s little gnome logo on it), which he offers for sale at a discount with your beer. If anybody tells you the best place to drink good beer in the area is Hopmonk in Sebastopol, don’t listen to him. That place feels like Chili’s. Come here instead.

7 p.m. - DINNER

SAINT ROSE

9890 Bodega Highway, Sebastopol
707-829-5898

[Note from ed.: Unfortunately, Saint Rose closed after this story was published.] Saint Rose is exactly the kind of restaurant you wish were a block from your house. Located in a former roadside brothel, it’s decorated with the wit and offbeat aesthetic of owner Mark Malicki (diorama art, thrift store lamps, an antique stove, and old-fashioned carnival-style hanging lights in its big, flower-filled backyard dining area). The menu, which changes daily, is just as colorful and creative. Summer dinner might include corn on the cob with lime and nasturtium butter, wild shrimp toast with avocado crema, barbecued goat, or pork shoulder braised in sherry with smoky wedges of roasted fennel, hazelnut-parsley gremolata, and eggplant, pepper, and zucchini gratin. Servers get to pick out a vintage apron from a cardboard box before their shift, and Thursdays are movie night, with flicks projected inside. (July’s theme: “alternative income month,” featuring Hustle & Flow, Belle de Jour, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Midnight Cowboy.) There’s live music many evenings, too, often of the Gypsy jazz variety.

ZAZU

3535 Guerneville Road, Santa Rosa
707-523-4814

Image courtesy of www.sonomauncorked.com

On the rural outskirts just inside the Santa Rosa city limits, Zazu describes itself as a roadhouse. But the Tuscan-meets–New American menu—which may include things like homemade mozzarella; wild salmon with corn griddle cakes, corn and watermelon chow-chow, and watermelon vinaigrette; and dark chocolate fondue with homemade Nutter Butters—would hold its own against any fashionable San Francisco farm-to-table-style restaurant. Produce comes from the owners’ garden, pasta is made fresh from eggs laid by the restaurant’s chickens, and Zazu is especially known for its salumi: Co-owner John Stewart trained with Mario Batali before opening the restaurant. (He and his partner, Duskie Estes, also run Black Pig Meat Co., which sells a line of antibiotic-free, heritage-hog bacon.) Although casual in its décor, Zazu is a little more formal and expensive than Saint Rose—a celebration destination rather than an everyday spot.

Next page: Ideas on where to sleep, plus more enticing photos 1 2 »