Weekend trip: Dry Creek Valley

Over President's Day weekend, we made a snap decision to hop on the motorcycle and head up to wine country. I booked a spot at Liberty Glen, one of the only campgrounds with sites available. It turned out to be nearly empty and beautiful, with wide open sites and views of the surrounding hills. I never would have found it if I hadn't been booking at the last minute.

We spent Sunday exploring the vineyards in Dry Creek Valley and crashed the wine club party at Truett Hurst Vineyards. Their Zinfandels were excellent and they encourage you to explore the grounds with your wine. We sipped ours while sitting by the river.

We took the scenic route home along Route 1, driving in and out of the fog. The area around northern Sonoma/Mendocino is one of my favorite parts of California, and this trip made me like it even more.

- Steph

A birthday in Gold Country

This post about an October road trip is embarrassingly late. We're playing catch up.

To celebrate my birthday, Ben planned a weekend for us visiting the former gold-rush towns in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

We first drove through the California Delta, the expansive inland river delta formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The small delta towns attracted migrant workers from Mexico and Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and today much of the area remains dedicated to agriculture.

Of particular note is the town of Locke, which claims to be the only town in the United States built exclusively by the Chinese for the Chinese. From 1913 until 1952, it was illegal for Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Korean immigrants to own land in California. To circumvent this restriction, a group of Chinese merchants approached a local landowner, named George Locke, about building on his land. The town they created — Lockeport, later Locke — still exists, with many of the original buildings still standing.

After lunch at a biker bar in Locke, we headed northwest toward Amador County. Ever since we attended the Vintners Market in San Francisco last year, I had been wanting to visit Amador, one of California's newest wine regions. We had purchased a bottle from one of the Amador vineyards, and the owner had encouraged us to come visit.

We were really impressed with the wines at two of the wineries we visited: Jeff Runquist Wines and Cooper Vineyards (we even joined the Runquist wine club). Not only were the wines good, but they were reasonably priced (I think the most expensive bottle was about $30) and the tastings were free (a welcome break from some of the overpriced tastings we've encountered recently).

The New Englander in me loved all of the foliage. San Francisco doesn't change color in the fall.

And it wasn't just the foliage that reminded me of New England. Couldn't this church be right out of small-town Vermont? Instead, it's the California town of Sutter Creek, where we stayed in a cute bed and breakfast.

The next morning we headed south on Route 49, a historic highway that connects many of the former mining towns. We pulled in at a few "ghost towns" before arriving at Murphys, once home to one of California's most bountiful gold mines. During one winter, $5 million worth of gold was mined from a four-acre plot. [1] Today it's an upscale town with a few old-time touches, a beautiful spot to eat and wander.

Our primary destination for the day was Columbia State Historic Park, a Gold Rush town that wasn't abandoned or rebuilt, but preserved as a historic site. A group of prospectors discovered gold in Columbia on March 27, 1850, and by 1852, the town housed more than 150 shops and saloons, including a meeting house and three churches. The population included a sizable number of Chinese, French, Italian, Irish, German and Jewish miners. A fire destroyed the town in 1854 and it was rebuilt with locally made brick and large iron shutters; the resulting style of architecture is characteristic of Gold Rush towns. When another fire struck in 1857, only the brick buildings survived.

By 1853, an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people called Columbia home, making it one of the largest cities in California. Over the next half-century, the miners unearthed as much as $150 million of gold, which helped finance the U.S. government and Union Army during the Civil War. The Wells Fargo scale in Columbia was used to weigh more than 1.4 million ounces of gold. It was so precise it could weigh a signature in pencil on a piece of paper.

The town began to decline in the late 1860s, before finally becoming a state park in 1945. It houses the largest single collection of existing Gold Rush-era structures. [2]

After exploring the town, we got back on the road back to San Francisco. The roads weren't the most interesting we've ever done, but the scenery was beautiful. And we ate dinner at a delicious Afghan restaurant to which we hope to return on future trips east.

- Steph

Sources:
[1] Murphys History, Visit Murphys
[2] Columbia State Historic Park brochure

Camping at China Camp

I started the summer with big dreams about all the camping we would do. As a San Francisco newbie, little did I know that I'm not the only one around here with summer camping ambitions. And the other campers were much more on top of their game, booking basically every campsite within 200 miles of San Francisco months in advance. When I found one remaining available campsite at China Camp State Park for a Saturday in August, I jumped on it.

Located in San Rafael, China Camp is only 25 miles from our apartment, but it sits at the intersection of two of our favorite destinations: Point Reyes and Sonoma. The first day we took Lucas Valley Road over to Point Reyes, where we stopped for lunch.

We spent the afternoon relaxing at a picnic area at China Camp. We were pleasantly surprised by our campsite, which was the only one available and had appeared on the map to be right next to the bathroom. In reality, it wasn't close at all and we had plenty of privacy, though we played host to a family who used the area near our campsite for a game they called "Ga Ga." Uninitiated in the games of kids today, we thought it resembled modern dodgeball. Apparently it's popular enough to warrant its own story in the NYTimes:

Believed to have originated in Israel, the game — which translates to “touch, touch” in Hebrew — has been a standby of Jewish summer camps and community centers in the United States since at least the 1970s. Now, to the surprise of parents who recall the game from their youths, gaga is solidly mainstream. ...

In gaga, players lob the ball underhand, trying to hit one another below the knees (or below the waist, depending on where you’re playing) to eliminate their opponents from the court. If the ball goes over the wall, or if it is caught before bouncing, the person who launched it is out of the game.

The next morning we explored Glen Ellen, a town in Sonoma Valley and a bit farther north than we normally go. Our new wine tasting guidelines came in handy when the Valley of the Moon Winery wanted to charge us $15 to taste five wines that ranged in price from $17-$25. We said no thank you, and enjoyed a tasting at Little Vineyards instead. After lunch, we headed home, again via Lucas Valley Road to avoid the traffic. (We're very proud of how well we're getting to know the roads around here — our quest to find interesting roads on the motorcycle pays off when the highways are clogged and we want to circumvent the traffic.)

And even though we only got to pull out our tent once this summer (in addition to camping on our road trip), we aren't despairing. The fall is even nicer than the summer here, so we have three months for camping before "winter" sets in.

- Steph

The economics of wine tastings

A few weekends ago we took the motorcycle up to Sonoma and had a very nice time tasting wine and enjoying the sunshine. The only less-than-stellar part of the day was a visit to Ravenswood Winery, which got us thinking about the economics of wine tastings.

We usually stop at wineries with $5 or $10 tasting fees (part of the reason we prefer Sonoma to Napa, where tastings can run $25 or more), and most of the time the fee is waived if you buy a bottle. We've always felt this is a fair and mutually beneficial arrangement. If you don't like the wine enough to buy a bottle, you still pay for the wine you drank. If you do buy a bottle, which we often do, the winery makes money from the sale and potentially earns a repeat customer (and many people join the wine clubs of their favorite wineries).

We were surprised when we arrived at Ravenswood to learn that the cost of a tasting is $15 and that the tasting fee is only waived if you buy three bottles. We ended up getting a pour or two for free and headed out. We weren't impressed at all with the wines we tasted and were glad we hadn't paid the fee. We scribbled some back-of-the-napkin calculations later and realized we were doubly glad we hadn't gotten ripped off. Here's our math:

• Most of the wines being poured retail for at most $35 per bottle (and retail price obviously already includes a significant markup)
• Most wine tastings include 5 pours of 1oz each for a total of 5oz
• A bottle of wine contains 25oz
• Conclusion: The wine tasting cost $3 per ounce; the retail cost of a bottle is $1.40 per ounce. That's a more than 50% markup, and the fee isn't even waived if you buy a bottle

That's not to say that every $15 tasting isn't worth the money. The tipping point for a $15 tasting using the math above is $75 — that's to say you're more than getting your money's worth for wines that cost more than $75 and you're overpaying for wines that cost less. Given the price of the bottles being poured at Ravenswood, a $7 tasting fee would have been fair.

Wine tasting fee	Equivalent bottle price with 1oz pours	Equivalent bottle price with 1.5oz pours*
$5	$25	$16
$10	$50	$33
$15	$75	$50
$20	$100	$66
$25	$125	$83

* Some wineries are more generous with their pours, which would change the calculation

Caveat #1: I am ignoring other costs that wineries incur from offering tastings, including paying staff to work the tastings. But there's also a clear marketing and long-term sales value to the tastings not counted in the straight-up fee.

Caveat #2: Some places, like Scribe Winery, sit down and talk to you about their wines for a significant amount of time. That would be a completely different situation. This was not the case at Ravenwood.

- Steph

Photo by Dave Dugdale

An improved Sonoma experience

If you recall, we didn't come away that impressed the last time we went to Sonoma. We liked the downtown area, but the motorcycle riding and scenery were lackluster. We promised at the time that we would return soon, and an olive oil festival last weekend seemed the perfect opportunity.

Rather than heading straight to Sonoma, a 50-mile drive on boring highways, we devised our own route that took us through a valley over toward Point Reyes before cutting back to Petaluma and on to Sonoma (map at the bottom). The first part took us through suburbia, but before long we escaped the strip malls and stop lights and entered farm country. We have traversed this area several times now (see here and here) and the landscape doesn't change much: rolling hills, long winding curves and lots of cows and horses. But the scenery, rather than beckoning boredom, has a mesmerizing effect and keeps us coming back.

Leaving the city

Nicasio Valley Road in Marin County

Even better, it was a balmy 68 degrees outside and wildflowers have started to bloom in the fields, which made for a much prettier ride than the one we did in December. We arrived in downtown Sonoma for lunch, too hungry to continue to the olive oil event at one of the vineyards. Instead, we ate and decided to explore the town of Sonoma. (Any suggestions for favorite affordable hotels near the town? We would love to come back for a weekend, but not for $300/night.)

By chance we wandered into the Charles Creek Vineyards tasting room. This was our fourth California wine tasting and though we bought a bottle from each of the previous wineries, in none of those cases did we come away impressed by the entire flight of wines. That wasn't the case at Charles Creek, which was affordable, generous with its pours and, most importantly, delicious.

We started with a 2011 Rosé from Napa made with Syrah grapes. Our pourer described it as "dry to the bone, as rosé should be." Ben and I were both immediately impressed. (I like good rosés — I have fond memories of a day spent walking around Palermo capped off by a bottle of Bodega Caelum Rosé.) We then tried a 2009 Chardonnay from the Russian River Valley and a 2010 Chardonnay from Sonoma County. Interestingly, these two wines were made exactly the same — same fermentation process, same oak, same aging, etc. The only variation was the grapes themselves, which were grown in different regions, and the two wines could not have been more different. Finally, we ended the whites with a 2008 Chardonnay from Sangiacomo Vineyard. According to our pourer, this wine is designed to be aged, unlike most California Chardonnays, which are meant to be drank young, with minimal subtlety and strong tones of fruit and oak.

Over the course of the tasting, which also included three Cabernet Sauvignons and a port, we absorbed some interesting information about the wine industry. First, for a wine to be labeled as a certain varietal (Chardonnay, Cabernet, Malbec, etc.), only 75 percent of the grapes need to be that varietal; the rest can be anything else the winemaker chooses. There is no obligation to disclose what grapes contribute to the other 25 percent. Second, while the U.S. labels wines mainly according to the varietal, Europe classifies wines by vineyard, village and/or region, known as the appellation. A wine labeled Chablis, for example, is a white wine made from only Chardonnay grapes grown within Chablis, France. The region is given a prominent position on the label, and the grape usually isn't mentioned at all.

Below: Arnold Drive in Sonoma and a cow made out of wine corks at the Charles Creek tasting room.

We enjoyed the wines at Charles Creek so much that we joined their wine club (it's a quarterly shipment of three bottles) and we came home with a bottle of the rosé and the 2008 Chardonnay. We're happy to  have found a vineyard we liked so much, and also to have discovered a scenic route to Sonoma. As readers of this blog surely know, beautiful drives exert a powerful pull on us, especially beautiful drives that end in world-famous wine towns.

- Steph

P.S. We were amazed by the crowns on these ducks. I looked them up when we got home: "This crest is actually caused by a genetic mutation that duck breeders have selected for. This mutation causes a duck to be born with a gap in its skull, which is filled with a growth of fatty tissue. It's from this growth that the pouf of feathers sprouts." Now I just feel bad for exploiting them.

Russian River getaway

A belated post from our trip to the Russian River Valley at the end of January.

My mother has long claimed the best wines come from Russian River, a wine-producing region north of San Francisco. Closer to the coast and cooler than Sonoma and Napa, it's mostly known for its Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

We decided at the last minute to get out of town and booked an AirBnB cottage in Sebastopol, one of the corners of the Russian River Valley, along with Guerneville and Healdsburg. We could have driven straight up 101 and gotten there faster, but the Pacific Coast Highway is much more fun.

Once in Sebastopol, we stopped at two small wineries. The first, Taft Street Winery, got its start in Oakland in the 1970s. There wasn't much of a view, but the tasting room was nice, and we bought a bottle of Zinfandel. The pourer did a good job of talking up their 2010 Russian River Chardonnay, which they weren't sampling that day, so we're hoping to track that one down soon. We also learned the difference between primary and secondary (or malolactic) fermentation. All wine undergoes primary fermentation to convert the sugar into alcohol. With malolactic fermentation, malic acid is converted into lactic acid, which is richer than the tart-tasting malic acid. It is this malolactic fermentation that gives many California Chardonnays their buttery taste.

Then we drove up to Joseph Swan Vineyards, on the recommendation of a friend. It's a small family-owned winery and the tasting room is also where they barrel and bottle their wine. The tasting included one Pinot Gris, two Pinot Noirs, one Zinfandel and one Syrah. We bought a bottle of the 2010 Cuveé de  Trois Pinot Noir, which was the brighter and more acidic of the two we tried and one of their best-selling wines.

The next day we wanted to get in a nice long motorcycle ride, and luckily, we had rented a cottage from a Harley Davidson owner who has been riding in the area for 30 years. He recommended a route along Coleman Valley Road from Occidental over to the coast. The first part was a little bumpy for our tastes (as a passenger, poorly paved roads are pretty uncomfortable), but the view was nice riding up high in the hills.

The real payoff, however: the giant expanse of ocean that materialized below us.

We passed some sheep before we dead-ended at Route 1, at Sonoma Coast State Beach, where the waves were huge.

The ride back to San Francisco from there is one of our favorites and we were happy to sit back (figuratively) and enjoy the scenery.

- Steph