Day 14 - Relaxing in Sonoma on November 4th

California or Bust…

Days 14 – Relaxing in Sonoma

Friday, November 4^th, 2011

Love waking up in the cool fog on the Russian River… so much different than the Florida Keys.   No rush to pack up the RV to drive… and no real plans until dinner with the Brothers.  We walked the dogs and started some laundry.  I went to Zumba in Santa Rosa taught by Clay Sanderson… this was my first class taught by a male Instructor… huge class and lots of FUN… as always!  Drew did some maintenance on the RV… trying to get a few squeaks out that manifested during the cross country drive.  He also replaced one of the small closet clothing rods that had shaken loose.

It’s about 1pm so we decided to take the dogs to their first vineyard.  We had looked up on the internet the wineries that were “dog friendly”… many wineries have dogs walking around and don’t care if you bring yours.  Our first stop was Arista… there were quite a few people in the tasting room… many who were in town for the Food and Wine Fest.  Brigit and Riley visited with a chocolate lab and got lots of love from all the pre-fest tasters. http://www.aristawinery.com/Visit-Arista/Photo-Gallery/Arista-Grounds

Riley and Brigit's first wine tasting

My Brother James and party are staying at a WorldMark Condo/Timeshare in Windsor.  They had gone to the grocery store and settled in so they were ready to start the wine tasting too.  We asked them to meet us at  “J Winery”…  many of you know that “J” is one of our favorite wineries.  http://jwinery.com/  Our love of “J” all started when Drew and I met, he would come down to visit from Ft. Lauderdale on the weekends and bring a bottle of J champagne… and the rest is history!  To our surprise, not only were James and Colleen there, but my Brother Ritchie and Liz had arrived from their trip down from Victoria B.C.  Because Drew and I are wine club members, the tasting was complimentary for the six of us… it is usually a $10 per person tasting fee and it would be waived if you purchased any of their wine(s).  We enjoyed a tasting of Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir and a few of their sparkling wines.  As you know, the classic example of a sparkling wine is Champagne, but this wine is exclusively produced in the Champagne region of France… sparkling wine produced anywhere else is known as Sparkling using the Methode de Champenoise.   “J” is still our favorite and my family was also impressed.  We purchased a few bottles of our favorite Brut... more on this later.

We LOVE J

Liz and Ritchie were missing their Standard Poodle named Raleigh that they could not bring with them… so they came out to the car to get some Poodle and Doodle love.  Drew and I then took the dogs back to the RV to feed them dinner.  We had plans to go to dinner at Johnny Garlicks… it is one of Guy Fieri’s restaurants.  Guy is known for his TV shows Guy’s Big Bite and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network.  One of the points of interest on our RV trips is to find restaurants that were featured on Guy’s DDD shows and in his books… they are usually very good and live up to their DDD fame.

After dinner we went back to the condo to formulate our Food and Wine Fest plan of attack… there are over 100 wineries on the tour… obviously there is no way to go to all of them.  We selected them by choosing our favorites, those with award winning wines, small distributors and by what foods were in the pairing.  The wineries paired their wines with everything to beautiful duck confeit and cabernet marinated tri-tip to burnt bologna and brie sliders.  We are looking forward to a fun fest!