Sonoma Wine Tasting and Restaurants: An Organic Itinerary

I’m not saying this is the best way to drink and eat Sonoma in a week, but it’s a very fun, very delicious, very off-the-beaten-path way to see the area.

It’s even relatively healthy.

Here’s how I planned my trip: I contacted three sommelier friends who specialize in natural wine and asked for the names of the wineries to visit. They gave me an extensive list of wineries and winemakers that I should book appointments with in advance by phone or email. These included:

Coturri
Merry Edwards
Joseph Swan
Rochioli
A Raphanelli
The Scholium Project
Ridge
Atascadero
Delhinger

I didn’t want any famous Cali wineries or anything with too, too big a production. I didn’t want to take a trolley tour or to pay $1000 for special biodynamic winery itinerary for two with transportation.

Unlike a lot of wineries in Sonoma and Napa, you can’t drop in for tastings at all of these, and some are only open certain days and certain times without appointment.

The Scholium project doesn’t actually do tastings at all, but if you ask nicely and are a complete funky wine geek, they’ll give you a tour. So we drove and did just one, max two wineries a day. Most days involved driving through rolling green landscapes, up gravel roads, and through forested areas for up to an hour or so from where we were staying in Santa Rosa.

In terms of the kinds of wines we were going for, funk was definitely a priority – not weird-smelling acetone wines and strange flavours, but nuanced and interesting wines that are the results of hands-off productions, with a tendency toward biodynamic, organic or fully natural methods.

We generally did one tasting per day in the morning after stopping at a farmer’s market to pick up lunch for a winery picnic post-tasting (there’s a farmer’s market pretty much every day somewhere in Sonoma). Then we’d go for dinner somewhere awesome in the evening. This way we were never too drunk to drive or hungover. The natural wines helped with that, too – they’re generally not full of the things that give you headaches, like chemical preservatives, commercial yeasts, stabilizers, emulsifiers and added sulfites. Hence, hands-off wines. That being said, the grapes don’t have to be organic (sometimes they even come from other wineries that the winemakers trust, or they don’t want to bother with certification). And sometimes they aren’t as palate-pleasing as sugared, glossy, industrial wines (think Barefoot).

But sometimes they’re mind-blowing. And some were.

This was our itinerary:

Day 1: Petaluma Farmers Market, Hana Japanese in Rohnert Park

Day 2: Santa Rosa Farmer’s Market, Merry Edwards Winery, Bravas Bar de Tapas in Healdsburg

Day 3: Scholium Project, Farmhouse Inn

Day 4: Coturri Winery, Wild Goat Bistro Petaluma, Iron Horse Winery, failed Rochioli Winery, Hana Japanese in Rohnert Park (again)

Day 5: Santa Rosa Farmer’s Market

Day 1 was about driving from San Francisco, stopping at the Petaluma market for incredible Peruvian-style roast chicken and salsas, organic dates (I actually looked up where to get dates a month in advance and came to this particular market because this organic date guy was here – so many kinds of dates!), the creamiest sheep’s milk yogurt and amazing peaches before settling into our relatively inexpensive motel in Santa Rosa (we chose the convenience of being just off the highway entrance over luxury).

Our first dinner was at Hana Japanese, whose sushi menu looks pretty much like any ho-hum sushi place (teriyaki chicken bento box combos and sushi combos) except that the teriyaki sauce is gluten free, the fish is impeccably fresh, and there’s a special tapas section if you want to go big. Most importantly, however, Hana Japanese is the home of North America’s pre-eminent saké sommelier. So we got a flight of sakés to split with dinner. More on that in another post to come.

Day 2 we hit up the Santa Rosa market for some picnic-ing supplies and headed to Merry Edwards Winery, a long-established and highly respected winery in Sonoma. We’d booked a private tasting (free) and learned about the different parcels of land that the female winemaker uses to make her sustainably farmed and award-winning Pinot Noirs. It was a very professional tasting complete with charts and a private room plus a print-out of what you’re tasting. And the winery itself is beautiful, with a little area out front with benches and flowers – perfect for picnic-ing.

Dinner was one of our favourite meals of the trip (I might say that every meal…). We went to Healdsburg for tapas at Bravas Bar de Tapas. The meal started with mushrooms sautéed with sherry and garlic, then amazing seared scallops with charred leeks and romesco sauce, then house-made sausage with pickled mustard seeds and caramelized onions, and finally a giant plate of paella with roasted and peeled red peppers, clams, shrimp and chorizo that there was no way we could finish. Leftovers for tomorrow’s picnic! The paella was served in a cast-iron skillet, giving it that crispy rice bottom that’s so incredible and lots of seafood flavour of the un-shelled giant shrimp soaking into the perfectly al dente rice. This was awesome.

Day 3 was the Scholium Project, the winery of a philosophy PhD where the goal is creating something unique and hands-off. We talked punchdowns, ripening, winemaking choices, foot yeasts, Budweiser wine and SO2 additions with a sommelier who pulled tastes from casks for us. We started with a carbonated sparkling wine and I tapped out at a heavy-hitting Pinot Noir, after spitting taste after juicy taste onto the working winery’s guttered floor.

Dinner was the award-winning Farmhouse Inn. The menu is small (3 or 4 services with or without wine pairing), there’s a gorgeous inn on site, parking is limited and the dining room feels like a mini church/elegant home, with high frescoed ceilings and archways between rooms. From the amuse-bouche to the dungeness crab gazpacho to our King salmon with fava beans, everything was very proper and carefully cooked and plated. The apricot soufflé (gluten free, dairy free!) to end was spectacular with apricot preserves hidden under the fluffed up top.

Day 4 was Coturri. This amazing winemaker doesn’t often do private tastings, and his winery isn’t open to the public. You have to ask very nicely. But he’s a passionate man, and while I don’t think he liked me very much, he was very patient with my questions and very happy to talk about why you should never add sulfites to wines. Not even the tiniest bit.

He took over the winery from his father, and was doing organic, biodynamic and natural wine before Robert Parker hit puberty. I did not have a headache from any of the impeccably made bottles Tony poured tastes from that day, starting with a 2015 rosé, then some Zinfandels and Pinot Noir. You can get some of his bottles at Ordinaire, a natural wine bar in Oakland, and it’s worth checking out the beautiful shop even if you can convince him to give you a private tasting.

The Wild Goat Bistro in Petaluma promised gluten free pizza and gf sandwiches. It’s a popular lunch spot with a nice wine list and is very quaint, well run and lovely. It’s a little upscale, but still casual, so perfect for a business lunch or a bite with a friend. The pizza I had with spicy sausage, roasted cauliflower, basil and tomato sauce was delicious, and I was eating it for the next two days for breakfast.

We then briefly stopped at Iron Horse Winery because our sommeliers at Merry Edwards and Scholium recommended it. We’d heard they did bubbles. This was a waste of our time. They may be the only ones doing bubbles in the area, but they were junk. The happy hour feel is fun, and maybe the Pinots are better, but the place isn’t organic and people there (guests and servers) made fun of us for spitting out the wine. I was driving!!

Because of this stop, we didn’t make it to Rochioli before it closed for the day. That was a disappointment, and it was too bad the sommelier wouldn’t let us taste some bottles that were still open. There was still a crowd at the winery finishing up their own tastings when we arrived three minutes after close, so it was frustrating to see people still being served and simultaneously told that our business wasn’t wanted. But it was our fault for being late. So we left, thirsty. Which was fine, because we wanted to try the nama unpasteurized saké flight back at Hana Japanese. Unfortunately, this time I didn’t go for the teriyaki chicken bento box with a real crab California roll, sashimi, wild teriyaki salmon and a mini wakame salad with house-made fermented Japanese pickles, which was such a generous serving and so delicious last time. I felt a bit ripped off by my à la carte nigiri order, but the nama tasting was fun. The fresh, young saké went from floral to sweet and still tasted refined.

Day 5 was the Santa Rosa farmer’s market, which was a great way to end the Sonoma adventure. It was row after row of blueberries, peaches, oranges, nectarines, plums, lettuces, kales, kimchi, tonics, cheeses, baked goods and honeys. The sauerkrauts were just what my stressed digestive tract needed.

Lessons learned:

I can live on peaches.

But I wouldn’t, because I love sushi, paella, grilled chicken, walnut butter and gluten free focaccia.

You should email natural winemaking gurus like Tony Coturri and respectfully ask for tastings, because spending a morning at their off-the-beaten-path wineries will make your trip.

Don’t drink sparkling wines in Sonoma, yet.

Return to the Russian River Valley as soon as possible.