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Hi Wine Friends,
Since returning to the cold Portland rain this week, so many of you have asked me where exactly we went, tasted, and dined in Sonoma. So, I thought I’d use today’s newsletter as a travel diary of sorts--to share what we did and where we did it.
You can use it to conjure up some vicarious California sunshine or as inspiration to plan a trip yourself! Remember, the Portland → Santa Rosa flight is the easiest of all time, very affordable, and you can bypass SFO completely! Plus, a case of wine flies free on Alaska either way 🙂
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Scribe's gorgeous Hacienda Tasting Room
Day 1
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We landed and headed straight to Scribe Winery, which was our home base for the weekend. I mentioned it briefly last week, but this place is heaven on earth. Their Hacienda property is a 100-year-old home—stunningly restored to its former glory—on a sweeping vineyard with a full commercial kitchen, the loveliest wrap-around veranda (where they host their tastings), and a 3-bedroom apartment upstairs, where we got to stay. Upon arrival, Erik immediately got to work on his pop-up menu—taste-testing sauces, adjusting portions, and demo-ing plating. We attended lineup with their wonderful hospitality team, and not only talked about our dishes but also heard more about Scribe’s inquisitive ethos and the wide range of creative wines they produce. We took a quick lunch break at Valley Swim Club (Valley’s seafood-focused sister restaurant), which is an elevated yet playful take on a roadside crab shack. We enjoyed micheladas, battered cod sandwiches, lobster rolls, louie salad, and more. We were sad we only got to eat here once! We ended the day with inventive cocktails at speakeasy bar The Beacon on the Sonoma Square, then walked next door for dinner at Valley to plan out the next day’s event…
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Friday was focused on our collaborative dinner that night with Valley—my absolute favorite restaurant in Sonoma. Since opening in 2020, Valley has been named to the Michelin Bib Gourmand and raised the bar for California farm-to-table cuisine. I actually think Valley shares a similar style and ethos with Arden, which is why we wanted to make this dinner happen! So, we cooked up a menu featuring the flavors and grapes of the Willamette and Sonoma Valleys to taste what the best of these bountiful regions have to offer. We flew down with quintessential Oregon ingredients—huckleberries, hazelnuts, and chanterelles—as well as a case of wine from some of my favorite Willamette producers (Hundred Suns, Kelley Fox, and Morgen Long, just to name a few). We poured California and Oregon Pinot and Chardonnay that showcased the terroir of each valley and were blown away by how delicious and different each one was. Working service alongside the Valley team was the highlight of the trip for me, and I’m trying to convince them to come up to Portland to do it again for all of you!
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With our “hard work” behind us (in quotes because both Scribe and Valley’s teams made these events so easy that we felt borderline useless!), we began our sightseeing portion of the trip. We started with brunch at El Molino–a Michelin-rated taco joint thats every bit as delicious as you hope it will be. They grind their own masa, so their tortillas are out of this world, as are their tamales, pozole, chilaquiles… you get the idea. In the afternoon, we got to enjoy the Scribe tasting experience as guests and it was so divine that, if we didn’t live in a different state, we would’ve joined their wine club ourselves. (If you’re curious to try Scribe’s wines, they are launching in the Portland market next week with a kickoff dinner at Arden!)Then we headed to Healdsburg, home to some of the cutest tasting rooms and restaurants in the valley. Alas, we did not love our dinner at Barndiva, which had lovely service but wasn’t our favorite menu. We did, however, enjoy our nightcap at the stately Madrona Hotel—a stunning Victorian mansion from the 1880s with a fancy restaurant and a classy, cozy bar that stirs an epic martini.
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We started the day with oysters and bubbles at Hog Island Oyster Company. in Tomales Bay. I’ve been coming here for years and–even though they no longer let you shuck your own oysters– it’s still my favorite spot for fresh seafood on the beach. Afterward, the group went for a cocktail at The Marshall Store (which they said was lovely), and I met a friend for lunch at Bear, a farm-to-table spot at the new Stanly Ranch resort in Napa (yes, the employees dress like ranch hands, no, there are no horses). We then visited Matthiason, a Napa winery changing the ‘big Napa red’ narrative with their fresh, lean wines from off-the-wall grapes. We ended the day in Yountville with cocktails at Bouchon, followed by dinner at Ciccio, where we had the best meal of the whole trip—simple yet exciting dishes like Sicilian linguini with pistachio pesto and pork chop milanesa with persimmon. It was a fabulous final meal! And we even snuck into the courtyard of the French Laundry after, where we watched their team prepare dessert through the kitchen’s spotless jewel box windows.
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Harland's Promontory Estate aka the Bond lair
Day 5
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The kitchen team headed home, but two of us stayed for one more day of tastings. We kicked it off with Dom Perignon at Harlan’s Promontory Estate, a magnificent property that felt like a Bond villain’s lair. The wines were just as elegant as the property and blew us away with their understated tension and complexity. We then visited Bedrock and Jolie Laide, two of our favorite Sonoma producers. Bedrock, known for working with old California vineyards, wowed us with their old-vine Zinfandel and quixotic ancient field blends. Plus, their viticulturalist Nate tasted us on his old-vine Palomino sherry-inspired project Soleras del Pacifico and it’s definitely one you should look out for! At Jolie Laide, Jen and Scott continue to make wines that I can’t get enough of—everything from their delicate Trousseau Gris to Mondeuse and Aligoté. We wrapped up the trip with fisherman’s stew at Handline in Sebastopol before heading home.
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Hopefully this inspires you to check out Sonoma–and some of these great places–yourself! We are counting the days until we can return. If you know of any other gorgeous wineries that want to host Portland restaurant teams, please let me know 😉
Cheers and, until next week,
Kelsey
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