Honeymoon In Wine Country

Ready for the last few days of the honeymoon recap? Wine country! We decided to go to Sonoma on our trip because neither of us had been there.

As many of you know - I've been to Napa several times and last year Brad and I went there together.

In planning my trip I went to several of my friends who live in the Bay Area and/or Napa to ask where to go, what to do.
Their response? 'F-Sonoma'.
Nice eh?
Most people don't know this - but there's a big competition between the two areas.

We didn't care. Most of our friends here in Charlotte said they liked it better because it's not as 'snobby' or 'uppity' and they don't charge you for tastings.

So here we go..
We arrive to find that Sonoma is much more residential than Napa/St.Helena/Rutherford. For instance - there's a Mickey D's down from our hotel. Very different for us but what the heck. Right?

So we couldn't check into our hotel until later so we headed out to the Square, where we had lunch, then to the wineries.

They weren't as close as they were to our hotel in Napa last year. About a 10-minute drive.

Since it was our first day there we decided to take it easy. We hit one winery which was Chateau St. Jean.
Most of you have probably heard of it. Beautiful place! Gardens, grounds, everything.

We did a tasting. Good wine. I'm not going to go into specific wines that we did or did not like because I forgot to bring my sheet with me but I will start posting about certain wines Brad and I do or do not like.

I tend to be a Chard fan...I know, Coco wouldn't be happy. Brad waivers...he generally is a Cab fan but now that it's hot he joined in drinking Chard. After our tasting we got a bottle and sat outside and relaxed and took it all in.
People were having picnics..it was nice.

Then we headed to our hotel - the Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa. Lovely hotel with lovely grounds.
Here is our suite.

And.. another shot. We had a patio too that we spent a lot of time on.

We decided to spend the rest of the day at the pool then do dinner.

Have I told you how much my hubby likes the water? LOVES.IT!

The funniest part of this day? We started talking with this couple at the pool and come to find out they are big buds with our friends Beth and DJ in the city. B and D had been in Napa so on the way home they stopped by to say 'hey' and they brought their pooch Cali Bear.

Cutest dog ever(well, except for Buddy). They take.her.everywhere. Literally. She even told us a story about the car being towed with Cali in it!

Dinner at The Girl and The Fig in the Sonoma Town Square. Very popular place - I made reservations a week in advance and of course told them it was our honeymoon so they brought us some bubbles.

I will tell you what our favorite wine from this night was and we even ordered a 2nd bottle to take to the hotel with us.

It's a 2007 Terre Rouge Roussanne - it's from the Sierra Foothills. A yummy white!!

Great dinner! Brad and I made a pact that we would try new, out-of-the-box foods we generally don't order.

That had us ordering duck, rabbit -- all kinds of fun stuff!

The next day I had set up a private food/wine pairing tasting at Ferrari-Carano. We have a friend whose Mom works there and told us we MUST go.

Awesome! The only bad part?? I had no idea it was an hour and 15-minutes from our hotel out in the Alexander Valley!

Our tasting was for 11am and we found this out at 10am.

No breakfast for us - just straight to the winery. Not going to lie.. me and hubs were not thrilled but we couldn't cancel because we had already paid.

Lovely place though. Here we are in the cave.

If you're not familiar than you should be. Most of their wines have been served at the White House.

The tasting room, grounds, the whole place was gorgeous!

As I said we set up a private tasting and THANK GOD it had food because we were still in breakfast mode.

An array of cheeses, meat, bread, pate, figs..you name it.

The after shot. The point of the tasting is mix it up. Try some truffle with some fig - taste the wine.

We had 3 glasses of reds to taste with and one was light, one medium and one big. Have to say.. I like the big, heavy reds! Especially with the cheese truffle!

One cool thing he suggested and I think I'm going to plan this for later in the summer.

Plan a food/wine tasting party...tell everyone to bring a cheese, pate, bread, meat and a bottle of their fav wine.

Have everyone sit together taste - putting different combos together and talk about it. I'm thinking this will be a girl party?

Gardens afterwards..

Then off to Silver Oak, which appeared to be next door according to the map, but after driving in circles and making a phone call we finally found them.

Not sure how familiar you are with them but they are one of the highest rated wines out there and they only make cabs.

Check us out in the courtyard.

Another thing to remember about Silver Oak? Not a cheap bottle of wine but worth it. We both still think the best bottle our entire trip was a 2005 Alexander Valley Cab. $70.

We enjoyed it in their courtyard then headed home -- which again, was over an hour away. boohoo..

We chilled at the hotel before heading out for our last dinner in Sonoma. I had reservations one place but we decided to just go for it and pick something.

Good idea!! Our best meal yet! Harvest Moon Cafe! OMG! It was downright divine! I had the rabbit risotto! Brad had lamb! AWESOME!

And.. that's about it. The next day we had a spa day at the hotel then headed back to the city for a little browsing around, dinner and home on the red-eye.

Overall, we didn't enjoy Sonoma as much as Napa but maybe we didn't do it right? The long drive to Alexander Valley was a screw-up on my part but who knows..?

Sorry for the long post but hope you enjoyed?!! Happy Monday!