We were picked up by Gene at 10 AM sharp. Angela had sched­uled a full day of tast­ings, so if this meant drink­ing before noon– then so be it! It had to be 5 O’clock some­where. We were to visit 7 winer­ies this day-I will take you along for the ride to the ones we loved the best.

Our first stop was Segh­e­sio. A lovely vine­yard down an olive tree lined road. We turned onto a beau­ti­ful lit­tle court­yard again lined with olive trees in addi­tion to roses. There was a huge foun­tain in front of the lovely ochre stuc­coed build­ing. I imme­di­ately felt at home — or least the place I live in my mind — as it reminded me of Italy.

I did not know what to expect. I have seen wine tast­ing on tele­vi­sion and in movies, but I wasn’t sure how out-of-my-element I would feel. Those fears were quickly assuaged as I entered the warm and invit­ing tast­ing room. The barista was as laid back California-cool as they come– with the twist of sophis­ti­ca­tion that must only come with years of dis­cussing the fine points of wine. One of the spe­cial requests we had was to sam­ple wine that were not imme­di­ately avail­able to us in our local wine shops. If were going to make the trip out there, we wanted our pur­chase to be spe­cial. Not a sim­ple bot­tle of vino that just any­one could get there hands on! Mio dio! We were assured the wine we would be sam­pling was not dis­trib­uted at retail in Geor­gia, but per­haps avail­able at fine din­ing estab­lish­ments. We could live with that. I won’t even go into the pol­i­tics (my Wine Diva Sis­ters are giv­ing a *sigh* of relief here) of now being able to ship freely into Geor­gia. Suf­fice to say, laws have passed and we now could pur­chase to our lit­tle hearts content.

Tummy up to the bar, we were given a fresh wine glass to begin the fes­tiv­i­ties. Angela and Michelle were in search of the per­fect Pinot Noir, so we started with the reds. I won’t give you a detailed account of every sip, how­ever, I will say that a wine tast­ing is a lovely way to start the day! Evette and I were pur­chas­ing wine together, we weren’t expe­ri­enced enough to buy by the case as our Wine Diva sis­ters were doing, but we did acquire a bot­tle of a full-bodied Petite Sirah (how often do you use full-bodied and petite together in a sen­tence? Maybe when describ­ing a Tit­ian or a Rubens painting…but I digress.) As I was say­ing, we acquired a 2003 San Lorenzo Petite Sirah and a pep­pery 2005 Cortina Zin­fan­del. Baby steps..onward.

Wind­ing down the vine­yard lined roads to our next stop at Ston­estreet Wines was like step­ping into a charm­ing pas­toral land­scape, except this land­scape meant busi­ness. These grapes meant dol­lar signs.  At the head of each sec­tion of grapevines was a sign that either stated the grape (vari­etal) or the region (appel­la­tion.) I found it inter­est­ing that there were also names of winer­ies on signs in numer­ous vine­yards through­out the region claim­ing own­er­ship of those grapes. I learned that winer­ies often owned or leased land in dif­fer­ent appel­la­tions in order to allow their winer­ies a more var­ied selec­tion and depth of fla­vor within their wine offer­ings. They may also con­tract the har­vest or pur­chase grapes from other vine­yards. Again, this is to allow the wine­maker to pro­duce the fla­vor of wine to their lik­ing. It isn’t just a mat­ter or putting a bunch or grapes in a pot and wait for them to stew. No, it is much more dif­fi­cult than that! And for the price of some wines, I would hope so. To clar­ify, a won­der­fully jammy, spicy Zin­fan­del may con­tain 85% Zin­fan­del, 11% Petite Sirah, 4% Carig­nane. All these vari­etals may not be avail­able on the winer­ies own land. If all the grapes are har­vested from the winer­ies estate owned land, the label will state the wine as Estate Grown or Estate Vine­yard or sim­i­lar descriptors.

As you can see, the winemaker’s palette is molto impor­tanté. Wine­mak­ing or vinefi­ca­tion is big busi­ness. Yet one could also call it an art.

…to be continued.

Are you enjoy­ing this visit to Sonoma? Why don’t you share your thoughts by leav­ing a comment?