This is the 2nd blog in a series about planning a 4 day trip to Sonoma County for the Amgis Stock Club.
Hotels, wineries, and food!
After reviewing proposals from 5 places to stay, I recommended Hotel Healdsburg. I stayed there after it first opened several years ago and it is a great property. Added bonus – it comes with a great buffet breakfast (and I know from previous trips that food is important to this group). Also, the hotel is in a good location for exploring the shops, tasting rooms, galleries and restaurants in downtown Healdsburg.
Next on my list is lining up wineries. From working with the Amgis group on several other trips, I know they can handle 3 wineries during the day plus a dinner with wine. Since they will taste several wines during each winery visit, that can mount up to a lot of wine. I will definitely advise this group to take one sip and dump so they are able to enjoy the 3rd winery but this doesn’t always work! So…I will need to push water and food which I will keep on the bus to help offset too much tasting.
My plan is to divide the 3 days into appellations…Dry Creek Valley, Alexander Valley and Russian River selecting wineries that are in close proximity to each other in each area. That way we are not spending all day riding back and forth on a bus. I also need to pick a winery each day and schedule lunch with the tasting. It’s important to check the facilities at each winery to see which ones can handle a lunch.
Something New
Dinners. Rather than dine in restaurants every night, I decided to have a few catered dinners at wineries. That way it will be very casual and something different than previous trip where we ate primarily at restaurants. I need to do more research to find wineries that can handle a catered dinner. They usually have a couple of caterers that they use regularly and know their wines.
I planned the final dinner at Dry Creek Kitchen. It is a great restaurant with a famous chef, Charlie Palmer. The restaurant is adjoining Hotel Healdsburg so we won’t have to worry about transportation. To make the evening even more special, I plan to invite a wine maker to join the group for dinner and have his wines with dinner. This trip is really shaping up nicely.
Part 3 of the planning process coming soon. To see the previous post in the series, please go to http://66.147.244.104/~grapeso2/Test/2012/06/planning-trip-wine-countrypart-1/