Holidays in Wine Country

I enjoyed two festive holiday experiences in the Northern California wine country last week, one in Healdsburg, the chic Sonoma county town near Dry Creek Valley, and the other at Napa Valley’s Meadowood resort, the home of Auction Napa Valley.

Holidays in Healdsburg is a month of planned activities starting the day after Thanksgiving that includes parties, “Toyland” exhibits, winery open houses, even caroling in convertibles. My favorite is the three-hour “Strolling Dine-Around,” held at 18 restaurants all within easy walking distance of the historic and picturesque Healdsburg Plaza. This is a progressive dinner with four courses served every 45 minutes. So my friend Pauline and I had appetizers at Café Gratitude, which serves organic raw vegan food (we ate a delicious guacamole and sunflower seed pate with flaxseed chips that did not make me miss the more conventional dish); a second course, scrumptious tempura green beans and a green salad at Zin Restaurant & Wine Bar; a main course of risotto and prawns at A Divine Affair and dessert (lemon pot de crème) at Restaurant Charcuterie. It’s a lot of food, so strolling in the winter air (of course, I’m talking about a California winter), was invigorating and whetted the appetite for what was next.

Naturally all these restaurants are wine savvy and have a rich and varied selection of wines by the glass or bottle. You can even bring your own bottle(s). But I wouldn’t recommend it because the corkage policy is complicated. Although the fees are not high, you have to pay anew for the same bottle each time you enter a restaurant, the charge varies from place to place and according to whether it’s a Sonoma wine or not – too cumbersome in my opinion. Once we ran out of the “J” sparkling wine I had brought with me, we ordered Navarro Edelzwicker (an aromatic blend of Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat) to go with the risotto-and-prawn dish, and it was a sublime combination. Next year, when the city of Healdsburg sponsors this event again, I recommend the restaurants either abolish all corkage charges for the night (while encouraging Sonoma County wines) or ban bringing your own bottles. When you are meant to enjoy yourself, simplicity is the key!



So walking between courses is a great idea, but when that’s not feasible, there is an appealing alternative. Pauline and I were driven from Café Gratitude to Zin Restaurant and Wine Bar in a restored vintage Chevy by former NASCAR driver Bryan Germone aka Hot Rod Tours. Bryan was fun, the car was nifty and there was a warm lap blanket in the back seat. Hot Rod Tours also provides a novel alternative to limo tours of the wine country.

The night before, I was invited to celebrate “The Twelve Days of Christmas” at the bucolic Meadowood resort in Napa Valley. For this benefit for Share Our Strength, a popular charity for chefs because it feeds hungry children, the resort invites 12 chefs from around the country and pairs their artisanal meals with Napa wines.

The night I attended, Paul Liebrandt of Corton in New York was the chef. His “modern French” cuisine contained a lot of foie gras, so it could not go wrong with me and the exceptional wines were from Napa’s PlumpJack and CADE wineries.  PlumpJack is the Oakville winery owned by billionaire Gordon Getty and Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, and wine lovers are probably familiar with its intense Cabernet Sauvignon. CADE is their newest venture, a Howell Mountain winery built for its time -- LEED certified and built with the environment in mind. John Conover, partner with Getty and Newsom in the winery, introduced CADE’s Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon bottlings, which were intense and fruity. Winemaker Anthony Biagi found a way to tame the tannins of his hillside Cab vineyards and bring out some spice in the 2006 Cabernet, which was paired interestingly with a wedge of Brillat-Savarin and a white chocolate coin.
Meadowood is pricey but also one of a kind in Northern California’s wine country: there are only 85 quietly elegant rooms (think Martha Stewart) scattered throughout 250 forested acres with a croquet lawn, tennis courts, spa, pools and a two-star Michelin restaurant. Wine fans couldn’t be in better hands – the owner is Bill Harlan of a little winery you may have heard about, Harlan Estate, and the resort employs a wine director primarily occupied with wine education and events centered around the elixir of Napa Valley.