Anyway, I think I didn't get sick this time around because Saturday we had an entire day of car commercial driving, followed by the road from hell? But yeah, on Sunday, just hopping straight on and off for the 25 miles was perfectly fine.
Which was good news because we had a little bit more wine in our future!
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| Lovelovelove. |
We munched on more sammies and snacks on the road (we did this most days for breakfast and lunch), and our first stop on the Anderson Valley tour (created by me, nothing official), was a place called The Madrones, in Philo, California.
LOL moment: I wrote up a ginormous and crazily detailed itinerary for this entire trip, because I'm a psycho, and actually wrote the sentence, "there's this magical place called The Madrones with tasting rooms, cool architecture on the property and even a secret garden!" OMG, stoppppp, loser. We laughed about this line the rest of the trip.
The Madrones? Were cool, but like, "magical" might have been a stretch. Tasting rooms, yes. Architecture? Who am I? Did I read that online somewhere? I wouldn't even know what to look for. I'm embarrassing myself. The secret garden? Not so secret. It was just like, off to the side when you walked in. There were some plants. It was fine. Ugh, I'm lame.
...
So, back to our tasting tour, we did make quite a few purchases! I bought a bottle of Pinot Noir (what the region is known for) at Knez, and then at Signal Ridge, they share a tasting room with Boonsville cider. This stuff tasted like the original Strongbow -- wasn't that the best? [They're not still making it in Michigan, are they? It's been replaced with the shittiest shit of all time out here (prly everywhere, right?) Like, gold apple Strongbow? Or this honey kind? GTFO. All I ever wanted was some clean, crisp, non-wussified cider. Take your fancy flavors and go hooooome, Strongbow].
Where was I?
Oh yeah, bought some sixers of Boonsville at Signal Ridge. Apparently you can buy it at some grocery stores in the Bay, better stock up next time I'm a little closer!
Next up (I mean, after all the architecture gazing), we hit up Roederer Estates. This was more of a bubbly tasting, which we've never done. Roederer only sells its extra dry champ at the tasting room, and it's made specifically for the White House. Ballerrrrrrr. We stocked up.
G and I were slightly underwhelmed with the place across the street (I won't name names), but we did buy a varietal I had never heard of that was delicious as F. It was a Quadriga, and it consisted of four of my fav Italian wines. And the owner is from Madison Heights! We chatted. I spotted her Red Wings mug. Small world! We actually met a LOT of people on our trip with Michigan/Metro Detroit connections. And when there wasn't a Mitten State tie, there was an upstate NY connection. Cray.
We also had a picnic atop a hill with more sammies and Goldfish. Then we ventured to Lula Cellars, where I proceeded to fall in LOVE with a dog named Honey. (And the owner/wine was really nice, too!) I became a wine club member. Happens sometimes. Best Pinot Noirs I've had in awhile.
We paced ourselves, spread out our day, poured out everything that we didn't absolutely LOVE and split most tastings ... we weren't trying to get buzzed and then drive back to the coast. Because back to the coast was where we were headed!
When we were finally done with the day, we drove about a half-hour over to Little River Inn, in Little River, California. This miiiiiiight have been one of my favorite places to stay (although it was pretty hard to compete with one of the B&Bs!)
The view was gorgeous!
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| From the balc. |
We had a balcony and watched the sun set -- which happened SO fast -- and chatted with our neighbors, also from the Sacramento area. They were actually pretty annoying after awhile, but the guy had friends who did undergrad at MSU, and he knew everything about the campus. Again, small world, yo.
For dinnz, we headed next door to our hotel's Whale Watch Bar, which would have overlooked the ocean if it weren't dark outside. We didn't want to do a full-on dinner, so we just had Scrimshaws and split a few seafoodie items (crab cakes, clam chowder, calamari). The freshest and best I've had, all three. DROOL!
We called it a night rather early and prepared to head to Mendocino (only eight miles up the road!) in the AM. TBC!
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| My feet and mini bagels, waiting for Jimmy to wake up. |
*I wish I had more pics of wine tasting day. We were too busy trying bevs, apparently!
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