Barrel Tasting in Sonoma County

This past weekend we flew to Sonoma County, California, for the annual Wine Road Barrel Tasting.
More than 100 wineries in the Alexander, Dry Creek and Russian River Valleys offered samples of both wines still in the barrel and their current bottlings.  We managed to visit more than a dozen wineries during the weekend.
We met up with some old friends for the tour:
We sampled lots of wines.  And enjoyed talking to the winemakers.  They are serious about their product.
Photo by Janet
 Well, most of them are.....
We learned a great deal about wine and wine blending.
Sonoma County is a beautiful place.  Even on a cold, rainy day:
We watched them prune the vines at Martorana Winery.  They didn't let a little rain hold them back:
The sun eventually came out and it was really lovely:
I believe that is mustard blooming between the vines:
We saw several cork oaks (Quercus Suber) in the garden at Ferrari-Carano.  This species is the primary source of cork.  The trees must be at least 40 years old before the bark can be harvested the first time.  After each harvest the tree grows new bark and can be harvested every nine years.  It was a very cool looking tree:
A closeup of the bark:
 We had lunch on Monday on the terrace at Korbel.  Champagne and a lovely salad:
Brian and I ended our long weekend at one of our favorite wineries, Seghesio, in Healdsburg:
Cheers!

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