We got home and settled in last night.  Overall it was an absolutely awesome trip. Best of all was being able to visit with my good friend.  We don’t get to see each other often enough.  But after this too quick visit, you better believe we’ll be heading out to Madrid to visit with them sooner rather than later!

And yes, it was filled with lots and lots of wine.  To be honest, we’d only managed to visit four wineries, one vineyard’s shop on the square and then had a bottle with dinner and a bottle back at the hotel.  But that was just enough to still enjoy everything we were drinking.

Overall, it was a bit of a Zinfandel kind of day.  Oh, but right before dinner we followed the advice on the guy from Porter Creek Winery and enjoyed a glass of some Oh.My.God so good chocolate port from Rosenblum Cellars.  We were seriously regretting only carrying on a bag and not checking our luggage, we fell so in love with this stuff.  I mean, the aroma alone made you just want to dive in and soak in it and it tasted even better still!  And I’m definatey not someone that drinks port.

As for dinner, we were considering trying out the Girl and Fig in Sonoma, but since we were just a couple of blocks away from one of our favorite restaurants in the area, we headed there.  Once again, dinner at Zin Restaurant and Wine Bar was absolutely amazing and our waiter treated us very well. We started with some odd but delicious calamari, butter bean, sausage and frise thing in a skillet that was awesome! We were fighting each other off to sop up the juice with the bread. Then there was a tasty frise, goat cheese and grilled peach salad (that I plan on duplicating!). Of course, we each had (and shared) some great dishes – though my short ribs were rumored to be the best of the bunch. And let’s not forget the shared dessert. A great end to a beautiful day with friends.

The visit itself was too short and our time together is too far between visits, but we definitely made the most of our time together.  Right up to killing one last bottle of wine while hanging out in the hotel lobby enjoying the fire catching up late into the night.  It was almost painful to wake up the next morning.  After a light breakfast we parted ways.  Until our next visit…this time in Spain!

And now some photos (clicking on them will make them larger)…

Just outside our hotel – we had a view like this from our room (this was from the deck though)

The view crossing the Russian River

Let the wine drinking commence!

Are these beautiful or what?

We don’t have this many varieties of garlic in LA

Don’t they just make you crave a glass of wine? No? What about grape jelly then?