trip up to sonoma!

A few weekends ago, my Aunt and Uncle came out to visit Peter and I in the bay. I have few snapshots from the trip:

We decided to do a bike trip around to a couple of different wineries through Sonoma Valley Bike Tours. We decided to take the cheaper route, just renting the bikes instead of doing a planned tour with them and I was really happy to have the experience. 

We went on a really hot day - which was my one regret. I think this would have been perfect in 70, or even 80 degree weather. We were all so beat that by the time we got to the third winery, none of us wanted wine!

The first winery we went to was Sebastiani Vineyards  which had a great tasting room. We split two tastings amongst the four of us. One was their standard wines (which I loved to taste considering all of them are available to Peter and I locally), and their reserve wines (which overall were much better than the standard wines). I appreciated that the tastings were on the cheaper side.

After that we went out to Ravenswood Winery which specializes in Zinfindels. Unfortunately to get there we had to go up our first major incline and the Aunt and Uncle were out for tastings. They enjoyed sitting outside and rehydrating (especially considering it was ~90 - eek!). Peter and I split a tasting of their not Zinfindels since neither of us enjoy Zins. I really liked their rose, but otherwise nothing else stood out to the two of us. However their atmosphere was great! Very laid back and a lot less stuffy than other tasting rooms.

At this point we were about a third of the way through our ride and pretty tired. We biked to our last winery which (to be honest) consisted of one section where the four of us walked our bikes up the hill (again did I mention how hot it was??) We ended up at Gundlach Bundschu (pronounced Gun-Lock-Bun-Shoe) which had a lovely area to catch our breath outside. At this point we were all pretty exhausted and decided to skip the wines. However I think this winery was the prettiest we went through. As we were leaving, I have to admit I was tempted to take a bunch of grapes off a tree, but then realized the grapes would be even more delicious as wine, and decided to move on.

I would recommend doing a bike tour of Sonoma, if drinking the wines is not your priority. The four of us were craving water way more than wine by the end of this trip. However, it was beautiful and definitely an adventure! I think next time I'll take a party bus :)