The Villa was beautiful. The pool overlooked vineyards and a horse stable owned by the crazy people who own the house. There were post-it notes w/ instructions pasted throughout the house with rules on just about everything you could imagine, and the applicable surcharge one would pay for breaking said rules. Heating the hot tub, that's a surcharge; leaving the pool uncovered overnight, that's a surcharge; turning the AC on, that's a surcharge; staring as my sandals, you better believe that's a surchar
ge. We didn't need the AC, so that wasn't an issue, but the hot tub might have been nice. The owner of the house, who came and went as she pleased during the week without talking to us, finally turned on the hot tub Thursday, it was hot by Friday. We left Sunday. But I digress. One more house note. For such a beautiful place, it contained a plethora of broken coffee makers and microwaves. Just odd.In the Sonoma the wine flows like wine, my friends. During the week (before the Friday booze cruise, which gets its own paragraph), we hit up Cline and Jacuzzi, which were a few minutes from the house. We were also treated to a lovely time at Folio. I won't pretend to know how the biz works and the details are fuzzy, but they have something to do with Mondavi. We drank
wine there.We also had some very nice meals throughout the week. The Girl and the Fig had some interesting charcuterie. You heard me. Charcuterie. It consisted of many odd pastes to be spread on toasts, none of which were particularly appetizing, and was the second best charcuterie I had in Sonoma. My pork belly was pretty bomb-ass however. The best meal I had was at The General's Daughter in Sonoma. We were there for the final night of that particular restaurant's ownership, and it was amazing, and had a borderline hilarious $50 wine corkage fee (for every bottle past your 2nd). I ate duck. Mmmmm. Duck.
The golf was very good, and very scenic. I beat Corbs once, and he beat me once. I still need to collect on the 3 bucks dad owes me :>
On to Friday. The booze cruise was great. We hit Paraduxx, Vine Cliff, Darioush, and Trefethen. Quick reviews of the facilities themselves, not the wine: Good, Great, Eh, Ehh. Vine Cliff was awesome. It was on the smaller side, and was the most personal of the four. They had a nice little tour of the vineyard and the cellar (cave?) and we had a great little picnic next to their pond. Paraduxx involved a private littl
e table and a free-form enjoy-at-your-own-pace tasting. Darioush was a demented Disney World looking Iranian Palace. We got a good chuckle over an $800 backgammon set, but my picture with the guy in the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad costume came out blurry. The people at Trefethen acted like we were being done a favor by paying to try their wine.Bonus picture: Julie playing conceptual art / mini-golf! Never thought you'd see that sentence typed out did you?
Bonus fact: In case you were wondering, it takes 12 hours 2 minutes to drive from Sonoma to Phoenix. If not for some Magic Mountain traffic outside of LA, I would have rocked 12 hours. You better believe I tore ass on the 10 in Phoenix in a failed attempt to do so.
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