Sonoma, Napa, and St. Helena, CA

I (Dustin) started work around 6am on Monday, ideally so that I could finish by 3pm and join Kim touring some vineyards and perhaps fit in a tasting or two at a winery. Kim dropped me off in Sonoma and I worked from a little coffee shop on the square, while she spent Monday at a couple of vineyards and wineries.
I (Kim) did manage to fit in a tasting or two before meeting up with Dustin. I started out at the Arrowood winery. It's a pretty big so it's possible you may have bought it at the store or ordered it at a restaurant. I really enjoyed their white wines so I bought a bottle of Chardonnay. Next I wanted to try something a little bit smaller so I headed over to Wellington. It is a much smaller winery, but it had lots of character. The wine guy was very friendly and gave me some good suggestions as to where I should take Dustin once he got off of work.

I did manage to enough work done to knock off around 3:30pm and we went directly to Little Vineyards to split a tasting (which is our favorite way to do tastings -- a nice tip, by the way). There, we bought a bottle of our favorite tasting.

Little Vineyards claims that this wooden bar was the bar at Jack London's favorite watering hole.

We had just enough time to make it to one more tasting, at B. Kohn Vineyards. B. Kohn is perhaps better known as the manager of the Doobie Brothers. We bought a bottle of his Dooble Red blend. There's an adjoining gift shop to the tasting room, where we sampled a variety of olive oils, vinegars, and mustards. We purchased a jar of delicious smoky mustard.

Most of our trips to the California wine country have been in the summer time. It was a nice change of pace to be there in the fall, with the grapes ripe and the leaves changing colors.

Roses are bellwethers for the health of a vineyard. These seem to be doing just fine!

We drove over to Napa for dinner, where we ate at none other than the Ubuntu restaurant (and yoga studio?).

The Ubuntu restaurant has nothing to do with the software I write, other than we share a name and actually have a similar set of principles. While we apply the tennets of Ubuntu to software, they apply it to food. The inside of the restaurant is really quite chic (like much of Napa). It really reminded me of the set from Joss Whedon's Dollhouse TV series :-)

All of the food is vegetarian, and it's ordered and served tapas style. Everything we had was delicious.

The portions looked small, but neither of us were hungry at all by the time we left.

(We did have cookies for dessert, just to make sure we wouldn't leave hungry.) Their menus are custom printed every day. We did leave our waitress with a stack of Ubuntu CDs. In exchange, she's supposed to mail me a copy of Sunday's 10.10.10 Ubuntu restaurant menu. I'm really hoping that's waiting for me when I get back to Austin!

Cheers to the Ubuntu restaurant!

Our drive back to Petaluma should have taken about 30-40 minutes, but the highway was under construction. We sat parked on the road for well over an hour. It took us nearly 2 hours to do that drive. Bummer.

Tuesday was an incredibly busy work day for me. I worked from a Starbucks in Petaluma. Kim visited a few more wineries, and attended a food-and-wine-pairing event. I had to work late, but we did make it to Sonoma for dinner. Kim took me to a place she visited on a recent girls trip to Sonoma, called A Girl and a Fig. Kim sampled a white wine flight while I did the same with a red whine flight. We continued a theme of breadth through the meal, agreeing on an appetize tower of cheeses, caperberries, nuts, figs, meats, and mustards. Again, it didn't look like a lot of food, but we ate slowly, enjoyed ourselves and found we were quite full. We didn't have room for a proper desert, but instead we split a flight of sherry, port, and maderia.

Our second trip through the road closures happened to be timed a bit better (not through any effort on our part, though).

We started our day quite early again on Wednesday, driving up through Santa Rosa where I bought oil and a filter from a Kragen Auto Parts. (I actually wanted to go to a Napa Auto Parts, in Napa, but they didn't have the filter I needed!) I found a place that recycled oil right near by, so I bought a cheap plastic pan and funnel too. It took me about 10 minutes (and no mess) to change my oil in a Whole Foods parking lot, and return the oil to the recylcing facility in the same parking lot. It's less about saving $40 and a lot more about doing the job well, I promise :-)

From Santa Rosa, we drove over to St. Helena, where a friend and colleague from Austin (Manoj) recommended an excellent coffee shop -- Napa Valley Coffee Roasters. I enjoyed an outstanding coffee, and spent my entire day working from there. At some point during the day, the gentleman next to me ask me about my laptop (a Lenovo x200), and if I liked it. He had a few complaints about his, and asked for some advice. After a brief conversation, he admitted that he actually though Windows was to blame for most of his problems. This is when he hit my sweet spot :-) I took advantage of the opportunity to evangelize Linux, and pass him a stack of Ubuntu CDs. Good deed for the day: done.

While Dustin was working, I (Kim) went olive oil tasting along the picturesque main road then enjoyed a picnic and a glass of wine at Sattui winery. It's pictured above with the fountain and beautiful roses. The scenery was awesome, but the winery/deli was super crowded. I guess every body had the same great idea I did!  That experience helped remind me again that it's better to seek out the smaller less traveled places so you can relax and not wait in line for 20 min to get a sandwich and then another 20 to get some wine and check out. I'm totally not complaining...just want to throw that out there if anyone is planning a visit to the wine country any time soon...by the way...I'm in!

We had other reasons for visiting St. Helena, too... Kim and I honeymooned (in part) in Napa Valley. I think we had the most fun on that trip in Callistoga, St. Helena, and along the Silverado Trail. The most unique, quirky winery we found on that trip in 2006 was easily Prager Port Works in St. Helena. I made it a point to finish my work by 4:30pm so that we'd have just enough time to stop into Prager for a tasting and certainly a purchase. We were not let down, enjoying all of the ports we tasted. I was most surprised by their Petit Syrah, actually, so we bought a bottle of that (and a bottle of their Balsamic Port vinegar).

I worked from the car for the next few hours, as we drove down into San Francisco. I snapped this picture of the Golden Gate bridge moving over head at 55mph, through the sunroof.

We met my manager, Jos, and my teammate (and our host in Montreal) Mathias. We had Blowfish Sushi to Die For, and it was absolutely incredible. Kim was far more adventurous than usual, trying all sorts of sushi and sashimi she normally avoids. (I don't know, I'm just feeling more adventurous these days!) After dinner, we somehow stuffed two passengers (Jos and Mathias) into our Jeep. We headed over to Jos' apartment for drinks at another Japanese place called Tsunami.

It's great seeing my remote teammates in other parts of the world, and in particular, in their own home towns. The sushi at Blowfish, is indeed, to die for. Look that's mine (Kim)...the outer rice was infused with squid ink and topped with salmon eggs! It was really good.

The dessert is really delicious too.

We dropped Mathias off at his hotel in downtown San Francisco (he was in town for a conference), and Kim and I drove down to San Jose, where we stayed at the Doubletree for a night in Silicon Valley.

:-Dustin