Day 3 1/2: Sonoma

“Sonoma over Napa,” all the guidebooks said. Definitely, Sonoma over Napa. Napa is a tourist trap; pricey and overdone. Sonoma is the place to be, the lesser known, more hip corner of wine country, with scenery just as gorgeous, and a historic downtown to boot.

Heck, I was sold. And on a personal note, everything with the name, “Sonoma” in it seems to bring me joy. Sonoma Chicken Salad from Whole Foods. Williams Sonoma. See?

The journey to Sonoma County is only an hour from San Francisco proper, and the drive up, for the most part, is unspectacular. Highways, houses, sky. Typical road trip stuff. “I thought it'd be a lot more pretty,” Sandy said, and I had to agree.

“Yeah, not much to look at. Unless it's going to be like in the movies, where we drive over one hill and there it all is, lush and glorious.”

Sure enough, a few minutes and one hilltop later, Sonoma was spread out before us. Lush, glorious, and too beautiful to believe. It wasn't long from the borders of the county to its downtown, and we drove it slowly, our eyes popping and mouths dropping the whole way.

Our visit coincided with harvest time, and the grapes were full and round on their vines. Quiet roads were lined with trees, the leaves from their heavily drooping branches brushing onto the roof of the Mini, just changing into the russet colours of fall.

Sonoma is home to about two zillion wineries, and they were everywhere. Magnificent houses dotted the landscape, rustic mansions with Mexican shingled rooftops set in the middle of hilltop vineyards. Paradise in grapes.

I have only read about such places.

Downtown Sonoma was equally breathtaking, a charming little town set in old style California, all trendy shops and corner cafes. I did what I do best when I'm excited: I squealed and bounced up and down in the seat while Sandy parked the Mini. As you've noticed, I get very worked up when I travel.

And so, after getting out of the car and stretching our legs, Sandy and I set about to discover. We ate lunch at an authentic Mexican restaurant, and tried tortilla soup for the first time. We had ice cream in a corner shop that churned each flavour by hand. We went to a liquor store built like an underground wine cellar, and saw dozens of vintages from around the world.

We went to the Lisa Kristine gallery, a photographer who does the occasional assignment for National Geographic, and purchased some truly unbelievable photographs: a shot of the faithful at the Ganges in India; a peasant girl in the mountains of Tibet; a man weaving his bicycle around yellow leaved trees in Kashgar, and a brown shuttered window against a striking red wall in Peru.

Then, we wine tasted. Really, if you're not going to wine taste, why bother going to wine country at all?

The Mayo Family Winery set up shop in downtown Sonoma, and does daily tastings. It works like this: you pay a nominal fee, $6 this case, and the person behind the counter/psuedo barkeep gives you samples of that year's batch.

I once saw a video of professional wine tasters; they'd swirl, sniff, take in a mouthful and, horror of horrors, spit it out. Really, what’s the point?

Luckily, non-professionals are allowed to be gauche, and everything we took in, went down. All of it. Happy, happy customers were we. Even better, walking us down the loopy path was Charles.

Charles Hillard, white haired, southern accented spirits virtuoso of the Mayo family was, in my imagination, born with a concord grape in one hand, and a cork in the other. Our tastes weren’t so much sips as they were multiple gulps, thanks to his generous pouring, and every last bit was poetry.

We had six wines to taste, but ended up with nine, as Charles let us have three extra, on the house tastings first. He’d pour a bit, swirl it around in the goblet then look at it, somber and misty-eyed, before launching into elegant prose.

“This cabernet is the queen of them all, really. It took second place for the best cab in Paris last year, and coming that close to the French was a feat unto itself. We didn’t lose, but we didn’t win, and there is a difference between the two. The body of this wine is very full, and the colour is more brown than your traditional cab, giving testament to the aging process and quality we give our wines here. The chocolate and spice notes are subtle on the tongue, and if you close your eyes you can appreciate its smoky tones.”

Brilliant salesman, that man. Extra long pours, a few free tries and lyrical storytelling. Make your customers lose presence of mind before purchase. Between the two of us we went home with six bottles, and had to giggle the session off in the park across the street, pawing each other all the while, before getting back into the car.

Whoop.