A Day of Vineyards and Beaches

After a full breakfast we ventured out to Jack London State Park for a little morning tour. We continued on to our first winery,Benzinger where we took a tour from the vineyards, through the processing plant, the underground cellar and finally a wine tasting. Although an amateur I can usually pick out some or most of the fruits or barrel smells. Well maybe my nose was a little off but all I could pick up in most of the reds were just the black fruit smell. The wine tasted ok but that was about it. The whites proved a little better but I suppose the fun of the visit is the process you go through and we all really did enjoy it. One of the most appealing aspects of the winery is the fact that they are "green". Our next journey was to the Glen Ellen Market for a picnic lunch and we headed off to Kenwood to have our lunch in the local park. We stopped at Ledson Winery to walk around and view the beautiful landscape and buildings. They have a restaurant and hold weddings there. From there it was to River Road, running along the Russian River to The Korbel Winery where we sampled some of their champagne. Heading east to Hwy 1 we stopped first at Sonoma Coast State park where the coastline was magnificent. We headed south to Bodega Bay, a winding trip south along the coast and stopped to take many more shots. We ended the evening with dinner at The Glen Ellen Inn and enjoying our bottle of Korbel Chardonnay Champagne and raspberries before and after our dip in the hot tub.