Northern California - Best weekend for winery rides this year.

This weekend and the next are Barrel tasting weekends in the Russian River area. Nearly 200 wineries, some of which are open to the general public only for this one event. Any one up for some rides. Most of them have some kind of food, some with excellent food. The Sunce winery on Olivet west of Santa Rosa comes to mind. If you are riding in the area stay off of Westside Road. The traffic will be incredibly bad even compared to parts of LA. Stretch limos and busses squeezing past drunk motorists.

Thanks for the heads up about the barrel tasting weekends, ken!

We checked out more then a dozens wineries. The prize was the Quaking Hills Winery. Small is not the word for it. No tasting room, sold only by mail, a few local stores, and a couple of restruants. I found the owner, winemaker, cellarworker, et alia mowing a patch of hillside. He was happy to stop working and start chatting about wine. He had the first Merlot my wife could every keep down, a nice Voigner, and a bottle of late harvest for me. His operation shares an old mossy shed/barn with Hart's Desire winery which is better known locally. Not that that is saying much.

There were a good number of cyclists over in Dry Creek Valley. Most wineries are happy to ship to most states so you do not have to haul the wine on your bike. Sunny and dry weather.

The Santa Rosa cycling club's 200K brevet was held up in that area this past Saturday. We started out in Healdsburg, went along Dry Creek Road, crossed over at Canyon Road towards Geyserville, back down Alexander Valley Road thru Calistoga, crossed over to the Silverado Trail, headed down the ST passed St. Helena & Yountville to Skyline Park in Napa, and turned around & headed back.

I was a little worried when I heard it was barrel tasting weekend, but the traffic wasn't bad, at least at the time I was passing through, and drivers were pretty courteous all in all. And it was such a beautiful day!