Inside Sonoma

There’s cat people and dog people, surely as there’s white wine and red wine people. And then there are cat wineries and dog wineries. The canines have the advantage for the moment, wagging and slobbering all over the glossy pages of “Winery Dogs of Wine Country” coffee table books in tasting rooms everywhere. The more I explore, however, the more felines I find, quietly waiting for their moment.

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas,” was a melancholy lament for J. Alfred Prufrock. Raise your nipper if you can relate. But this time of year in
Sonoma County, crabs are actually a rather popular and sought-after bunch. Crab cakes, in particular, are not only a [...]

It’s easy to get the impression that John Hart is some kind of prototypical Sonoma County winemaker, one part hardworking dude who harvests some fields himself, one part bon vivant—or anyway, he certainly doesn’t resist playing it up with the winery’s image. Hart’s Desire bottles bear labels by the artist Loreta Hornall, depicting bedroom-eyed women and amatory couples in the midst of a toast, or an embrace, or both.

It may offend the easily affronted to suggest the pick of the week is second-best, especially since it’s one tier above the wine I was pining for: Alas, Siduri’s 2008 Sonoma County Pinot Noir is sold out.

Picture this scene, a post-new year’s day dinner for one: I had some blue cheese that was getting bluer by the day, a bag of shiitake mushrooms barely salvaged from a broiler vent-meltdown the night before, a single serving of grass-fed ribeye and someone on my mind. Times like these call for a big bottle [...]

One of the greatest mysteries of sparkling wine—despite its turbulent origins in the eponymous Champagne region, the never-ending miracle of tiny bubbles streaming heavenward, and the seductive dissipation of, er, yeast autolysis—is that it’s so darned inexpensive. That is: compared to other fine Sonoma County wines,