Russian River and Sausalito Trip Day 1
Bill and I have never been to this part of the wine country as we never went past Sonoma in our previous trips.
Since we are unfamiliar with the region wineries, the idea was to do a weekend exploration of the terroir there and see what they can offer. The blog has detailed notes of our tasting in each wineries for our future references. We also learned that pinot has warm and cold climate pinot grapes. The warm climate grapes are usually what our palette preferred as the cool climate tends to be lighter flavor.
After getting through the 1.5 hours line in Thrifty car rental counter in SFO airport (highly recommended not to use them.. understaffed and oversold, didn't give us the car that we booked), we finally made it to Balletto winery.
Balletto vineyards
https://www.ballettovineyards.com/
Full disclosure, I picked this winery as it has great reviews and the basic tasting is $20.
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| Balletto vineyards |
This is a very friendly winery with a nice outdoor tasting room. They have a lot of vineyards and they sell their grapes to a lot of wineries like La Crema etc. So the owner is more of a farmer and have his pick of grapes in the region.
When we got there, we got upgraded to $30 tasting as they want us to be able to try their full range of pinots (if we end up not buying the bottle they would have only charged us $20 and it's waived with 2 bottles purchase).
They also let us share a tasting but gave us enough pours that it easily feels like having 2 tasting.
We end up tasting 1 brut rose, 2 chardonnays, 6 pinot from Burnside to Russian River, Sexton Hill and blend from 18 barrel of pinot. Both chardonnays are really good at $42 but it's too early for us to commit to purchases with limited bottles we can bring back. If I could find them in the stores, their chardonnay is definitely worth it.
Our favorite pinot is the 18 barrel pinot blend with 6 barrels each from Burnside, Sexton and BCD, but can't justify the $60 price tag. We prefer their zinfandel over the pinots. They also have a late harvest chardonnay that's very nice with noble B (aka the fungus)
What we end up buying is their Brut Rose where they blend 60% pinot with 40% chardonnay. It is easily the best sparkling that I have tried. It's full of flavor without being too dry or too bright. Has the subtlety of pinot with the nose of chardonnay. Yum.
Halleck winery
https://halleckvineyard.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorvYAaWcUWfaPg4IJKTqGHyYxoX0K-9Uno_Kye5RmTZ92-Ur0Bd
This place is the heavy hitter and easily the best place that we went to. Not surprising as they win a lot of gold, double gold and the winners of double golds. They have 2 big cabinet full of wine with medals.
Their tasting is appointment only at 11am and 3pm if they are open. We took a risk as we flew in that day. But they are only open that Sat before taking a week off for Easter. It's $65 for 6 tasting with small local cheese or chocolate pairing for each wine.
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| Dracula home! |
I personally find their chardonnays to be very high in the acid note and too pricy at $47 to $55. They have an interesting white zinfandel that's experimental. Bone dry and need food pairing but affordable at $34. We end up signing up for the wine club to get free shipping of 6 bottles of their 3 sons pinot as it's the best pinot for the trip. They also comp the tasting which makes the purchase worthwhile.
The grapes are a blend of 3 warm climate pinots from Russian River and tend to be fruit forward with light red fruits like cherries and strawberries with a great finish. Easy to pair with food but can hold up on its own.
David who did the tasting is a sommelier and we got a lot of interesting history of the wine making in Russian River and Halleck. Looks like he's a wine broker who also taste a lot of wine for clients and Halleck is highly recommended.
He also gave us 4 of the top 5 wineries in Russian River (Halleck, Merry Edwards, Rochioli, William Seylema). We are able to taste in 3 out of the 4 places as WS does not allow tasting unless you buy 2 shipments annually from them =)
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| Halleck tasting |
After Halleck tasting, we check into hotel at Sebastopol and went down to the Barlow.
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| Fairfield Inn |
It's a very similar concept to Tin City in Paso Robles except it's not as big.
At the Barlow we found a cute wine bar that offers tasting by glass and do their own test tubes of wine. Not the cheapest but a fun way to look at different wineries in the region.
Got dinner at the Blue Ridge kitchen that night. It's big in mixology but we didn't order cocktails as we just finish 2 tasting. Great burgers and brussels sprouts but disappointing fried chicken.
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