Sonoma Vacation: Goat Rock Beach at Jenner

Wildlife interlude.

So after settling in to our cottage at Fern Grove Cottages in Guerneville, (definitely "quaint," meaning "small" but quite nice), we realized we had a bit of time before dinner, so we took a leisurely drive out towards Jenner and crossed over to Goat Rock Beach in hopes of spotting some seals.

Unfortunately, although there are signs advising us not to harass the seals, and ropes up, there are no seals to be seen.

Nevertheless, the beach is gorgeous, and I'm totally fascinated by the flocks and flocks of pelicans, who scatter themselves among the sea gulls all across the beach and sail inches away from the water at the mouth of the Russian River.

They look like nothing so much as the neo-pterodactyls they are, and as each group comes in for a landing, I peer at them, wondering what desert island they've been hiding on since the Mesozoic Era.


I sidle over to get a better look at him, and that amazing neck stretches out, ET-like, to get a better look at me.

We eye each other for a bit, and then he waddles off a step or two and I realize that they're even more absurdly ungainly on land than swans.

But when they take off, suddenly, they're like alien warplanes. No sagging chin full of fish, no thick feet, just streamlined darts cutting through the air. They look dangerous, and prehistoric. As I watch them sail over Goat Rock, I can't hlp but wonder if this is what dinosaurs saw standing on this beach?

No tourists, no taco stand, no wineries or marketing materials. Just gorgeous coastline.

Back to our itinerary.

Sonoma Vacation: Dutton Goldfield/ Balletto and Hartford Family Wineries

We had a few wineries on the list and we hit our first one on the way up Highway 116 to Guerneville.

On the search for Chardonnays of redeeming crispness, my Omnivore turned up the name of Dutton. No, no, we were told, that's the Dutton Estates up the road. Same family, different kids. But while we were there, why not sample...?

Why not indeed?

Balletto, the winery that shares the tasting room made some nice wines, and we bought a bottle of Pinot Gris from Balletto and a Zin from Dutton, but if I'm being honest, the best selling point of the place is a nice quiet patio with a fountain where we could put up the umbrellas over the tables, and indulge in my favorite pastime, picnicking!

It takes me all of about 2 minutes to roll out the spread.

In preparation for this little excursion, I made a couple of batches of homemade mustards-- our mustard adventures will have to wait for a post of their own--and picked up some of Fra'Mani's luscious new Rosemary ham, along with slices of soppresata and toscano. Add some of those Maille cornichons, slices of St. George, toasted pecans, a few bites of fregola..... I'm in picnic heaven!

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Balletto & Dutton-Goldfield Tasting Room
5700 Occidental Road (midway between Hwy 116 and Fulton)
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
707.568.2455 x18

Hartford Family Wines
8075 Martinelli Road
Forestville, CA
800-588-0234

Back to our itinerary.

Sonoma Vacation: Matos Family Cheese

Oh. Oh. OHHH. One of our favorite cheeses.

The Matos Family's St. Jorge or St. George cheese. It's a pungent, cheddary Portuguese style cheese that hint back at the Azores, where the Matos family grew up.

We've been fans of this local cheese for a long time, so it was one of our most anticipated stops of the whole trip. If we played it right, I theorized, we'd have cheese for the rest of the trip-- maybe the rest of the year...

The farm itself, is a working affair, with perhaps not-so-welcoming cows, and crows that toss fruit at you as you come up the drive.

Perhaps we should say the cows are just disinterested. Almost with that French Normandy Bovine disinterested sort of fashion.

But hey, they look a heckuva lot more happy--nay, entitled-- than the Giacomini Dairy cows whose living quarters next to a pit of their own feces so horrified me that I can't bear the sight of Point Reyes Blue, much less eating it.

The Matos farm is a different story. As we drive up, a dog raises a lazy ear on the driveway, but doesn't budge from his dusty corner, giving us leave to inspect the chickens pecking about in their yard.

As always, the city girl is fascinated by the barnyard animals, but we're here for the cheese. We head for the door to what looks like an extension of the family house, which sets off a startling buzz on opening. We quickly close it behind us and stare around at the absurdly austere, tiny room marked only by a counter, a hunk of cheese, a 12-inch chef's knife, a scale, a register and a few posters.

A young woman, who only speaks Spanish, comes out to handle us. The very first thing she does is hack off a slice, a big slice, and hand it over to us to sample. Yum. Well, we clearly seem to want cheese, but after that, she's a little non-plussed as to what exactly we want. She goes back into a ROOM OF CHEESE, and shows us a WHEEL of CHEESE, albeit one of the smaller ones in the room. She weighs it and indicates--about $77. I'm all excited and ready to take the whole damn thing, but my Omnivore-- perhaps envisioning cheese for breakfast, second breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner and supper, not to mention elevenses--balks.

We negotiate in my high school pidgin Spanish and settle on three large chunks of cheese. $44 and a steal.

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Matos Cheese Factory
3669 Llano Rd,
Santa Rosa, CA 95407
707-584-5283
Daily 9-5

Back to our itinerary.

Sonoma Vacation: Bud's Custom Meats

What a hilarious place.

I don't know what I expected when we drove off the beaten path to head for Penngrove and Bud's Custom Meats. It was a little like driving around Tuscany when we discovered that the roads marked in white on the Italian Touring Club maps are basically dirt roads.

"Turn right here," I say, torquing around my map and peering intently at the crisscross of rail lines with-- I thought-- roads.

The incredulous look on my Omnivore's face says, "Um... into the field?"

Well, anyway, we made it to Bud's, which at least is marked with a prominent sign, and discovered a hard-core butcher shop.

There's a.. a... well, a deer, a deer head, that is, overseeing the counter, which separates an impressive meat packing operation, done by hand by several workers, who look pretty much ready to ignore us until we fire off a shotgun.

In the mean time, folks are coming in here and there, picking up what seem to be humongous pre-orders of meat, chops, ground, all kinds of stuff.

"They have wild boar!" I say excitedly, pointing into one of the vast refrigerated cases.

Sadly, we have no cooler (and it's pretty hot outside) and I'm not sure there's a refrigerator where we're going anyhow. Sighing, we settle on some fairly safe venison jerky and something delectable, with the undelectable name of "Bloody Mary" jerky.

We'll be back.

Bud's Custom Meats
7750 Petaluma Hill Rd
Penngrove CA
(707) 795-8402
Open Monday-Saturday 8-5

Back to our itinerary.

Sonoma Vacation: Divine Delights

Vacation! Really? Honest? Yay!

We kicked off our trip up to the gorgeous Russian River with a quick pass by a place I found online a few weeks ago after paroxysms of frustration unleashed by the great Petits Fours Debacle.

The Petaluma-based Divine Delights makes Petits Fours... and they'll ship them to you.

But are they any good? Their Petit Four Outlet is apparently "Now Open" and easily accessed from the Old Redwood Highway exit off 101, so we made them our first target.

Petit Four Outlet?

Fine, bring it on.

Actually, the place is the home base where they make the thousands of painfully, adorable little cakes, and ship them all over the country. There's a small room with a case of samples that are less expensive than if you ordered them from the catalog and had to pay shipping (about $1.00 apiece for the small petits fours).

They were kind enough to let us peek at the facility where the magic happens. Cakes are made on site, using Italian almond paste for the cake, and poured Guittard chocolate (not fondant-- aha! the secret!) for the smooth, sweet covering. All of the cakes are run through a machine for their two coats of chocolate, but they are expertly hand decorated, as you can see from the two charming ladies who are already working on Christmas themes.

Right, right. They're disarmingly precious and look stunning on a tea stand, but are they any good??

Ahhhh... yes, yes, the Strawberry one... quite nice... Yes, the Apple one, yes, indeedy, quite good. The Hazelnut... um.. let me take a bite. Oh yes, yes. And that's one...? Orange? Yes, yes, by Jove, quite good. And the Lemon? Mmmm-ph, mmmm-hmmmm... And ugggmmmph...? Pass the mmmmmph....with the ..... mmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmm.

Mmmmmmm...

Note: Management would like to indicate that insufficient testing was conducted. One sample of each flavor results in an OBVIOUSLY inconclusive study. Testing must begin again. From the beginning. With more samples. Now.

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Divine Delights
1250 Holm Rd
Petaluma, CA 94954
Phone: 800-443-2836

Back to our itinerary.

Sonoma Vacation: the List

Sonoma Vacation

places we visited and stuff we did!

And we're off! My Omnivore headed out last weekend (to beat the Labor Day crush) in search of a bout of much-needed R & R along with foraging for wine and food. And wine. And food.

We visited so many places that if I put them all in one post it would be probably be as many miles long as we drove last weekend, so I've parsed our itinerary out into individual posts. Looking at the list, I'm actually surprised at how many places we hit. I guess this will give us a head start on the Slow Food Nation next weekend and make it easier to get through all those taste pavilions at Fort Mason!

I post updates to this page as I finish blogging! Whew!

An alphabetical list of all the places we went with links to the individual posts. Take that Slow Food.

• Amphora Family Wines, Dry Creek


• Applewood Inn, Guerneville


• Balletto Vineyards, Santa Rosa


• BeeKind Honey, Sebastopol


• Bistro des Copains, Occidental


• Bud's Custom Meats, Penngrove


• The Cheese Shop, Healdsburg


• Divine Delights, Petaluma


• Dutton Goldfield Winery, Santa Rosa


• Farmer Dave's, Penngrove


• Gary Farrell Wines, Healdsburg


• Goat Rock Beach, Jenner


• Hagemann Ranch Trout Farm, Bodega Bay


• Hop Kiln Winery, Healdsburg


• Farmers Market, Healdsburg


• Matos Family Cheese, Santa Rosa


• Oakville Grocery, Healdsburg


• Preston Vineyards, Healdsburg


• Pug's Leap Cheeses, Dry Creek


• Taco Truck, Guerneville


• Unti Vineyards, Dry Creek


• Wild Flour Bread, Freestone