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Destination · Bodega Bay

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Andrew Truong will not serve fish and chips in a fishing town, and people have walked out over it.

Solid · Sonoma

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Morgan Twain-Peterson pours a field blend off 35 acres planted in 1888, in a house built two years before that. Nearly thirty varieties share the vineyard, and he can tell you why.

Solid · Healdsburg

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The seated tasting runs $35: five single-vineyard wines, about seventy-five minutes, six people at most.

Solid · Santa Rosa

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Fried chicken coated in arborio rice flour, on smashed potatoes loaded with butter and cream, under a caramelized pancetta glaze.

Solid · Santa Rosa

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Asparagus and maitake go into a tempura batter that comes out champagne-colored and stays crisp, with a soy, ginger, daikon and sake sauce beside it.

Listed · Santa Rosa

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Mark Stark cooks over a custom grill that weighs 1,600 pounds and runs near 800 degrees, with a V-channel cut into it to catch the fat and baste the meat back.

Listed · Sonoma

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Lloyd Davis pours five wines seated, one on one, with a bite of food against every glass.

Listed · Healdsburg

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The vineyards are on the far Sonoma Coast, at Camp Meeting Ridge and Sea View Ridge, and the tasting is in a Healdsburg garden an hour inland. Three wines and a snack board is $75.

Listed · Sonoma

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Six generations of one family have farmed Rhinefarm since 1858, and the vineyard now carries Regenerative Organic Certification.

Listed · Valley Ford

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The burger carries Sonoma Mountain grass-fed beef and Estero Gold from the creamery across the street. Highway 1 at Valley Ford, with the hotel upstairs.

Listed · Petaluma

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Fortified wine and nothing but, made in Petaluma since 1994. Bill and Caryn Reading handed it to Heringer Estates in 2025, so the sign now reads Portworks.

Listed · Santa Rosa

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The beef is dry-aged in house, and the house burger is ground from the same aged meat as the steaks. An 1892 building in downtown Santa Rosa, open since 2008.

Listed · Healdsburg

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Dry Creek Valley has a Mediterranean climate, so George and Mick Unti planted Italian and Rhone varieties into it. Sixty acres, organic, all theirs.

Listed · Santa Rosa

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Mark and Terri Stark were running small plates out of an 1886 roadhouse from 2002.

Listed · Santa Rosa

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Nikolai Stez does not own a pump. The wine moves by hand, the caps go down by hand, the press is a basket, and the yeast is cultured, which he says out loud.

Listed · Healdsburg

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Four generations on West Dry Creek Road since the early 1900s, still family owned, still small on purpose. Twenty-five dollars, by appointment, six people maximum, booked by telephone.

Listed · Sonoma

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Small-lot Rhone and Burgundian wines off Carneros, on an estate the winery runs on wind and solar. There is also a pickleball court above the Picpoul.

Listed · Healdsburg

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Over seventy percent of the fruit comes off Bella's own century-old vines, and you taste it underground in the caves. Thirty-five dollars seated, capped at eight people.

Listed · Healdsburg

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Fractured sandstone on the West Sonoma Coast against shale in the Santa Cruz Mountains, tasted side by side in a working winery in downtown Healdsburg.

Listed · Healdsburg

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The first vines went in on Limerick Lane in 1972 and still make the Reserve Petite Sirah and Reserve Syrah. Sixty dollars gets you the Pinot straight out of the barrel.

Listed · Santa Rosa

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Roasted zucchini flowers for $18 next to a wood oven, in a Santa Rosa complex that also holds a brewery and a set of micro-wineries.

Listed · Healdsburg

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Five single-vineyard wines for $65, or four for $25, on a terrace over the Russian River Valley. Walk-ins get a seat if there is one.

Listed · Sonoma

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Dry-farmed Biodynamic vineyards on volcanic ground in the Moon Mountain District, and a chef cooking five courses against them for $225. Every tasting caps at six people.

Listed · Sonoma

booking essentialthe room’s own account

Bordeaux and Rhone varieties off Moon Mountain, and Repris sells most of them to members, or to whoever is standing on the property that day. Appointment only.

Listed · Bodega Bay

walk-inthe room’s own account

Hog Island Sweetwaters, raw or wood-fired with garlic butter, and a smoked clam pizza for $25 off the same oven. You sit on the water and nobody takes a booking.