dry creek valley with wine country journeys.

i am so behind in posting more about our sonoma trip. work has just been super busy, and then i'm too tired when i get home.

 anyway, on sunday of our trip up to sonoma, we drove up to healdsburg where jerry of wine country journeys picked us up for a wine tour. we picked them because they do tours with a maximum of eight people, and we wanted something small. we were exactly eight that day, and it ended up being a gorgeous day.

jerry took us around dry creek valley to small producers (2000 cases or less, if i remember correctly). the valley is known mostly for it zinfandels, but there was a fair amount of syrahs as well. we went to four wineries: montemaggiore, kachina, talty (pictured above) and amista. at the first, we did a tasting and tour with lise, the winemaker. at kachina, we sat in their tasting room and met greg, half of the winemaking pair there. james loved the port they made and got himself a bottle.

lise of montemaggiore.

at montemaggiore; photo from wine country journeys.

the tasting/barrel room at kachina.

tasting at kachina; photo from wine country journeys.

at talty, we met talty himself (though the business is named after his father). i bought a bottle of their 2007 estate zinfandel. then, after grabbing lunch at a local market, we headed over to amista to picnic and do our final tasting. jerry even brought us out a whole bottle of their sparkling rose before we actually started tasting and they printed out personalized welcome signs for each party within the group.

michael talty, and some patrons.

outside amista.

inside amista.

the tour itself was great. jerry was very nice and knowledgeable; and we love that they picked us up and dropped us off at healdsburg, since we had dinner reservations for later that night and didn't want to have to do the one hour drive from sonoma after wine tasting all day.