D e s e r t E x p o s u r e 
March 2005
D e s e r t E x p o s u r e |
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GETAWAYS
By David A. Fryxell This story will make you envious. That's not my intent, of course, but it's simply inevitable. If you derive pleasure from fine food, wine and luxury, by article's end you will be seething with envy that this all happened to me and not to you. Sorry. If you're a Tibetan monk who's foresworn all earthly pleasures, on a brief sabbatical in southwest New Mexico where you just happened to pick this up for some light reading on your next bed-of-nails session, you're probably OK. No guarantees, though—heavy-duty earthly temptations lie just ahead.
The thing is, occasionally writers get to have experiences that regular mortals don't—although in this case you can follow in my Dionysian footsteps, which is the whole point. (As you'll see, however, you may want to take it a bit easier than I did, skipping one or two Bacchanals.) Mostly the writer's life involves such exciting activities as putting semicolons in their place, or trying to wrest a colorful quote out of the assistant director of sewage maintenance. But every now and then we get to take, well, those of you outside the writerly ranks might call them junkets. We writers know that they are research trips. In early December of last year, such a "research trip" found me and my photographer-wife hurtling across the Golden Gate Bridge toward California's Sonoma County, a gently rolling paradise where every intersection is marked with signs pointing to a dozen or so vineyards. Grapes grow everywhere here. People have grapevines in their front yards. It wouldn't have surprised me, after a couple of days winding through vineyard upon vineyard, to learn that Sonoma County folks have grapes growing in their bedrooms and vines climbing their refrigerator doors. Our immediate destination was an oasis among the vineyards in the town of Healdsburg—virtually across the street from Seghesio vineyards, within a grape's throw of a half-dozen other wineries—called Honor Mansion. This stately home, built in 1883, was named for Dr. Herbert Honor, whose family owned the house for more than a century. In 1994, Steve and Cathi Fowler bought the house, which had fallen into dark and dusty disrepair, and began a top-to-bottom renovation into a AAA Four-Diamond "resort inn." Calling the Honor Mansion a "bed and breakfast" doesn't do it justice, though there certainly are beds—soft, multi-pillowed beds, many of them antiques—and they do serve breakfast, which we'll get to in a minute. Behind the main house, hidden away from Healdsburg's hustle and bustle, are a swimming pool, tennis courts, walking path and rose-lined lawn—amenities that justify the inn's "resort" designation. There's also a small pond, where koi swim and cluster, mouths pulsing with demands to be fed, when anyone strolls past. Inside, the Honor Mansion manages to feel luxurious in an Old World sort of way, without crossing the line into the Victorian kitschiness that afflicts so many B&Bs. On arrival, we were led on a tour of the five rooms in the main house, the adjacent "Squire's Cottage" (where we'd be staying) and the six suites in small buildings out back, including the two-level Tower Suite created from the original 1883 water tower. The rooms in the main mansion have the most conventional B&B feel, each with a name and a theme that stops thankfully short of icky: Angel Oak Room (with hand-painted cherubs on the walls), Camelia, Dogwood, Magnolia (overlooking a 100-year-old tree) and Rose. Each has a mix of extras, such as claw-foot tubs, private porches, fireplaces and sitting areas. All the suites have fireplaces, wet bars, private decks and outdoor spa tubs (which provoked much racy chatter among the junketeering travel writers). Our cottage, across the koi pond from the main house, lacked a spa but featured a king-size canopy bed, gas fireplace, wet bar with fridge, claw-foot soaking tub, stereo, and deck with a view of the pond. We weren't complaining. A decanter of sherry awaited our arrival—a taste of things to come. We unpacked and assembled in the breakfast room for late-afternoon hors d'oeuvres and wine. Now, let's make it clear that we are both wine lovers. At home, we have wine with almost every dinner. But the pouring on this trip would ultimately tax even our imbibing abilities. By day three, we were skipping the afternoon wine and hors d'oeuvres—more wine, are you kidding? Back at the Honor Mansion, we collapsed into the downy comfort of our canopy bed, the light from the fireplace flickering on the walls and our taste buds still pleasantly tingling, and thought, "They'll have to escort us out of here at gunpoint to get us to leave." I confess, I'm not used to breakfast being a multi-course meal, unless the first course is OJ, the second coffee and the third Cheerios. Our breakfasts at the Honor Mansion, however, came in delicious waves, any one of which would have been plenty for a normal morning meal. Pears poached in espresso were followed by a southwestern-spiced souffle, or maybe by Grand Marnier French toast—I forget. Often the sweet dishes were topped by a delightful glob of ice cream, another thing I don't ordinarily associate with breakfast. Oh, and the orange juice was fresh-squeezed. The idea of the big breakfasts, I soon learned, was to fortify us for the, er, fortification to come. A full stomach helps fend off the effects of wine tasting. Because, yes, we started wine tasting by 10 in the morning. When in California, do as the Californians do! Though Honor Mansion makes a perfect jumping-off point for any of Sonoma's better-known wineries, our tour concentrated on smaller, boutique wineries whose products are generally not found in stores. Most sell strictly on-site, through their own mail-order wine clubs and, increasingly, over the Internet. During our tour, the US Supreme Court was hearing arguments on a case to liberalize the interstate shipping of wine, which many states prohibit with a Byzantine maze of laws. The boutique vintners we met practically salivated over the prospect of gaining entry to such prime markets as New York and Florida. They smiled and nodded when we said we were from New Mexico, one of the enlightened states that allows direct shipment of wine. Even though the wineries were on the scale of a few thousand cases annually rather than the millions pumped out by the Gallos or Fetzers of the wine world, their facilities were far from modest. At our first stop, Passalacqua, we sampled the wares in a handsome, wood-paneled tasting room and enjoyed the view from the deck and picnic area, overlooking the misty vineyards belonging to neighboring giant Dry Creek. Winemaker Margaret Davenport, who formerly practiced her craft for the far larger Clos du Bois, explained that falling grape prices in the recent recession caused a lot of Sonoma growers to decide to open their own boutique wineries, rather than sell to the big guys at depressed prices. She took us across to the barn-like storage area where oak barrels of Passalacqua's 2003 Cabernet bide their time until bottling this summer. But we didn't have to wait: Davenport used a long glass gizmo, sort of like a giant syringe, called a "wine thief," to steal a taste for us. Just what we needed—more wine. It was not quite 11 a.m., and we still had Stryker, a winery in a stunning modern building that belies its boutique status, to sample before lunch. We were already getting jaded by lunch at the Jim Town General Store, an eclectic roadside grocery, wine shop (of course) and souvenir stand presided over by cookbook author Carrie Brown. We turned down the proffered wine—I needed a cup of coffee by this point—but couldn't resist the sandwiches made with Brown's signature spreads, such as fig and olive with blue cheese.
Some writers pooped out by this point and went shopping in downtown Healdsburg, but a handful of us gamely pressed on to the next winery, Bella. We were glad we did: Though Bella is, again, a smallish operation case-wise, its setting was anything but modest. Owner Scott Adams took us on a tour of the caves he had cut into the hillside—carefully preserving the 90-year-old vines on top—over a 22-month span of dynamiting and digging into solid rock. Inside, it's a constant 58-61 degrees, perfect for storing wine in oak barrels. The tour ended at a banquet room tucked in the manmade caves, where we ate appetizers (it had been at least 90 minutes since lunch!) and sampled zinfandels from Bella's "library." That night, in the canopied comfort of the Honor Mansion, I dreamed of pigs whose tails had been replaced by sausages, their corkscrew-like originals being used to open endless bottles of zinfandel. It was after 1 p.m. by the time we left Mauritson, and the late lunch would pretty much do us in. At Costeaux French Bakery in Healdsburg, we ordered sandwiches and the renowned French onion soup with an eye on our expanding waistlines. So far so good. But then Will Seppi, whose family has owned the 82-year-old bakery since 1981, had to take us on a tour of the baking operation (home, among other things, of the Guinness-record world's largest pumpkin pie). And of course we had to sample the signature dessert, caramel macadamia nut tart, and a platter of other goodies. As a veteran journalist, I know I should be able to handle this sort of action. But I confess, by the time we got to our last winery, Seghesio, I was beginning to feel the effects of two wine tastings followed by caramel macadamia nut tart. My notebook, where each previous winery's experiences take up three or four tightly scribbled pages, has less than half a page on Seghesio, most of which is just an illegible, caramel-macadamia-slurred scrawl. I think Seghesio has a "huge curved bar with a view of the barrels," but that could just as well say, "high carved barn with a view of the bananas." My apologies to the fine folks at Seghesio, whom I'm pretty sure gave us another half-dozen wines to taste. I have no notes at all—it's all just a caloric haze—from our dinner that night at Monti's Rotisserie & Bar in Santa Rosa. I'm pretty sure, though, that it was a lively, modern place and that we had a nice chat with Terri Stark, whose husband Mark is the chef. I definitely had the seafood stew, rich with clams and shrimp plus chunks of chorizo. And I'm willing to bet there was more wine, though some weaklings in the group had switched to soft drinks or cocktails (a Monti's specialty) by this point. But we've pretty much recuperated now and I'm back down to my fighting weight. We've got one last bottle of wine we brought home from Passalacqua that I'm saving for a special occasion. Then, well, our wine country safari will be just a fond, fattening memory. What I'm hinting at here is, if you know anybody who can send us on a "research trip" to, say, the wineries of France, send them our way, OK? It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.
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