Location: Guerneville Area
Attractions: Simi Winery, Fancis Ford Coppola Winery, David Coffaro, Trattore Farms Winery, Bear Republic Brewery

We woke Wednesday to a wet dreary day, but that didn’t get us down one bit. We ate breakfast, got cleaned up, and headed to our first winery tour at Simi Winery. We tasted a bit of wine at the gift shop while we waited for our tour to start. Once the guide was ready, we grabbed our umbrellas, headed across the bridge and over to the warehouse. There was something a bit romantic about sharing an umbrella in the heavy drizzle while walking around the well kept winery grounds. There were some amazing roses planted for every president of The United States accept for Hoover. Hoover didn’t get a bush because there was a bit of a grudge against him for not lifting the prohibition of alcohol while in office.

The warehouse was also beautiful with it’s stone walls and wood floors. Our tour guide was a kind lady with a dry sense of humor that really made the tour enjoyable. Once done with the tour, we met up in a conference-style room for some tasting.

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Our next stop was the Francis Ford Coppola Winery. Because we had a reservation with our friend that was a vendor of their wine, we received quite the red carpet treatment. They sat us down at a table and told us the history of the winery and taught us about each wine we tasted. Maybe you already know this, but I didn’t; Coppola is a famous director that was involved with all of the Godfather movies along with many other box office hits. The winery had movie memorabilia all over and even had Mr. Coppola’s Oscars and other awards on display. The inside of the winery was very nice and we would have loved to check out the outside a bit more, but the heavy rain kept us from exploring the outdoors.

Jill’s aunt and uncle used to live in wine country and had lived right beside a winery that they still buy wine from to this day. That was the next winery on our list. Along the way we stopped a Dry Creek General Store for some lunch. We had some really good sandwiches, some salad and a cookie. We did a bit of shopping, in the store, but the over-priced merchandise kept us from purchasing anything.

Once we got to David Coffaro’s Winery, we sampled a bunch more wine and talked with the nice guy serving us for quite some time. Jill wanted to see her aunt and uncle’s old house, so we may have trespassed a little by driving up their steep, gated driveway (the gate was open) to take a couple of pictures of the house for a souvenir to bring home. We stopped at Trattore Farms for a little more wine (which I skipped on since I was driving).

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On our trek back to our rental house, we grabbed a beer from Bear Republic Brewing. We weren’t overly impressed with either the restaurant or the beer here. I also couldn’t help but notice that their art work and marketing seemed very unprofessional and not very polished. We had Russian River beer the next day and that was, hands down, a lot better beer than Bear Republic.

When we got back to our rental house, we had some Philly Cheese Steak style sandwiches and took a soak in the hot tub. Then we rested up for another adventure in the morning.