San Francisco Days

We spent last weekend doing actual work - no, really - it’s true! Our very good friend Carolyn has invited us multiple times to visit her vineyard up near Jenner (about 2.5 hours north of SF toward the ocean). Her former luxurious home, dubbed “Chateau Single-Wide” has been newly replaced with a house she’d designed herself. We were anxious to see the place, help her prune the vines, grout the kitchen counters and tile the bathroom vanity. She told us to rent a 4-wheel drive to get there, but we were a bit too cavalier and went with whatever Budge-It had. Nearly a mistake. YIKES!! This place is out there - and I mean WAY out there. Picture this - 4-lane highway to 2-lane highway to 2-lane country road to 1-lane, dirt/gravel, winding, cliff-hanging, stomach-churning road (all 12 miles of it). Wait, we’re not done, then 2 more miles on a rutted, tired old dirt ranch road. Imagine our surprise when we came to the end of the road and saw a beautiful new house with a wide veranda and detached guest house. All this perched on a ridge line high over a canyon that leads out toward the ocean and contained her vineyards. Pulled into the driveway (another mistake - see below) and got a characteristically warm greeting from Carolyn.

Skip ahead after lunch and three bottles of amazing wine (she’s a collector), we didn’t get much, well actually no, pruning done. She had a crew of 13 guys there who knew what they were doing, so what were we supposed to do? Right, drink! Had a fantastic dinner, more wine and talked the night away. Reluctantly we had to leave this remote little chunk of paradise the next evening after the grouting and tiling was done. More accurately, I should say “tried” to leave. Turns out we couldn’t get out of the driveway without 4-wheel drive. Carolyn, ever resourceful by virtue of living out there, suggested I back all the way up to the bottom of the vineyard, floor the car and jet up the hill at a high enough speed to blast through the gravel and up onto the road. Oh, and please avoid the gate posts in the narrow opening at the top of the drive. OK. I won’t give further detail, fearing reprisals from the Budge-It Rental Car Company, but we made it out with no obvious damage to the car. Negotiating the roads back in the rain and absolute pitch blackness was fun. NOT!! Needless to say, we made it back OK and can’t wait to go up there again. There’s the great room floor to tile yet.

If you’re curious about where Carolyn’s grapes go, visit this link (Tin Barn Vineyards) and read about the delicious 2002 Tin Barn Syrah Sonoma Coast, Coryelle Fields Vineyard. If want to see a picture of her , check out this link.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 5th, 2005 at 2:21 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.