The original plan was we were only going to go to one vineyard on our way out of town, just to be able to say we had tasted in Sonoma as well as Napa. But as road trips go, things never go quite as planned. We did our scheduled tasting at Nicholson Ranch vineyard. It was a typical movie-set worthy estate on the hill overlooking their vines. They specialized in delightful Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs and had a chatty wine-tender. We were the only ones in the tasting room for most of the time, so we got to pick the music for the place and hear about wine-tender life. 
Toward the end of the tasting I asked the guy, who was making the best champagne in the region? I figured I would store this info in my Evernote for a future trip (Hopefully an AST long-weekend!). The whole Sonoma/Napa region are a little spread out and on slow moving country roads so I assumed it was going to be far away and we would continue on with out drive right after this taste. To my delight it was the gorgeous chateau Domaine Carneros we had passed just 2 miles prior, that we had hemmed and hawed over whether to stop at, only to instantly regret it as we decided to drive on. We had pressed on because we wanted to "officially" be in Sonoma. When he mentioned that place, we were all on board to throw out the drive plans and go get some spontaneous sparkles. 
Once we got there we found out that they were about to do a proper wine tour of their whole on-site facilities with a combo of education interspersed between tastings. This is what I had really wanted to get to do while I was out there, something more than just a sample or two in the course of 30 min, but a real semi-in-depth look into what it was that they did out there. We booked ourselves and took the 30 min prior to do cheese tasting on their expansive tiered outdoor patio. 
Once the tour started we met the other people who were there visiting as well. We thought we had the far away award won, since Niina was from Finland, but there was another scandinavian kid from Sweden who was also on the tour. He had just gotten back from a week at Burning Man and was "recovering" by going wine tasting (what a way to recover, huh?).
The tour was super informative as the guide we over all their fields, how the weather between the two regions was perfect for champagne and sparkling types, how the sun facing a certain direction was better for certain grapes and in how they grew and ripened. Next we went on to the pressing, processing, aging, bottling, and then final fancy shiny foil capping. The cool part about the tour was that we got not only the local story of that vineyard, but also of how historically they had made champagne to how things had changed. And of course different wines were served through out the passing of knowledge. Since we were the final tour of the day we got to taste all the ones they had open and not just the usual 6 that they generally serve on the tour. It was excellent. Triina and I both loved the Rose, I also loved two other wines, the Blanc de Noir and the Late Disgorged vintage brut (both of which are not part of the usual package).
We made our purchases and it was agreed we definitely needed something to eat. At this point we had made friends with the Swedish kid and invited him to hang with us at our car as we made sandwiches before we headed back for the coast (we definitely got hungry since we had only had pre-tour cheese for lunch). It was now late afternoon we had yet to make it back to Highway 1. The new plan was to setup camp at an ocean view state park before it got dark and to hopefully catch the sunset on the beach.
An hour later we had made it out of wine country and back to the rolling seaside landscape and got a campsite right on the beach in Sonoma Coast State Park. We got the tent up and caught the last glimpses of the sun sliver just as it slipped beneath the waves. We took some playful shots in front of the haystacks.
Back at camp, we made a delicious fresh-made pasta meal of zucchini, heirloom tomatoes, and basil in a tomato sauce. A Caprese salad with local mozzarella, a french baguette, and napa valley olive oil to dip in. Triina strummed the Uke as I cooked and Niina stirred. A bottle of red was opened and we enjoyed a feast of the valley's spoils. Spontaneous days are sometimes the best.
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