Wine Country And Horses

Today’s rain should clear up and bring sunny skies and warmer temperatures for the second weekend of this year’s Barrel Tasting Event sponsored by WineRoad, a group of northern Sonoma County wineries from the Russian River, Dry Creek and Alexander Valley appellations. If you are like me, perhaps your first exposure to the Sonoma wine country and our gorgeous back roads came from visiting friends during tasting events such as this. After many repeat visits, you begin to think, after a long weekend of wine tasting, gee, if I lived here, I’d be home by now. Last year, hundreds of home buyers in Sonoma County shared that sentiment, moving here from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, New York, Japan and Europe. I love to work with out of town buyers seeking the wine country lifestyle, feel free to contact me if you would like to explore the possibilities, and cheers!

Meanwhile–this video does a good job of capturing the flavor of barrel tasting weekend, and has scenes shot last week at Joseph Swan, Bella, Stryker and other Sonoma County wineries.

Yesterday the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau released version 1.0 of an iPhone app promoting local wineries, restaurants, hotels, spas and more, from your iPhone. It is sort of like a private label version of Yelp dedicated to all things Sonoma County. It has a handy wine finder for example which lets you select a varietal–let’s say Carignane–and then view all the wineries within a certain radius of your location that offer that type of wine.

I already use my iPhone in so many ways when with clients and this tool will be a welcome addition.
So far I have used the iPhone out on location

to show maps, routes, and traffic
to take pictures and videos
to show pictures and videos from listings
to determine the orientation of a home with the compass
to send and search emails and review contract documents
to locate and make lunch reservations
to view the multiple listings,
to make blog posts or Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook updates
do calculations and more.

Now I can quickly point out what wineries are in range of a given weekend home, point out the latest upcoming tasting event or festival, recommend hotels, etc. I am not a golfer but this app finds all the golf courses within radius of a give property. It looks pretty good for a start and takes advantage of the iPhone environment. Check it out!

Visit Sonoma? There's an App for that!

I was on the hunt for something else when I stumbled across this local video of some of my friends and neighbors talking about why they love Sonoma County, and it’s not just all about the wine! I thought you might enjoy! Bon appetit!

The latest Bite Club post by Heather Irwin

Then you should check out Heather Irwin’s BiteClub which is a great source of the latest foodie restaurant news in Sonoma County. You will find the latest restaurant gossip, new openings, and guides to the best places to get a bowl of soup or a chile relleno. She is in the midst of running the second annual best cookie recipe contest. A community of commenters and Twitterers offers their own takes and tips. “Find it Fast” helps you quickly search by cuisine and location.

I also use Yelp quite a bit, especially on my iPhone where I can find nearby restaurants based on my location. Posts are filed by nearby Yelpers in the community. Very handy.

And then there is Open Table. I used to use this just to make reservations on my laptop, but it is far more powerful on the iPhone, since it takes advantage of the GPS to find me something near by that is open, and then automatically sends an email from the iPhone to confirm my reservation. It is a completely simple and fast. I use Open Table way more often now since I downloaded the iPhone app. There are only 98 “wine country” restaurants on Open Table, so it is a limited list of the better restaurants rather than the more comprehensive listing on Heather’s site or on Yelp.