I’ve been on the hunt for the best fall foliage in California FOR YEARS and I’m not going to lie, I was pretty butt-hurt that it’s just been hiding up in Healdsburg this entire time!!!
Healdsburg is my favorite wine region in Northern California and the stomping grounds of our wine weekend girls trips we do a few times a year. I just got back from our fall trip (writing this post in bed!) and we somehow accidentally timed to for peak Sonoma County fall foliage season!
I mean, just look at how pretty the vines were!!!!
My friends Amy and Caitlin are part of the Foley Sonoma wine club family, which means they (and a few guests) can get free wine tastings at all the wineries in the family. Aka, we always go to these wineries because we can do wine tastings for free. They’re also like, really really pretty especailly in the fall.
I’ve seen the vines orange before during other fall seasons but I’ve always seemed to miss peak season before this year. Literally all weekend I was walking around being like “OMG LOOK AT HOW PRETTY THE EARTH IS” and “I WISH I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS TO BUY A HOUSE UP HERE!”
The weather was perfect so we always sat outside to our tasting. Amy (a true Ravenclaw) thought we might get hungry and brought purse cheese. Like, a whole bag of assorted cheese from Trader Joes and crackers, which was LIFE. Never go to wine country without purse cheese, ladies!!
We started at Foley Sonoma and then went to Lancaster where the vines were POPPIN with orange! I’ve visited this one a few times but it’s always been raining out before, so this was the first time we were able to walk around the vineyards and sit outside. Beautiful! I love fall trips.
After wine tasting, we visited a few tasting rooms in downtown Healdsburg and had an Italian dinner at Campo Fina, probably my new favorite Healdsburg restaurant. It looks small on the outside but there’s a HUGE outdoor patio out back with strings lights and a bocce court. Plus, the food is fantastic and they even have gluten-free options.
I’m not going to lie, it was around dinner that I started to sorta forget some moments of the evening. Ok, I blacked out a little bit. As you can tell from some of the photos below, I was having a great night!! The next morning in the hotel, the girls were telling me all these things I did that night (like eating a bunch of cookies that I have no recollection of doing!) Nothing embarrassing or bad, thankfully.
Then this morning, we dragged our sleepy (and in my case, hungover) butts to the Parish Cafe, which is my favorite brunch spot in the entire city. It’s a New Orleans style restaurant with amazing beignets. I always order the shrimp and grits with a poached egg YUMM!
Our last stop of the wine weekend was at Roth, which is my favorite winery we always go to. It was a lot of outdoor seating and it’s dog-friendly, so I got to pet two goldens (Gunner and Georgia!) while sipping on fantastic pinot in the sunshine. It was really hard to leave, but we finally managed to pull ourselves off that couch and drive back home to San Francisco. Until next time, wine country…
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