When I first moved to Southern California, I was pretty excited to live just a short drive away from the San Diego area's wine region, known as Temecula Valley. I would bring visiting family and friends there to go gallivanting around the area's wineries tasting wine, noshing on snacks, listening to live music, and enjoying the beautiful wine country scenery. This year, Temecula celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first commercial vineyard. These days, over 40 wineries exist in the small region. It's just a drive away for residents of San Diego, Los Angeles, and Orange County, so it's a popular spot for city dwellers to have a weekend country getaway. In fact, my husband and I visited Temecula in August for my birthday, and we've spent weekends there for our anniversary and ... [Read More]
California wine country
5 Awesome Wineries to Visit in Paso Robles, California
“Paso Robles is the wild west of California wine.” A couple of weekends ago, my hubby and I went on a long weekend getaway up to Paso Robles to relax, drink some wine, eat some good food, hike a bit, and enjoy central California wine country. I find that it's hard for people who haven't spent a lot of time around California to understand how massive it is. I remember when I moved up to the San Jose area from San Diego (and later, vice versa), family members of mine thought it would be a short drive away and were shocked when I told them it was almost a 10-hour drive! But that's one of the many things that I think is so cool about California. We've gone on countless road trips while never even leaving the state. For a Jersey girl, that was a pretty wild phenomena that took ... [Read More]
California Wine Country ’16 Trip: My Favorite Sonoma & Napa Wineries
Hi friends! How was your weekend? I flew to Las Vegas yesterday for a work trip and will be in Sin City for the week. But today, I want to back it up a few weeks to my vacation road trip up to Sonoma wine country. I already recapped my favorite eats and reviewed my Sonoma hotel, so today I’m chatting about my favorite wineries of the trip! Whenever I visit a wine region, I like to do my research to find wineries that I want to visit beforehand. During this trip we did a nice combo of tasting at smaller establishments and larger productions. It’s always kind of fun to compare and contrast, and I tend to gravitate towards smaller wineries. While I love wine and obviously appreciate the wine itself, what I also love is meeting the people behind the wine. I’m the same way with food: ... [Read More]
Inn at Sonoma Review + My Favorite California Road Trip ’16 Eats
As a California transplant, I'm always in awe of how vast and beautiful this state is. Having been born and raised in New Jersey where you can drive from the top of the state to the bottom in a couple of hours, it's amazing to me how massive California is. There are so many awesome places to visit and explore, and we've gone on many weekend getaways and vacations without even leaving state lines. This was the case two weeks ago, when my hubby and I set off on a California road trip vacation. We traveled from San Diego up to San Francisco to meet my parents, who flew in from the East coast, stayed there a night, then headed into wine country for the remainder of the week. We elected to stay in Sonoma at the Inn at Sonoma, which I was excited about because while I had wine ... [Read More]