Sonoma & Napa Valleys

This was the day to immerse ourselves in the richness of the famed California wine country. Appropriately, we began with an early morning visit to the town of Sonoma where the first wine grapes were introduced by Spanish missionaries in the early 1800s. The padres planted vineyards to produce sacramental wine needed for celebration of the Holy Eucharist in their arduous campaign to transform the Native Californians into productive members of the Spanish empire. San Francisco Solano de Sonoma, established in 1823, was the final and northernmost of the chain of coastal missions which had begun at the tip of Baja California more than a century earlier. After touring the mission chapel, decorated with colorful designs of local pigments on white-plastered adobe walls, we discovered a fruit-laden pomegranate tree growing near the façade. This reminded us of the long struggle against the Moors in Spain which had culminated in the reconquista of Granada in 1492, the same year that Columbus had “sailed the ocean blue” to begin the process of the conquista of the Western Hemisphere. As William Lopez-Forment explained, “pomegranate” is the English equivalent of the Spanish word “Granada.” Thus it was that this lone pomegranate tree in Sonoma took on an added significance, recalling for us a process of expansion both within the Iberian Peninsula and throughout the Americas.

Following our visit to Sonoma we motored to the William Hill Estate Winery for a delicious meal prepared before our very eyes by Lindblad Expeditions Executive Chef Gary Jenanyan and accompanied by an array of local wines from the Napa Valley. In the afternoon, we divided our time between the Paraduxx Winery—poised to harvest its Cabernet grapes any day now—and a collection of shops in an old winery founded by a German immigrant in 1870.