Hop Kiln Winery

Today OilMan and I had a play date. When the local market didn't have the little pumpkins I wanted for my "harvest" decor at Thanksgiving (nobody ever comes here for Halloween), OilMan came up with a plan…lunch at the Portuguese restaurant in Healdsburg with stops at Geyser Peak Winery for our house wine, or, as a friend puts it, "school night" wine, a drive down Westside Road to Forestville, and Andy's Produce in Sebastopol.

It's hard to miss the Hop Kiln Winery on Westside Road, because of its unique building. California's North Coast was once the major hop growing area in the west. Built in 1905 by Italian stonemasons, it consists of three kilns for drying the hops, a wooden cooler and a two story press for baling the hops for shipment

It is interesting that although there are now dozens of craft breweries in Sonoma County, hops are no longer grown here, just as prunes are no longer grown in the Alexander Valley. .Now, everywhere one looks, one sees vineyards, and the old hop kilns, beautifully restored, are an interesting architectural feature of a wine tasting room.

The vineyards are beautiful in the autumn. The crush is almost over, and the number of grape trucks on the roads has dwindled. The leaves on the vines change colors from green to yellow or red, depending on the variety, the skies are still blue, and the trees are showing their autumn colors as well. Here is a picture of pinot noir vines at Geyser Peak.Soon, the vines and trees will lose their leaves , the vines will be pruned, and the fields will grow quiet and dormant for the winter.

Perhaps we will go into hibernation for the winter, also, but today, our play date is not over. We came home to an invitation to meet friends at a French restaurant for dinner. After a generous Caldeirada (Portuguese fisherman's stew), I'm not sure how I'm going to make room for a French meal. I doubt if "a bowl of cereal" will be on the menu….