• sweepstakes & deals
• Join F&W’s Wine Club!

F&W’s guide to the best of Sonoma—fantastic food, great wine and perfect places to stay (also, spectacular recipes from local chefs at right). Plus: find your way around with our useful map of the destinations listed here.

Places to Eat

Barndiva

Barndiva sources its ingredients from small, sustainable Sonoma County purveyors, muddles cocktails with herbs grown on owner Jil Hales’s farm in Mendocino and produces its own Cabernet.
231 Center St., Healdsburg

El Dorado Kitchen

A sophisticated bistro serving straightforward seasonal dishes. On warm evenings, the patio is a lovely place to try one of the inventive cocktails, such as the refreshing gin-based Cucumber and Thyme.
405 1st St W., Sonoma

Cyrus

Opulence is never out of style at Cyrus, Sonoma’s destination for foie gras, caviar and $1,700-a-pound white Alba truffle. Chef and co-owner Douglas Keane turns out spectacular dishes but avoids the stuffiness that often follows lavishness.
29 North St., Healdsburg

Hana Japanese Restaurant

Located in a strip mall, this spot’s surroundings don’t betray its offerings: superlative traditional sushi—including superfresh toro—and avant-garde rolls like the Fat Boy, made with tuna, unagi tempura and foie gras.
101 Golf Course Dr., Rohnert Park

Singletree Café

“My favorite place in Healdsburg for breakfast,” says Douglas Keane, chef at Cyrus. “It’s almost like a truck stop, but they make their own biscuits and gravy and nice, fluffy omelets (I hate overcooked omelets). In the summer they have heirloom tomatoes.”
165 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg

Places to Stay

Beautiful Places

This luxury-vacation outfit can set you up in some of wine country’s finest lodgings—like the Sullivan-Birney Ranch in Glen Ellen, set on 25 acres with a vineyard in the front yard, a pool in the back and spectacular 360-degree views of the surrounding countryside.
539 1st St. W., Sonoma

Duchamp Hotel

A luxurious, post-modern retreat. Breakfast pastries are from the fabulous Downtown Bakery and Creamery and the pool’s pretty cool too.
421 Foss St., Healdsburg

Hotel Healdsburg

The other fashionable hotel option in Healdsburg: Think W meets California chic. Home to Dry Creek Kitchen.
25 Matheson St., Healdsburg

Plus

Artists & Farmers

Carries beautiful one-of-a-kind items that help support local communities worldwide—a women’s co-op in India embroiders sari table throws, and a fair-trade co-op in Burkina Faso weaves nestlike bowls out of vetiver, a kind of grass used in men’s colognes.
237 Center St. Healdsburg

Lime Stone

Charlie and Lisa Palmer are Healdsburg’s power couple. He’s the chef at Dry Creek Kitchen; she picks the design items for their fantastic new shop, Lime Stone. One top seller: trays decoupaged with bottle labels from local wineries ($96).
315 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg

Chateau St. Jean

Book ahead for a seminar in which you blend your own wine with the varietals used in Cinq Cépages Cabernet Sauvignon. The visitor center (where walk-in tastings are held) sells good panini, charcuterie and cheese for picnics.
8555 Sonoma Hwy., Kenwood

Siduri Wines

Adam and Dianna Lee make an astonishing 27 different Pinot Noirs under the Siduri label. Though the winery is bare-bones, the appointment-only tours—usually given by one of the Lees—include a sampling of wines aging in barrels for a preview of upcoming vintages.
980-C Airway Court, Santa Rosa

Seghesio Family Vineyard

Seghesio offers a fantastic appointment-only Family Table program, in which guests gather in private dining rooms to enjoy the winery’s famous Zinfandels (it makes five kinds) paired with Italian dishes from chef Jon Helquist (an alum of Chez Panisse, Oliveto and Martini House).
14730 Grove St., Healdsburg

Hanzell Vineyards

The only way to visit this established producer, which made some of the first Chardonnay to be fermented in stainless steel, is to book one of two tours, which are often led by Ben Sessions, son of winemaker emeritus Bob Sessions.
18596 Lomita Ave., Sonoma

Lancaster Estate

This small estate winery puts nearly all of its efforts into one great wine: a Bordeaux-style red blend called Lancaster Estate. Private tours are followed by a tasting of three wines in the caves.
15001 Chalk Hill Rd., Healdsburg

Medlock Ames

Owners Ames Morison (who’s also the winemaker) and Christopher Medlock James give tours of the eco-friendly 350-acre ranch and its 50-acre organic winery by appointment only, via electric car and on foot.
13414 Chalk Hill Rd., Healdsburg

Gallo Family Vineyards

Secretive Gallo has pulled back the curtain a bit by opening its first public tasting room, on the plaza in Healdsburg, and offering appointment-only tours of its 650-acre Barrelli Creek Vineyard.
320 Center St., Healdsburg

A. Rafanelli

Dave and Patty Rafanelli’s heralded Zinfandels and Cabernet Sauvignons (now made by their daughter, Shelly Rafanelli Fehlman) are available only at the winery and on restaurant lists. There are no bells, no whistles, just outstanding wines sold from a rustic barn—old-school yet still cool.
4685 W. Dry Creek Rd., Healdsburg

Peay Vineyards

The vineyard is an hour’s drive from both Healdsburg and Santa Rosa, but it’s worth the trip to get an inside look at a mom-and-pop operation—and to see vines planted on hillsides so steep that tractors tip over.
33201 Annapolis Rd., Annapolis

J Vineyards & Winery

Their Bubble Room is the best tasting room in all of Sonoma County. They’ll bring out five little tastes—like gougères, ham tartlets, mini quiches, blue cheese—and tell you what to pair with each, and why.
11447 Old Redwood Hwy., Healdsburg

Five Great Sonoma Bottles

• 2003 Arrowood Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2003 Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cépages Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2002 Arrowood Le Beau Mélange Syrah
• 2005 Kunde Estate Grown Chardonnay Nu
• 2006 Matanzas Creek Winery Sauvignon Blanc