Matanzas Creek Winery

Given my interest in wine and that I work part-time at a local Virginia winery, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit Sonoma and Napa during our honeymoon. We drove about an hour north of San Francisco and started off first in Sonoma at Matanzas Creek Winery.

We were drawn in by the beautiful pictures and description of their lavender fields on the property, which certainly didn't disappoint us upon arrival.  Despite living near a local lavender farm in Virginia, I still have yet to pay it a visit, though this certainly piqued my interest even more.  As you approach the tasting room you get to walk through the pale purple fields of lavender abuzz with plenty of happy bees.

In addition to the gorgeous approach to the winery, Matanzas Creek's tasting room building can hold its own in terms of impressiveness.  We're both a big fan of buildings that incorporate hardwood and so we loved that the tasting room integrated a lot of it in to their aesthetic.

As for the wine, which is of course the most important part (!), we were very happy with the selection we tasted in July.  Historically I've never been a huge fan of Sauvignon Blanc, especially those from New Zealand as I find them to be too "grassy" on my palate.  I still rarely or voluntarily buy this varietal in the store either.  So when our tasting associate gave us their 2014 Sauvignon Blanch (from Knights Valley, if you're wondering) to try, I was incredibly happy to find that I really liked it.  It really goes to show that terroir can absolutely have an effect on how a wine tastes on your palate.  (For the record, I also tend to like French Sauvignon Blancs more than New Zealand's as well.)

Matanzas Creek's other wines on the tasting menu were just as phenomenal.  (We found that it's impossible to find a bad wine in Sonoma and Napa.  I'm not even exaggerating.)  Though we would have loved to take one of each home with us, we wanted to leave room to purchase wine from other wineries we planned on visiting, so we only purchased the Sauvignon Blanc.

This was the only Sonoma winery we stopped at as we planned for more of our time to be spent in Napa.  You could easily spend a week (or more!) in both counties trying wine.  However, looking back we really would have loved to visit a couple more in Sonoma.  Though Napa was lovely (I'll touch on that in the next blog post!), we found that Sonoma, in our small experience, was more relaxed, which is a vibe we normally gravitate towards rather than something more "upscale."

Long story short, I highly recommend visiting Matanzas Creek Winery.  And do budget more than an afternoon in Sonoma.  I'm sure you won't be disappointed!

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