Tom Snyder - The Two-Lane Gourmet. Fine Wine Trails, Superb Inns, and Exceptional Dining Through California,...

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THE TWO-LANE GOURMET. Copyright 2007 by Thomas J. Snyder. Foreword copyright 2007 by Frank J. Prial. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Book design by Michelle McMillian

Excerpt from The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World by Brian Doyle. Copyright 2006 by Brian Doyle. Reprinted with the permission of Oregon State University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Snyder, Tom, 1934

Two-lane gourmet: fine wine trails, superb inns, and exceptional dining through California, Oregon, and Washington /Tom Snyder ; foreword by Frank J. Prial.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36471-7 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-312-36471-7 (alk. paper)

1. WineriesPacific StatesGuidebooks. 2. VineyardsPacific StatesGuidebooks. 3. HotelsPacific StatesGuidebooks. 4. Taverns (Inns)Pacific StatesGuidebooks. 5. RestaurantsPacific StatesGuidebooks. 6. Scenic bywaysPacific StatesGuidebooks. 7. VillagesPacific StatesGuidebooks. 8. Automobile travelPacific StatesGuidebooks. 9. Pacific StatesTours. I. Title.

TP557.S57 2007

917.90434dc22

2007022691

First Edition: October 2007

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Special thanks go to Daniela Rapp, my editor at St. Martins Press, for her continuing wisdom and unwavering support, and to California project manager Melissa Biliardi for her knowledge of viticulture. Each invested this work with generosity from the outset, providing winetasting expertise as well as guidance. Initial planning by Stephany Boettner was indispensable when, with a short lead time, it was still necessary to circumvent holidays, special events, and a difficult harvest that came on the installment plan.

Further thanks go to those who kept me focused and on the road: Jonni Biaggini; Phil Bilodeau; Shannon Brooks; Gail Camposagrado; Honore Comfort; Michael Davidson; Dawn Endean; John Enquist; Shannon Flynn; Christine Forsyth; Terri Gieg; Tom Glidden; Jennifer Gould; Koleen Hamblin; Tana Bader Inglima; Stacie Jacob; Kellie James; Laura Kath; Gina Keough; Lota LaMontagne; Elizabeth Martin-Calder; Michelle McMillian; Rhonda Motil; Regan OLeary; Mary Pat Parker; Tyffani Peters; Sue Price; Sabrina Soares Roberts; Frances Sayers; Kimberly Scargle; Craig Schmidt; Cathy Seghesio; Scott Stein

lowski; Richard Stenger; Kristina Streeter; Kerrie Walters; Christopher Weir; Carrie Wilkinson; Carly Williams; Carolyn Woodall; Lonnie Wright; and Sherrye Wyatt.

Support from the Phantom Tasters, who visited wineries to provide confirmation and comment, was invaluable. I am grateful as well to a host of roadside brothers who, whenever they discovered that I was a tour-book writer whod got himself hopelessly lost, were kind enough not to laugh....

BY FRANK J. PRIAL

Forty years or so ago, when I first explored the wine roads of the West, they were, essentially, all back roads. St. Helena, in the Napa Valley, was a country town, and everyone strolling Main Street knew everyone else. Sonoma, just over the Mayacamas Range, was the same. The shops were the shops of any American farm town; they catered to nononsense folk who made their living from the soil. The restaurants were practical places where men in bib overalls who had never heard of a double espresso discussed weather reports and grumbled about the new little wineries popping up all over the place. They called the new people them damned boutiquers.

Wine grapes were a major crop, as they had been all along, and a lot of wine was madeworkaday jug wine, mostly, meant for winedrinking immigrants and their progeny in the big cities of the East. A lot of it was still shipped offin jugsto be bottled close to where it would be drunk.

Tourists, not many, were beginning to drift up to the valley and they were generally well treated, even if the locals couldnt imagine what they found so interesting about fermenting grape uice. None of them, the winemakers or those first hardy wine drinking visitors, could have imagined in those innocent days how quickly that idyllic pastoral world would change.

Now, on a typical summer weekend day, the traffic through the Napa Valley on Route 29 and on the Silverado Trail to the east slows to a crawl, parking lots at the better-known wineries overflow, and visitors often must wait in line for a chance to taste a few wines. Shops that once sold farm supplies now hawk T-shirts and corkscrews, and the restaurants are both expensive and overbooked. Whats more, these phenomena are hardly limited to Napa and Sonoma. Calistoga and Healdsburg have becomeI hate the wordtrendy, as has most of the South Central Coast, the Monterey Peninsula, the Russian River Valley, and just about anywhere wine is made in California. Innocently, the crowds gather and sadly the old wine world fades from view.

Ah, but here, like some western hero of old, comes Tom Snyder, aptly named The Two-Lane Gourmet, to rescue us from the Disneyfication of the wine world. On our behalf, he has tooled a Jaguar over some 2,100 miles of roads less traveled, finding hidden little wineries, delightful eateries, and bed-and-breakfast hideaways run by the kind of warm and welcoming people who recall the California I fell in love with those many years ago. Whats more, for true devotees of the unbeaten path, he has done the same for Oregon and Washington State.

Consider if you will, the wineries he offers us along the Corralitos Wine Trail in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The wineries, Tom advises, welcome guests, though tour and tastings are by appointment only. Farm vineyards are a quiet treat, with time to savor and reflect. How long has it been since you last had time to savor and reflect? On anything.

Im not much for tasting notes; they tend to change, mine anyway, from day to day, even from hour to hour. The wines I like today may well bore me tomorrow. I like his travel notes the sky, the sea, the open roadand, Ill admit it, his vivid word pictures of the meals he relished in some of those country inns.

Damn, I wish Id had Toms book when I first wandered through the wine country. On the other hand, theres no reason not to use it now. Never did those two-lane roads sound more appealing. Somewhere he calls it retro-touring. Ill forgive him that. I cant be upset with any guy who compares a great Cabernet with the sound of a smoothrunning radial airplane engine.

Also by Tom Snyder

Route 66 Travelers Guide and Roadside Companion
Pacific Coast Highway Travelers Guide
When You Close Your Eyes

The
Two-lane
gourmet

For all the vintners, winemakers
innkeepers, hoteliers, restaurateurs
and chefs who spent patient hours sharing
their crafts, dreams, and passions.
Some became my teachers;