Sonoma Wineries:
Michel-Schlumberger Winery and Madrona Manor
Driving out of Healdsburg over the Mill Street bridge, you get your first glimpse of Dry Creek, a burbling stream overhung by cottonwoods and silvery willows, and your first “Road Narrows” sign, signaling the start of a slow ramble north on West Dry Creek Road. Just at the Mill Street/West Dry Creek junction is the archway entrance to complete with lacy gingerbread and scrollwork trimmings, a mansard roof, columned verandas and a spectacle of dormers.
On up twisting, turning West Dry Creek Road, mossy oak branches touch overhead, splitrail fences line the vineyards and worn-looking farm buildings turn up around the bends. On weekdays, you may share the road with just an occasional pickup truck or a rumbling tractor. During harvest in September and October, you could get stuck behind a truck pulling a gondola piled with grapes headed for the crush. This is a heady, busy time of year, when thousands of acres of vines turn ruddy and the heavy clusters of grapes are picked. Just two miles wide, the whole valley takes on the rich, fruity smell of grape juice beginning to ferment and the pungent scent of mounds of “pomace,” the skins, seeds and pulp remaining from the crush.
As you drive or bicycle along, peer through the dense screen of madrones, maples and oaks along the roadside, to notice the path of the creek as it snakes through the vineyards. To enter a magical, sylvan cranny of the wine country that seems lost in time, go west on Wine Creek Road as it winds through a verdant canyon past century-old apple orchards, black walnut and persimmon trees, and olive groves.
Behind a filigreed gate, a Mediterranean-style hacienda with a tile roof and a bell tower marks the Michel-Schlumberger wine estate. The proprietor, Jacques Pierre Schlumberger, descends from a family famous for wine-making in Alsace for more than 400 years. Sprawling across rocky benchlands in the canyon are rows of his Bordeaux-type grapevines. The estate produces a mere 15,000 cases, including an elegant Cabernet Sauvignon tasting of blueberry and cassis, with hints of earthy cedar aromas.
Continue the Dry Creek Valley Winery Guide and see the “Old Vines” »
The article on this page is adapted from the book, Backroads of the California Wine Country by Karen Misuraca (www.karenmisuraca.com), published by Voyageur Press.
Photo Credit: The pictures on this page are by Lisa Moore. www.studioponderosa.com