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Healdsburg Winery Tasting Room Changes
As we work on our iPhone Apps and winery tour books one of the components that drive us a little crazy are downtown tasting rooms. These are store fronts where you can taste wines grown and made in different locations, usually not too far away. Sometimes it’s a way for a winery to put their toe in the water and see if the temperature is good. A tasting room is easier to set up than a hospitality center at your winery.
At the end of last season some things in Healdsburg Plaza shifted. Two big companies, Gallo and Souverain left the plaza and their places where quickly taken over by other contenders. Vintage Wine Estates is a collective tasting room operated by some larger wineries and including some smaller labels. Both Girard from Napa and Kunde from the Sonoma Valley are on the labels but their wines are not poured. Sonoma Coast Vineyards, Grove Street, Stone Fly, Windsor Sonoma and Fire Station Red are represented
I’m sure that there are some good wines in that list but like many collectives they need to go the extra mile to put the wineries in a context that customers can relate to. I was touring northern Sonoma with two charming couples from Seattle and brought them to a wine and food pairing at the Williamson winery just off the Healdsburg Plaza. Not surprisingly I saw my friend and fellow wine tour guide Jack Swanson there. His clients were tasting there too so we chatted for a while. I explained that Williamson was the only store front tasting room I brought clients to.
We feel that people come to wine country to go to where the grapes are grown and the wine is made. Williamson is an exception because they do a remarkably educational food and wine pairing that clients adore. What many of the store front tasting rooms lack is the story of the winery, the people and the history. They create a slick environment suitable to a bar but completely forget the countryside where the grapes come from. They’ll put out some small bits and pieces of the story, but in today’s media crazy society they need to go over the top in the style of a major commercial convention. Trefethen does this well as does Rubicon at their wineries. Even Kunde tells their story well in their Sonoma Valley winery. But in the Healdsburg tasting room they need more, otherwise it’s just a room with some wine to sell, and you can find that in any town in America.
Down the street Boisset opened a tasting room offering their DeLoach vineyard wines alongside their French labels and a tasting room only brand. It is very finished, very European with a neat turn of phrase. They offer little wine barrels for sale. You buy the barrel and they send you the wine in a box to refill it. This was the way that people stored wine before the popularity of the wine bottle in the 1700’s. That’s unique!
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