celebrating in sonoma

Wine country is fantastic any day, but it’s even better when there’s a reason to celebrate, like there was on Friday, when we headed across the Golden Gate Bridge and into wine country for the rehearsal dinner of two good San Francisco friends. The wedding itself was back in the city at the Presidio Golf Course, but a whole day of pre-nuptial festivities took place at the bride’s parents’ home in Sonoma. “Dinner” was a bit of a misleading term, as the fun started at 1pm and included a few hours of wine-tasting at Chateau St. Jean, croquet on the lawn, playing with the new family puppy and attempting to make friends with the family cow, Barbecue (a somewhat-morbid foreshadowing name of what’s to come for Barbecue when he’s meaty enough), before a dinner of stone oven-baked pizza from Rosso (they brought the whole stone oven to the rehearsal dinner and cooked the pizzas on site). All in all, a nice little Friday.


Chateau St. Jean winery in Sonoma (above left – photo courtesy chateaustjean.com); rehearsal dinner at the bride’s parents’ home in Sonoma (above right + below); Seb making friends with the family pets, Beignet the puppy and Barbecue the cow (bottom left + right)