Highway 128 runs inland from the coast along the Navarro River, through a long green tunnel of redwood, and drops you into one of the loveliest and coolest-climate wine regions in California. The Pinot Noir and the Alsatian whites they grow up there are as good as anything in the state, and they exist because of the same marine fog that sits over camp, which is a very nice thing to have in your head before you drink any of it.
We’ll walk first. Big Hendy Grove is eighty acres that were never logged, on a gentle loop, and it’s dead quiet in there. Somewhere among it are the shelters a man they called the Hendy Hermit lived in for eighteen years, which is a story worth hearing on the spot. Then two tastings with lunch in Boonville or Philo in between. Both are small and seated and poured by somebody who actually makes the wine, and they’re deliberately from different producers with different ideas, because the interesting part is the contrast rather than the number of glasses.
We’ll finish at Anderson Valley Brewing, which has twenty taps, thirty acres and a free eighteen-hole disc golf course for anybody who’s had enough wine for one day. It’s also where you’ll get Boontling explained to you, which is the local language, and yes, it’s real, and yes, people still speak it.
