when foodies honeymoon: day two
our second morning in santa rosa we still got up fairly early, probably all thanks to the time change & no thanks to our accidental bender the night before. it was time to pack up & say goodbye to santa rosa. kinda sad, we really liked it there.
the next leg of our trip had us driving through sonoma. we stopped in downtown sonoma for lunch, which consisted mostly of samples from the sonoma cheese factory & that place was incredible. every flavor imaginable, garlic jack, pesto jack, habanero jack, chipotle cheddar, smoked cheddar…. & you could taste them all. we picked up a wedge of garlic jack, some salami, a box of crackers & had a nice little picnic lunch in the plaza across the street. walked around, sampled some chocolate, checked out the wine shops & left sonoma fat & happy.
onward to napa!
first stop: chappellet. but the road was so narrow & windy, we weren’t sure we would make it up to the hilltop winery & i’m pretty sure we could have hiked it faster than our car was moving. we made it though! barely! good thing too, because it was fun to see the inner workings of the winery AND we got to drink some fabulous ones all along the tour! 
lovely way to spend an afternoon & the weather couldn’t have been better. i just wish our guide hadn’t mentioned that rattlesnakes liked to hang out in the vineyards, because after that, i was obsessively watching every. step. i. took. a 2006 petit syrah left with us.
titus here we come! & if you’re not looking, you could easily miss it, because it’s just a small farmhouse, barn & lots & lots of vineyards, but a friend of a friend handles their marketing & was nice enough to meet us & show us around.
it was nice & nontouristy, walking through the vineyards, eating grapes off the vine & leisurely sipping the goods on the back patio of the little farmhouse. plus, we love titus wines anyway, so to be there drinking it was priceless.
a bottle of 2005 lot 1 was a lovely souvenir.
then to cole’s chophouse, because the man felt like he needed a steak.
the place was pretty swank, but not in a stuffy way. food? top notch.
& the man who was nice enough to snap this picture of us gave us some killer recommendations for the rest of napa adventures.
win.
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We were big fans of the samples at the Sonoma Cheese Factory. Did you stop in the Sonoma Wine Shop on the street to the right (facing the C.F.)?
Yes! We stopped in b/c of your blog post!