On one of the hottest days this summer we visited Gary Farrell Vineyard & Winery. It’s located in one of the coolest regions in Sonoma’s wine country but we were experiencing a heat wave. The temperature was hitting 100 degrees. Tasting outdoors was not going to be an option.

Their facility sits well above the river off Westside Road and on a normal day you’d want to sit out on the spacious patio that overlooks the surrounding hills and where you can catch a great breeze.

It’s a Saturday. Put together weekend tasting traffic and the heat and what you get is what we experienced – an indoor tasting filled to capacity.

Like many wineries today, Gary Farrell offers a number of tasting options. We chose the Elevation Tasting. Basically its an hour long tasting of six wines paired with cheeses.

Each wine was expertly paired to a cheese. It was truly fascinating to me how well they did this. Plus, they so smartly listed the cheeses on the tasting menu for you to refer to.

We tasted three Chardonnays and three Pinot Noirs. The first Chardonnay, a 2019 Olivet Lane Vineyard was handed to us when we arrived – something to taste while you visually take the place in. And…take it in you should – beautiful architecture – beautiful site!

The second and third were a 2019 La Riconada Vineyard Chardonnay from the Santa Barbara area and a 2018 Rochioli Vineyard Chardonnay. The three Pinots were a 2018 Sanford & Benedict Vineyard (Santa Barbara region), a 2018 Russian River Hallberg Vineyard and a 2018 Petaluma Gap from Gap’s Crown Vineyard.

The staff and our host Michael handled the sizable indoor crowd very well. The tasting was lovely. We especially liked the 2018 Pinot Noir from Gap’s Crown and took two bottles with us. We found two of the cheeses to be so amazing that after our tasting we headed to our local market to try and find them.

Thank you so much Michael! Salud!

NOTE – Gary Farrell’s address is Healdsburg however for planning your route purposes, they are located 11 miles out of the town.