Our Favorite Sonoma Stories

From Wine Country in Shorts

By: Ralph DeAmicis, Lahni DeAmicis

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Sonoma is a world famous wine region a short ride from San Francisco. But before that it was the northern tip of the Spanish Empire where the Royal Road, that stretched north from Mexico City ended. With its abundant sunshine, nurturing fogs, fertile soil and diverse, but gentle climates, the early settlers must have thought they had arrived in Eden. Sonoma has a beautiful Pacific coastline, great redwood forests and bucolic valleys which each form their own magical worlds with their own unique growing conditions, where the locals have grown grapes and made marvelous wines since the 1800’s.
This digital version features the photos in color. These stories about how Sonoma evolved were selected from the book, Wine Country in Shorts, the Stories of Napa and Sonoma, by Ralph and Lahni DeAmicis, storytellers, speakers and filmmakers. The stories were collected over twenty years during their time as popular guides and tour book authors. They are the ultimate insiders who present a wonderfully revealing picture of how Napa became such a remarkable place.

This book celebrates the unique storytelling style that goes well with wine: colorful, relaxed, thoughtful, a little rambling and segmented. That’s because the pace of the story allows time for the listeners to taste the wines and enjoy the illumination it bestows. That’s how the ancients described the experience of drinking alcohol, being illuminated by the wine.’ We hope that you enjoy these stories that are only as remarkable as the wonderful places and people they describe, and that are treasured by so many.
A wine region’s personality is not just about the topography and climate, but also about how the people living there adapted to its unique qualities. Those experiences are shared in stories. Where did we get these stories? We heard them while standing at the back of countless tasting rooms. For many years there were a couple of hundred wineries where customers could just walk in, stand at the bar and taste the wines. At other wineries the tastings happened sitting down, and of course there are cave and vineyard tours. In these tasting experiences, the hosts shared information about the wines, and many shared stories.
In any given year we visited over three hundred tasting rooms, and we heard so many stories, and multiple versions of those stories! The overall feeling was very casual, relaxed and friendly.
We retold these stories countless times to groups and wine tour clients while driving around the North Bay Wine Country. It was easy to recall those tales when we visited those places where the events occurred. So, to pull together the stories for this book, Ralph started dictating the, into his phone while our clients were tasting at the wineries. We wanted to write down these stories for a while, but it was hard to find the time. And then a fortuitous thing happened. The local wine tasting fees escalated, and the wineries recognized that if they abandoned their quick tasting bars, in favor of longer seated experiences, their sales would improve.
Honestly, any tour guide could have told them that! The big wines grown in the Napa vineyards taste better when you give them time to open up in the glass. However, as the tastings became more formal, exclusive and expensive, it was a rare time when we stayed with or clients during the sessions.
That scheduling change suddenly gave Ralph a predictable amount of precious, uninterrupted time to dictate the stories, and then later improve the drafts. Choosing the stories was hard because an amazing number pop out of his mouth as he drives around with clients. Sometimes he remembers a story because they are passing the winery where a friend first shared it with him.