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Valentine's Day in Mendocino Wine Country

·Mendocino County, California·#winter#travel#food#valentines-day#wine country#wine tasting
Dormant vineyards with yellow flowers in the foreground, against green rolling hills, small wind turbines, and a blue sky.

Drove up to Mendocino County for Valentine's Day. The vines are all bare this time of year, pruned back to the wire, but the mustard is up between the rows and the hills behind are about as green as they get. We walked along the vineyard fence for a while before lunch — a white windmill spinning out past the far block, wild mustard everywhere at our feet.

Lunch came with a flight of whites, three glasses with names written on the coasters by hand: Lambert, Roth, Blackbird. I paired the Blackbird with a beet salad and made a mess of the plate doing it. Beets stain everything, including the greens they arrive with.

Not a bad way to spend the holiday — no reservations fought over, no prix fixe, just wine country in February when almost nobody else is out. The drive home is long from up there, but the tasting rooms empty out early anyway.

Bare grapevines, yellow flowers, green fields, and two white structures lead to rolling treed hills under a blue sky.Two people stand outdoors with a backdrop of green hills and blue sky.Three white wine glasses with 'Lambert', 'Roth', and 'Blackbird' name tags, with red wine and water.A partially eaten beet salad on a white plate, a bowl of beets, and a glass of wine on a Blackbird coaster.

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