Brian Hunt of Moonlight Brewing Co. (photo by Chris Hardy)
While other kids were playing baseball and learning to drive, Brian Hunt was busy brewing mead in his bedroom at age 15, inspired by an article in Scientific American Magazine.
It didn’t matter that the ancient libation of fermented honey tasted “disgusting:” The seed was planted. years later, when Hunt abandoned pre-med studies and enrolled at UC Davis, that same thirst for experimentation would lead him to beer.
Since founding Moonlight Brewing Co. in 1992 in rural Santa Rosa, Hunt has never stopped pushing the edge, whether it’s inventing the California dark lager that would become his flagship Death & Taxes brew, or dropping redwood tips from a tree in his backyard into the “hopless” Working For Tips ale.
“I fail at mainstream,” Hunt said. “If everybody likes the beers that I make, then I have failed.”
Always off-center in the beer revolution that has thrived in Sonoma for more than three decades, Hunt is a maverick among mavericks.
“Death & Taxes was not a beer that was copied from somewhere else in the world,” he said. “One day, I had in my mind a beer that I wanted and it didn’t exist: not in the store where I could buy it, not on the planet.”
It was a hot day in Napa and he wanted a beer that was “refreshing and crisp and black and tannic. I wanted it to have that iced-coffee zippiness to it but not the caffeine.”
It didn’t take long for beer connoisseurs to discover the dark molasses lager goes well with “tacos, sushi and 100-degree weather.” Or for Budweiser and Guinness to come out with their own black lagers.
Over the years, while brewing with unusual ingredients such as mugwort, yarrow, bee balm and Labrador tea, Hunt has always tried to walk the balance between innovation and gimmickry.
“I call those novelty beers,” he said. “You take a sip and say, ‘Wow that’s interesting,’ and then you probably don’t finish the glass.”
These days, at 57, he has five employees who help him brew approximately 2,300 barrels a year. Despite rave reviews and widespread distribution in pubs, he’s never been interested in rampant growth, or even bottling, for that matter. Moonlight Brewing beers are sold only in kegs. While working for Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. in Milwaukee in the early 1980s, Hunt learned “what happens to a company when you cheapen a product.”
He recently relocated his “Abbey de St. Humulus” brewery from his backyard to Coffey Lane in Santa Rosa. He had dreamed of opening a taproom, but is now working on a growler fill station to open later this year, where fans can fill glass jugs with Moonlight ales and take them home.
More important than growth, Hunt said, is his beer philosophy: “I like it when people try something I make and I see their face wince,” he said. “not wince and spit it out, but if they wince and then have this look of curiosity, then I don’t care if they don’t like it. If I put a crack in their preconceived notions of what beer can be, then I’ve succeeded with that person.”
One week at historic Casa Sebastiani can be yours for about $14,500. (BeautifulPlaces.com)
On the far upper end of the vacation rental world are people who forgo hotels and traditional inns to rent their own baronial estates with sweeping views and all the over-the-top comforts befitting a celebrity. They are the 1 percent, or those who want, if only for a weekend, to feel what it’s like to live like the 1 percent. That includes all the accoutrements: outdoor fireplaces, pizza ovens, big pools, bocce courts and home theaters.
This is the market that Liza and Patrick Graves sought to tap when they moved to Sonoma about 20 years ago. Inspired by their own experience renting getaway homes from Connecticut to Europe, places where they could cook their own meals with fresh ingredients from the farmers market and meet locals, they saw an untapped potential in the high-end homes of the Sonoma and Napa valleys. Many were second homes and sitting vacant much of the year. In 2003 they launched Beautiful Places, a vacation-rental company headquartered in Sonoma and specializing in “luxury villa rentals.” They currently have 35 to 40 in Sonoma Valley and Healdsburg, a few in Napa, and a growing portfolio around the world.
“This is nothing new. If you read a lot of the famous classic writers, they were always renting homes in far-off places,” Liza Graves explained. “Many of the high-end homes in Wine Country have been purchased by second-home owners, people who want to use their house, but only one or two weeks every year. Many of these people want the chance to use their property some of the time and recoup some of the costs by renting it out. Houses are much better if they’re lived in than if they’re vacant. If your house sits vacant most of the year, it’s going to deteriorate faster than if the systems are being used.”
Villa Carneros will set you back about $18,500 and requires at least a seven-night stay. (BeautifulPlaces.com)
Her exclusive listings include the old Sebastiani family home perched on a hill above the winery in Sonoma, and the popular Villa Carneros, a plantation-style house set in a vineyard with luxury appointments, including a formal dining room and wine tasting room. Also hot is the Vineyard Knoll Estate in Glen Ellen. Showcased three years ago on TV’s “The Bachelor,” it boasts a grand piano and a free-form pool and spa with panoramic views of the Mayacamas Mountains.
Not all houses are over the top in luxury, but each must have, as Graves puts it, a certain “je ne sais quoi” that sets it apart.
She said she carefully vets houses and guests to weed out bad apples or anyone thinking about throwing a big party in a rented villa. No more than two people per room are allowed.
While big parties are a no-no, Beautiful Places, which also serves as a full concierge service, will arrange for private chefs and accommodate extra-special requests, such as for the couple who wanted to put on a Medieval-themed dinner party, complete with costumes, drumsticks and dancing to a live trio.
“We had a 60-year-old woman who was getting remarried. She had her girlfriends for the weekend and she wanted someone to teach them pole dancing. We found somebody to do that.
“We do get a lot of unusual requests, but that’s what makes it fun because you’re helping people to have a vacation or reconnect with their friends or family,” she explained.
Mickey Cooke, whose family has owned acreage on Sonoma Mountain for more than 70 years, says visitors to her rural neighborhood lack community roots and respect for the environment. (photo by Chris Hardy)
Mickey Cooke was 12 when her father, pioneering Bay Area sportscaster Ernie Smith, bought 100 acres on Sonoma Mountain from Charmian London, the widow of writer and raconteur Jack London.
For years, the former London guest ranch up a narrow road above the little Valley of the Moon village of Glen Ellen provided a country retreat solely for the Smiths. The family finally moved up permanently from Sausalito in the late 1950s.
“We were typical early Marin people who had a second home here. It cost all of $22,000 for 100 acres, two houses and two barns,” Cooke remembered. “Dad didn’t have enough money to swing it, so he cashed in our war bonds for the down payment.” Cooke chuckles at the 21st century absurdity of scoring that much property for less than what some people are now forking over to stay in a nearby “villa” for a couple of weeks.
For decades she has been a fierce protector of the mountain she has explored for decades on foot and horseback, pushing back at anything that would threaten to despoil it or harm the wildlife.
Now, at 83, the wiry white-haired defender has been blindsided by a new breed of weekender. Rather than coming up to their own cabins in the country, they rent a nicely appointed house with all the amenities.
“On a busy weekend 47 people can be living here who don’t really live here. They wander up and down the street with their paper cups of coffee from down below, talking loud and with their dogs,” Cooke sighs, turning her gaze downhill in the direction of some half-dozen full-time vacation rental homes that once were the primary residences of people she knew by name, like the late Sonoma County District Attorney Gene Tunney.
Of the 40 parcels on her road, six are vacation rentals, with another on a side road being readied for market. The heir of yet another house has indicated interest in converting it to a vacation rental, Cooke said.
There is one particularly noisy rental 200 yards from her house, across a creek, the site of frequent large parties, including a wedding. Several times she’s called the owner, who then calls the renters to quiet down. Once she called directly into the house, threatening to call the sheriff.
“Boom, it was quiet in a minute. But to have to do that, it just makes you angry. I don’t want to get nasty with people,” she lamented.
She worries that the weekenders don’t have the respect for the mountain that locals do, such as concern for the watershed and awareness of fire danger.
“I wouldn’t care how many of these establishments there are as long as there is an on-site owner,” she said. “An owner who would pay taxes here and vote here and be involved in the community here. All these other owners? They don’t give a damn. It’s just a cash cow for them.”
Debbie Nitasaka complains that a nearby vacation rental home has become a party house. (photo by Chris Hardy)
Debbie Nitasaka says it hit her with a thundering blast early one summer morning three years ago: Life as she knew it in her small, Wine Country village was about to change.
She was awakened at 1:30 a.m. by the sounds from a neighboring home where a huge party was going on. Horns blasting. People yelling. Cars coming and going.
It wasn’t the Glen Ellen Firefighters Dance & BBQ, where a rumpus is raised once a year for a good cause and half the town attends.
It was, instead, the invasion of the vacation renters.
“I finally fell asleep at 4:30,” she recalled.
And that was just the beginning.
“All summer, every summer, into the fall and sometimes in February. Sometimes in April. We never know when they’ll come,” Nitasaka said. A community activist who years ago founded a program to help Sonoma Valley’s migrant laborers, she lives on a dead-end road in a middle-class neighborhood of working people and retirees. Her husband is a retired physician. But when the revelry began, he was still working and on call. Complaints to the county, to the property owner, to the sheriff, she said, rarely provide relief.
The party house, once owned by a respected town elder, is now, she said, “like a roadhouse.”
“I hear screaming and yelling. I hear bottles breaking. I hear loud music,” Nitasaka said. “It’s either dark and creepy or loud and intrusive and horrible.”
It is an experience increasingly common, to one degree or another, across Sonoma County as residents confront the rapid spread of vacation rentals and their flow of paying customers — strangers on the block, sometimes noisy and bothersome — into everyday neighborhoods.
Vacation getaways have long been fixtures in the county’s top tourist stops, drawing visitors from across the country and around the world to cozy coastal retreats in Bodega Bay and The Sea Ranch, redwood-shaded cabins along the Russian River and shelter amid the vineyards both expansive and intimate.
What’s changed is the number of homes, from humble bungalows to opulent estates, being transformed into short-term rental lodging. Before, they were anomalies. It is happening not just in destinations like Kenwood and Geyserville, but in cities like Petaluma and Santa Rosa. And not just in places with acreage but on streets with small lots where neighbors share fences.
The shift is being fueled by the exploding popularity of home-booking websites like Airbnb, Flipkey and Vacation Rentals by Owner (VRBO), which enable almost anyone with even a spare bedroom to become an instant innkeeper.
The county says there are 775 legally permitted rentals in the unincorporated area alone, more than half of which were approved after the county passed an ordinance. The largest batch is along the Russian River, followed by Sonoma Valley and rural Healdsburg.
But the problem lies more often with the large number of properties without permits showing up in online listings, often with owners who don’t know or don’t follow rules such as noise curfews imposed on vacation rentals by some local governments.
The resulting complaints have poured in from residents countywide, outstripping the ability of officials to respond. Many detail daily nuisances and breaches of privacy.
Linda Duff, a teacher who lives a few blocks from Nitasaka up a mountain road, bought her Glen Ellen home for $265,000 in the 1980s, back when 10 acres with a view could be had by a couple of modest means. She said the first sign of the change was the bewildering appearance of limousines, struggling to turn around on her steep road.
“There’s no accountability. They’re not thoughtful,” she said. “They don’t care who lives up the street, who might have a baby or who might be elderly. Houses are sold but nobody moves in. You don’t know who is here.”
It’s the latest dust-up in the ongoing clash of interests between residents who seek out quiet in the countryside, small towns and city side streets of the North Coast and the wine and tourist industries that drive the local economy and draw some 7.5 million visitors a year.
“This is part of a larger issue, the whole issue of rural character and tourism and where our county is going,” said James Gore, a county supervisor who represents the heavily impacted areas outside of Healdsburg and Geyserville, where there also are simmering conflicts over the development of wineries and an explosion of public events that draw traffic and noise.
A related and perhaps equally pressing issue for local governments is the loss of a significant amount of tax revenue from rentals that fly under the radar. An audit by the Sonoma County Auditor-Controller’s Office estimated that the county was losing $500,000 to $1.3 million a year from short-term vacation rentals in the unincorporated areas that don’t pay the required bed taxes. Cities have also expressed concern over similar lost revenue.
The auditor also found that more than half of the local listings on Airbnb, the San Francisco-based rental-booking giant, don’t have valid permits to operate.
Proposed state legislation would give local governments more leverage to close that loophole, but it faces an uphill climb, with tourism and tech forces already lining up in opposition. So far, only a few big cities, among them San Francisco, have managed to secure deals with Airbnb that assure the company collects and remits hotel taxes.
“We’ve been working with cities across the country and around the world to help our community pay hotel and tourist taxes,” said Airbnb public affairs representative Christopher Nulty. “Recently, we started collecting and remitting these taxes on behalf of our hosts and guests in Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Amsterdam. Airbnb is focused on making neighborhoods better places to live and visit, and part of that includes working with lawmakers to do the right thing on this issue.
“We ask all of our hosts to follow their local laws and regulations.”
The dilemma is magnified in Sonoma County by the region’s rising popularity as a tourist destination — the influential travel website TripAdvisor last year ranked it as one of the most desirable Wine Country destinations in the world, second only to Tuscany — making it a prime target for vacation rental conversions. At the same time, the economic downturn starting in 2008 left property owners on all levels of the income scale scrambling for ways to stay afloat while those with extra cash were scooping up foreclosures at bargain prices.
David Kerr, president of the North Bay Realtors Association and a senior sales partner of Terra Firma Global Partners in Sonoma, said he hasn’t seen a big problem with houses being pulled off the long-term rental market. But he said in the last three years he’s seen a big shift among buyers, from people looking to either buy a second home or a vacation rental investment, to a surge in people wanting to do both — buy a second home and offset the costs by marketing it as a vacation rental when they’re not using it.
“I have about a half dozen right now that are looking to do that,” Kerr said. And with tight restrictions in cities like Healdsburg and Sonoma, the demand is heightened in outlying areas like The Springs just north of Sonoma, Glen Ellen, Kenwood and in Geyserville.
“The people buying the smaller houses very often have a little extra disposable income,” he said. “We’re not talking the vice president of Google. We’re talking people usually earning $100,000 to $200,000 a year.”
Among them are high-tech workers and other professionals priced out of the astronomical San Francisco market, who instead opt to rent there while building equity through a second home in Sonoma County.
Chris Nocetti and his husband, Tom Floyd, live in San Francisco and have rented vacation homes in the Healdsburg area for the last six years. They’re members of 10 wine clubs and love to come with groups of friends for a weekend.
“We’ve found hotel prices in Healdsburg have crept up over the years. Trying to book a hotel for a group of six equates to $1,600 a night. We’ve found it more appealing to rent homes that are within five to 10 minutes from the plaza. They frequently have pools and a view,” said Nocetti, 36, who manages a banking firm in San Francisco; Floyd works for Facebook.
“We’ve rented so many times and we’ve spent so much money on hotels we’re actually looking to purchase a second (home) up there,” Nocetti said. “We plan on using it twice per month and renting it out the rest of the time. It’s going to be the place where we spend our Thanksgivings and our Christmases.”
Still, at $800,000 to buy even a fairly moderate home in many sought-after places, investment in a vacation rental is out of reach for many and often a money-making mirage for those who do jump in, said Marc Matson of Healdsburg Vacation Homes, a conventional property management company. Cost for upkeep can be high. Beyond the mortgage, property taxes and insurance, there are expenses associated with landscaping, maintenance, pool care and cleaning.
“It’s not necessarily going to make a big profit but it can generate $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year and that goes a ways toward paying for expenses,” he said.
The county was spurred to regulate vacation rentals after a huge dance party at a rental house on the Russian River in 2010 caused a deck to collapse, injuring some of the young revelers.
But continued complaints about lax enforcement and the proliferating number of vacation rentals, particularly those operating without permits, have brought the issue under increased scrutiny.
City and county officials throughout Wine Country have been struggling to manage the juggernaut, fine-tuning existing rules and drafting new laws where they didn’t exist, while balancing the demands of the market against the rights of property owners on both sides of the debate.
North Coast Sen. Mike McGuire introduced a bill this spring aimed at getting online vacation rental companies to disclose the extent of their businesses so that they can be taxed. It would also help local governments better track vacation rentals and enforce the laws regulating them.
At the same time, Sonoma County planning officials are looking at how they can retool their November 2010 ordinance, passed after the deck collapse, to bring more property owners into compliance and better address neighbors’ concerns.
Beyond the government’s interest in recouping lost tax revenue and keeping the peace, however, are what some see as larger social impacts. Many people fear the vacation rental boom is cutting into an already squeezed housing market, diminishing the stock of moderate and affordable housing at a time when property values and rents are rising and the rental vacancy rate is under 1.5 percent.
While places like Guerneville and The Sea Ranch have traditionally been chock-full with vacation rentals, the outbreak in areas like Healdsburg and Sonoma Valley is worrisome, said David Grabill, a Santa Rosa attorney for the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group.
“Those areas already are characterized by extremely high housing costs and lots of people who work there don’t have the option economically to live there. That puts more traffic on the highways and it’s bad for local businesses and it’s bad for a community to have a significant percentage of its units fill with an essentially transient population.”
County Supervisor Susan Gorin, whose district encompasses Sonoma Valley, with the second-highest concentration of rentals after the Russian River area, said the potential conversion of affordable housing into vacation rentals is particularly troubling.
“Employers have come to me saying they’re having difficulty recruiting and hiring employees. They can’t afford to live, or even find a place to live, in the community where they work.”
“Unfortunately,” she added, “technology has preceded the government’s ability to really look at this methodically and make sense from a policy direction to get a handle on it.”
Shanon Johnson and her husband, Eric, of Seattle, celebrate their wedding anniversary in a cottage behind the home of Sandy and Bud Metzger. The cottage, located in a historic Santa Rosa neighborhood, is offered through Airbnb. (photo by Jeremy Portje)
On the upside, the vacation-rental-by-owner phenomenon offers a chance for people to tap into their homes for a little extra cash without borrowing against them. It helps the struggle to meet mortgages, finance home improvements, put kids through school or make ends meet. And renting out a spare room or second unit can bring in as much or more income per month than simply renting it out full time, without the conflicts that arise with roommates.
At 66, Maria Lobanovsky said she has a hard time keeping up with the cost of living on a fixed retirement income. So two years ago she “gingerly stepped into” the Airbnb business, renting out the master bedroom suite in her 1968 ranch house on Sonoma’s east side to visitors. Outfitted with French antiques, Japanese tansus and luxury linens, her garden suite garnered $207 a night in the high season.
“A new roof is $20,000, a fence is $3,000. I call it the magic thousand. No matter what you have to touch it’s at least $1,000,” she said with a grim laugh. “So I looked around the house and decided that instead of me working for the house I can get the house to work for me.”
She enjoyed fussing over visitors with a kind of hospitality that earned her a top SuperHostess designation with Airbnb, even forging friendships with some of her visitors, like the couple from Norway who, when they heard her dog was gravely ill, offered to raise money on social media to pay her veterinary bills.
But complaints from a few neighbors who didn’t like the idea of a short-term rental on their residential street forced her to shut down while the city reviewed its policies, which allow rentals of less than 30 days in residential zones only if the home is deemed historic. The issue proved, as it has in many communities, highly contentious.
Those tight rules in cities like Sonoma and Healdsburg, some complain, are pushing the demand into unincorporated areas where the county’s rules are more permissive.
For travelers who like the comforts of home over hotel, vacation rentals offer what amounts to a growing variety of alternatives. Particularly when couples, families or friends are pooling resources, it can cost less to rent a whole house than multiple rooms in an inn.
“We like the extra room, like maybe having a kitchen and a sitting area. When we go to a hotel or a motel it’s pretty much just a bed. Here, we also get a more personal recommendation about where to eat and where to go,” said Karen Romanelli. The 53-year-old retired church administrator and her husband were on their way earlier this year from Vancouver, Wash., to Carpenteria, stopping at Airbnb lodging along the way.
On a sunny Friday afternoon, the couple relaxed on the patio beside a cottage that Sandy and Bud Metzger, both retired professionals, turned into vacation rental they list on Airbnb. The cottage is behind their vintage French storybook home in a historic neighborhood in Santa Rosa.
“Here we are, drinking wine and looking out at a beautiful garden,” said Romanelli with an air of someone who knows when she’s scored a good deal at $135 a night. She claims to have never had a bad experience after booking multiple rentals on Airbnb, in places as disparate as Kentucky and Newport, R.I.
Sandy Metzger said most of her guests are educated 25- to 35-year-olds in town for an event, such as Levi’s GranFondo bike ride in October and the Russian River Brewing Co.’s highly anticipated annual release of its Pliny the Younger triple India Pale Ale each February. They once hosted a woman who needed a quiet place to finish a proposal she was writing for a nonprofit organization.
“Our guests are so quiet,” Metzger said, “our neighbors don’t know when they come and go.”
The growth of an online market for vacation rentals has turned what was once likely an agent-assisted search or word-of-mouth recommendation into a shopper’s bazaar offering seemingly everything under the sun. In the case of the populist Airbnb site, the choices go from $50 single bedrooms in private homes to backyard glamping trailers to luxury hilltop oases overlooking vineyards, with fountains, indoor spa tubs and gourmet kitchens that fetch more than $1,500 a night.
The transaction is often two-way, with property owners and renters presenting their online profiles a la Facebook so each can screen the other.
Prospective guests have to send what amounts to a pitch letter through Airbnb to Judi Cohen, who with her physician husband, Carl Speizer, turned a second cottage on their property on a hidden lane outside Sonoma into a vacation rental, based on their own positive travel experiences with private homestays and exchanges.
She pores over online profiles before saying yes to anyone. The couple maintain that their guests are quiet, respectful and not that frequent, maybe 15 nights in the summer and half that the rest of the year.
While the remote hilltop villas serve the pampered upper end, it’s the more modest rentals popping up in long established neighborhoods that are causing the greatest consternation, and have led county officials to rethink their 2010 ordinance setting rules for rentals. They are asking hard questions, such as how to take action on non-permitted rentals, how to make sure owners respond quickly to complaints and whether there should be limits on the number of vacation rentals in certain neighborhoods where longtime residents resent sharing their streets and roads with an endless churn of strangers unaware of pets, children, blind curves and culverts.
“Someone drove into our driveway at 3 a.m. looking for a rental house out in the country,” said Phil LaParne, who since 1989 has lived on a private road off Chalk Hill Road outside Healdsburg. “Up here there are no streetlights and no cell reception. When you’re out in the country, the sheriff is not going to show up for 45 minutes or maybe an hour.” Of the seven homes on his road, four are vacation rentals.
Healdsburg has responded by moving enforcement of its vacation rental rules, which prohibit stays of less than 30 days in most parts of the city, from the planning department to the police department. It brought in Kevin Young, a retired police lieutenant, to serve as an interim code enforcement officer and to crack down on rentals without a permit.
The move seems to have helped. Trolling the Internet, he identified some 28 scofflaws that, as he put it, “did not have the necessary licensing or they were advertising for more than 30 days, which is legal, but accepting reservations for under 30 days, which is not.” He issued warning letters that resulted in 15 citations. Fines start at $750 per day of violation.
“The positive is that most of the homes were meticulously maintained. In fact, that was a giveaway,” he said, noting that vacation rentals are often easy to spot, with a groomed, not-lived-in look. And that’s part of the problem, he said.
“In Healdsburg we have such a limited supply of houses as it is. You’re taking 30, 40, 50 houses off the rental market for families and having them tied up with vacation homes.”
Kathryn Henderson said of the 16 houses on her block on Fitch Mountain east of Healdsburg, the last five sold have been for vacation rentals. “When my husband told me another house up the street sold for a vacation rental, I cried,” she said.
It’s not that the rental owners are bad people, she added with a sigh. She grieves the loss of real neighbors she knows and with whom she can talk.
“I don’t have a neighborhood anymore. They’re all gone,” Henderson said “I don’t have people to interact with anymore.”
Many people who have dived into the new world of innkeeping on their own properties maintain that the experience is enriching, allowing them to meet people from around the globe.
“It’s an amazing way to travel. You can travel all over the world on Airbnb and it’s an interesting way to meet people,” said Cohen, an attorney who trains lawyers in the stress-reducing practice of mindfulness.
But for all the positive intercultural exchanges it fosters, the proliferation of vacation rentals has, in some cases, pitted neighbor against neighbor.
Cohen and Speizer used to be friends with their neighbors up the hill, Joan and Peter Geary. But when the Gearys learned about their vacation rental, things got frosty.
Joan Geary, who also opposes other vacation rentals in her neighborhood, said their single-lane, dead-end road is too narrow and has no turn-arounds. Strangers have run up to her property. She was terrified one night when a taxi pulled up to her private drive at 11:30 p.m., shining its headlights into her kitchen window and idling for at least five minutes. Geary reacted by installing a gate.
“We were very close friends,” she lamented. “Now we won’t talk to them.”
Speizer said he believes the traffic argument is a red herring, and that a full-time renter in their cottage would produce more car trips than the occasional weekender.
“This is very much part of the sharing economy,” Cohen reflected. “For a community like Sonoma where you have a couple of super fancy hotels and a bunch that are not anything to write home about, this is a way for people to enjoy our beautiful place here and really feel at home. We feel lucky to be able to share it.”
Chia Seed Parfait. Vegan Food Truck Seed on the Go features comfort classics with a twist.
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Chia Seed Parfait. Vegan Food Truck Seed on the Go features comfort classics with a twist.
Let’s face it. Vegan isn’t really a thing anymore.
Or, rather we’re all looking toward more “plant-based” foods as a healthy alternative to the meat-obsession of the last 10 years (yes, even me). We’re looking for foods that fit into the myriad dietary restrictions/lifestyle choices we’re making for both our bodies and the planet. We’re looking for delicious, natural food that we don’t have to regret in 10 minutes or 10 years.
Cheezy mac and kale. Vegan Food Truck Seed on the Go features comfort classics with a twist.
So, it makes sense that Jerri Hastey’sSeed On The Go food truck, which is entirely vegan, is one of the most popular mobile eateries in Sonoma County.
In fact, her meat and dairy-free mobile menu has gotten the attention of Ellen Degeneres and People magazine, who are huge fans.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Hastey’s biggest promoter is her daughter, actress Jessica Chastain.
Chia Seed Parfait. Vegan Food Truck Seed on the Go features comfort classics with a twist.
Hastey said that it was Jessica who turned her on to a vegan diet years ago, and she lost 60 pounds in six months giving up meat and dairy. “I feel good. That’s my motivation for making this food. It gives me energy,” she said.
The menu changes up, but includes comforting dishes like colcannon soup, mac and cheese, a vegan take on the sloppy joe, her butter pecan waffles and her signature Chia Tapioca Parfait. Made with cashew almond cream and chia seeds, layered between strawberries and mangos, its a refreshing treat that keeps fans coming back.
“I love to play with food. These are my grandma’s recipes with the same old down to earth flavors,” she said. Without all the guilt.
You can find Hastey most Saturdays at the Santa Rosa Community Farmer’s Market at the Veterans Building or online at facebook.com/seedonthego
Hand Made Events Pop Up Party. Photo: Hand Made Events.
Hand Made Events Pop Up Party. Photo: Hand Made Events.
What do you call a pop-up dinner in Sonoma where you have to bring your own food, wine and table decor?
Hand Made Events calls it a party. After sell-out events in SF, LA and Brooklyn, the Sonoma-based company is bringing their unique concept to Wine Country on May 23.
Hand Made Events Pop Up Party. Photo: Hand Made Events.
What makes the experience so much fun? It’s an exercise in creativity and community. Groups of guests are guided to a secret location (in this case somewhere in the Sonoma Valley) a few hours before the start of the event. Wearing chic all-white ensembles, friends collaborate on the menu, the table decor and the drink list, with just two hours to set-up before the 7p.m. dinner, followed by entertainment and dancing.
“We are so happy to bring PopUp Dinner back to our hometown.” said Nicole Benjamin, co-founder of Hand Made Events, “Sonoma is a place known for its exceptional beauty, food, and wine so it truly is the perfect location.”
Hand Made Events Pop Up Party. Photo: Hand Made Events.
Tickets are $38 per person (remember, you bring all your own food and drink) for a night with hundreds of new (and old) friends under the stars of the Valley of the Moon. After the event, you get to truck out all your own stuff as well, leaving no trace behind. Details and tickets at handmade-events.com.
Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy uses chestnut leaf stalks held together with hawthorn thorns for his piece “Surface Tension” on display at the Hess Collection just outside of Napa. (photo by John Burgess)
Art with a side of wine, anyone? Or is it wine with a side of art?
In a mix of culture and viticulture, a number of local wineries have impressive art and sculpture collections that are accessible to visitors, and spring is an ideal time to visit. It’s an opportunity to appreciate artists’ palettes while indulging your own palate.
Imagery Estate Winery
Imagery Estate says it is home to the largest single-themed art collection in the world, with every painting featuring the replica of the Athens Parthenon that stands at the nearby Benziger Family Winery.
Imagery owner Joe Benziger invites artists from around the world to send their artwork to the Glen Ellen winery for possible use on a wine label. The catch: the Parthenon replica must appear in the painting. There have been some inventive renditions over the years, and many of the label paintings hang in the tasting room.
Imagery has two patios and a “varietal walk” that provides information on various grape types. A mesmerizing wind sculpture by Lyman Whitaker changes with every breeze.
Imagery Estate Winery, 14335 Highway 12, Glen Ellen, 800-989-8890, imagerywinery.com
Large-scale sculptures dot the landscape at Paradise Ridge Winery. (photo by Crista Jeremiason)
Paradise Ridge Winery
At this winery estate in northern Santa Rosa, lively sculptures dot the hills and valleys like exotic animals on a wildlife preserve. A “sound work” by Peter Hess is audible on arrival, beckoning visitors into the woods and sculpture grottoes, where the works run a stylistic gamut.
Some installations are transplants from the Burning Man festival in Nevada, including “LOVE” by Laura Kimpton, visible from the perched tasting patio, and the interactive “Temple of Remembrance” by David Best, a tribute to those loved and lost. Visitors are encouraged to write names of loved ones on ribbons; once a year, the ribbons are taken to Burning Man for inclusion in the fire effigy.
A new exhibit, “Conversations in Sculpture,” opens June 20, presented by the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation. And don’t miss the Wine and Sunsets events, held every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m., May through mid-October. Food vendors and live music join the art and wine mix ($8 in advance, $10 at the door).
Paradise Ridge Winery, 4545 Thomas Lake Harris Drive, Santa Rosa, 707-528-9463, prwinery.com
The Hess Collection Winery
This Napa winery is home to a jaw-dropping collection of works by luminaries of the art world, many acquired by owner Donald Hess before the artists achieved their fame.
Over several decades, the Swiss-born Hess has nurtured friendships with the 23 artists whose works are on exhibit at the winery’s contemporary art museum, including Frank Stella, Francis Bacon, Robert Motherwell and Andy Goldsworthy.
Stroll the sculpture garden while sipping Small-Block Series Merlot and discuss brushstrokes or realism under a canopy of fragrant wisteria. Share the shady garden with a large bronze by Armando called “The Campaign” and an abstract Buddha by Joseph Cornell.
Guided tours of the collection ($30) are offered at 10:15 a.m. daily, with reservations strongly suggested.
The Hess Collection, 4411 Redwood Road, Napa, 707-255-1144, hesscollection.com
One of the six giant spike sculptures by artist-in-residence Gordon Huether that overlook the fountain at Artesa Vineyards & WInery in Napa’s Carneros region. (photo by Charlie Gesell)
Artesa Vineyards & Winery
Artesa is graced by the majestic architecture of Spanish architect Domingo Triay, whose visitor center blends into the natural surroundings of Napa Carneros. The wraparound terraces offer panoramic views and a peek at the top portion of a 65-foot Samuel Yates sculpture of stacked metal drawers installed below at the di Rosa preserve. Artesa has its own collection of outdoor sculpture, thanks to artist- in-residence Gordon Huether.
His most arresting work is a series of six monolithic spikes made of resin, fiberglass and powdered aluminum that form a semicircle around the enormous fountain visitors pass on their way to the tasting room. A few steps beyond, Huether’s metal and glass sculpture, “Reflections,” catches the light in prismatic colors. More of his work adorns the walls inside the winery.
Artesa Vineyards & Winery, 1345 Henry Road, Napa, 707-224-1668, artesawinery.com
“At first, I was horrified,” he admitted. “But then everybody thought it was funny. The stoner part is true, but the savant part you can only hope for.”
That, in a nutshell, is Tony Magee. Where some might wince at being called a “stoner” in bold, 64-point type, instead he’s uneasy about being labeled a sage.
Growing up in the Windy City and dropping out of the new Bauhaus Institute of Design in the early 1980s to tour with a reggae band, he said, “I never thought I’d have a reason to return to Chicago again.”
The inspiration was three-fold — shipping costs, beer freshness and world domination. One day, he did the math and realized how much he was spending in freight, “just to cross two mountain ranges and a desert to get to Iowa.”
So far, he said, Chicago has been a lot easier to deal with than Petaluma, the city he moved to after opening the original Lagunitas brewery in Marin in 1993.
“What I learned is you want the city to want what you want,” said Magee, who splits time these days between his home in Point Reyes Station and a condo in Chicago. “In Petaluma, we weren’t always so well-aligned and sometimes I still don’t think we are today.”
In 1987, while trying to kick a drug habit, he moved to Northern California and got hooked instead on home brewing. He was dabbling in the printing business, but it was craft beer that piqued his creativity. When his wife, Carissa Brader, booted him out of the kitchen, he scraped together enough funding to open his brewery. Growing leaps and bounds over the past two decades, Lagunitas is now the sixth-largest craft brewery in the country, thanks to the ubiquitous flagship IPA and relentless hipster marketing.
“I like to say we’re in the tribe-building business,” Magee said, repeating what has become his favorite catch phrase.
The latest Lagunitas slogan, “Beer Speaks; People Mumble,” pairs well with “CouchTrippin’ to Austin” marketing campaigns for the annual SXSW festival, and his rambling, irreverent Twitter feed.
At 54, Magee sees beer as the original social media. “That’s why they called them pubs. They were the original public houses on the block, where people would go and share news of births, deaths and air their grievances.”
Thanks to the latest version of social media, Magee got an earful from outraged hop heads in January when he filed a trade infringement lawsuit against Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. for what he saw as its marketing of a copycat IPA, right down to the print font and label design.
Although Magee dropped the suit a day later, he’s still a little bitter. “At some point, it doesn’t matter if you’re right because your customers have a different feeling about it and you have to pay attention to that.”
Can he imagine a day when he can look back and laugh about it? “You know, brother, I sure hope so.”
Vinnie Cilurzo, Russian River Brewing Co. (photo by Chris Hardy)
Walking through buzzing construction and renovation at the Russian River Brewing Co. production facility in Santa Rosa, Vinnie Cilurzo is all about sharing.
He explains that the new brewhouse he’s installing was supposed to cost $500,000 but is coming in closer to $750,000. The old brewhouse — the 50-barrel kettle and mash tun where the beermaking process starts — was a hand-me-down from Dogfish Head Ales in Delaware. At the same time, he’s brewing Pliny the Elder (the double IPa that accounts for around 70 percent of Russian River’s beer sales) at Firestone Walker Brewing Co. in Paso Robles.
Along with innovation and off-the-charts reviews from critics, Cilurzo is just as well known in the beer business for sharing. Russian River Brewing’s owner and brewmaster has published recipes online for both Pliny the Elder and the coveted, tiny-production Pliny the Younger. Up-and-coming brewers often call Cilurzo for advice, and he gives it. The same goes for competing brewery owners.
And then we reach the barrel room. “This is the only area where we don’t share in the brewing world,” Cilurzo said, lifting a metal roll-up door to reveal a mountain of 450 mostly French oak barrels filled with beer and kept at between 58 and 62 degrees. “We don’t tell people our barrel sources.”
From floor to ceiling, on the left, is Temptation, a blonde ale aged in Chardonnay barrels. In the middle, Supplication is a brown ale aged in Pinot noir barrels with sour cherries. On the right is Consecration, a dark ale aged with currants in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels. The barrels are sourced from small, high-end Sonoma wineries, after three to four years in use. French oak barrels are more porous, giving ample space for Cilurzo’s handpicked funky wild yeasts to burrow in and extract complex flavors from the wood and the wine that was once there. He holds the door open just long enough for a visitor to squint and try to decipher a few barrel markings, then rolls the door back down. And off we go to check out his personal 15-gallon “glorified homebrew system,” which doubles as an experimental R&D tank. Cilurzo has trademarked the term “RnD” to let his small army of brewers (he now over- sees seven brewers and 90 total employees) occasionally stretch their wings and get creative with a new line of beers such as RnD Pale and RnD Pils.
“That’s the one thing: When you brew at Russian River, there really isn’t any room to be creative, because that’s my job,” he said.
In the brewing universe, in which Sonoma is a major constellation, it’s hard to find a more humble guy surrounded by more insanity and hoopla. All you have to do is drop by the Russian River brewpub on the first Friday in February to witness the madness that seems to follow Cilurzo like yeast on sugar.
At least a day before, lines start forming around the block in downtown Santa Rosa as beer lovers from around the world make the pilgrimage for Pliny the Younger, the famous triple IPA released for only two weeks every year. It’s what happens when the Beer Advocate website ranks Younger the No. 1 in the U.S. in 2010, something that caught Cilurzo, 44, and his wife, Natalie (whom he describes as “the backbone of the company”), by surprise when fans started lining up to buy Younger. They sold out in hours.
“I think we finally got it figured out this year,” Cilurzo said of the 2015 younger release. “The new three-hour table limit (in the brewpub) made a huge difference.”
Yet the hype doesn’t end in February. At beer festivals all year long, all over the world, Cilurzo spends half his time posing for photos and selfies with fans.
“The popularity is weird, totally weird,” he said. “We never forget that we wouldn’t be here without our customers. I think it goes back to that saying, ‘Win humbly, lose humbly.’ There are new breweries out there trying to create the next cult beer, but it’s not something you do on purpose. It’s like a band that takes off or a new restaurant or a chef. It can only be consumer-driven. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it.”
At his the tiny taproom, Cilurzo pulls out a few glasses and asks, “You want a beer?” He starts with the new STS Pils, a dry, hop-forward Pilsner that’s been on tap intermittently for about four months at the pub. Inspired by a Pilsner tasting trip through Germany, Cilurzo is ready to push forward with larger-scale production of the beer named for the acronym of the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) he frequents.
In many ways, his experimentations (and definitely the secret wine-barrel room) are an extension of the family business. Growing up in Temecula, Cilurzo found a second home in the cellar room at Cilurzo Family Vineyards, founded by his parents Audrey and Vincent Cilurzo. Inspired more by hops than grapes, he opened Blind Pig Brewing Co. in Temecula in 1994; it’s where he is credited with inventing the double IPA style, meaning twice the bitter hops character of a “regular” IPA.
Then it was on to Korbel Champagne Cellars in Guerneville, which hired him to run the newly created Russian River Brewing Co. in 1997. When Korbel bailed on the beer business, it allowed Cilurzo to keep the company, and he opened in 2004 on Fourth Street in downtown Santa Rosa.
In 2008, when he opened the production brewery a block off Santa Rosa avenue, Cilurzo’s beer production increased from 3,000 barrels to more than 14,000 barrels a year. That same year, he was given the Brewers association’s Russell Schehrer
award for Innovation in Brewing. Given the hype and demand, Russian River could have expanded much faster and larger, easily rivaling craft giants like Lagunitas and Sierra Nevada.
“I think the misinformation is that we don’t want to grow,” Cilurzo said. “It’s not that we don’t want to grow, it’s that we like growing organically.”
Seven years later, he’s maxed out on tank space and is thinking about opening another production facility in the not-too-distant future. There is also a “side project,” called Sonoma Pride explains as an employee delivers a paper plate of venison that Cilurzo smoked after a deer hunt near Lake Sonoma. The Amasa American Wild Ale with which he washes down the venison is made with Brettanomyces yeast in the bottle-conditioning process; it’s a rustic, earthy characteristic winemakers try to avoid, yet is encouraged in this beer, adding a layer of complexity.
“It’s less about making more beer and more about making better beer with better equipment and more efficient equipment,” Cilurzo explained.
Over the years, he’s had hundreds of offers to expand production and distribution. Cilurzo recently received an email from “a guy who was in town on business and fell in love with Pliny.”
“He said, ‘I would love to be your exclusive distributor in Dubai.’”
Given his fondness for sharing, did Cilurzo reply?
“Of course, I reply to everything,” he said. “I had to tell him we weren’t quite prepared to expand to Dubai just yet.”
Naomi Starkman of CivilEats.com has won a James L. Knight Fellowship
Naomi Starkman of CivilEats.com has won a James S. Knight Fellowship
Sonoma County journalist Naomi Starkman of the popular food system blog Civil Eats has been named a 2015 James S. Knight Fellow. The prestigious award is given each year to just 20 individuals worldwide to study a particular issue facing the media. Starkman will spend her time looking at how to make food policy news part of readers’ daily diet.
“My goal is to explore ways in which Civil Eats—and all online publications—will survive in this rapidly changing media landscape while making sure that award-winning, independent journalism stays alive,” she said. Amen, sister.
In an editorial on her website she wrote, “Journalism and agriculture are two sides of the same coin: Both have been made artificially cheap. We have come to expect free media, just as many expect to be able to buy a dozen eggs for under $3.00.
But lack of social investment in both of these public goods is leading us down the wrong path…buying healthier, sustainably produced food helps keep the environment cleaner, ensures that farm animals and workers are treated better, and leads to better personal health outcomes,” adding, “But investing in well-crafted reporting and thoughtful commentary is equally important in a world of listicles, sponsored content, sensational headlines, and dumbed-down aggregation.”
The fellowship is based at Stanford, where journalism and technology are being carefully studied. It’s also geographically between the Central Valley — the farming capital of the nation — and Silicon Valley. “This ideal location foments solutions to this food journalism question and is the perfect place for me to incubate Civil Eats as I mine its myriad assets,” she said. We can’t wait to see what she comes up with.
