Clocking the moments on our watches, knocking out a few Tweets as we ignore the scenery around us, stuffing down dinner without really enjoying a single bite … it’s no wonder we often come up blank when we try to remember a special night out.

Make the journey the destination.

Here are five restaurants where the drive is as much a part of the experience as the dining. From winding coastal roads to relaxing forays into the heart of dairy country and past world-famous vineyards, these are opportunities to relax, unplug and be part of a moment. Your inbox can wait. At least until you get home.

Farmhouse Inn: 7871 River Road, Forestville, 707-887-3300, farmhouseinn.com

This cozy inn run by the brother and sister team of Joe and Catherine Bartolomei is tucked among the vineyards of the Russian River Valley. The space was converted from a rundown motel into a luxurious collection of cottages, suites, spacious barn-house rooms and a Michelin-starred restaurant (the jewel of the location). Chef Steve Litke has reigned over the kitchen since before anyone can remember, creating signature dishes such as Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit (local rabbit served three ways), Dungeness crab and seared duck breast, paired with one of the best wine lists in Northern California (chosen by wine director and Master Sommelier Geoff Kruth).

The drive: The 7.5-mile drive west along River Road from Highway 101 winds past some of the most scenic vineyards in Sonoma. Watch for Martinelli Winery & Vineyards about three miles in, a pioneering family business. Farther along, you’ll pass Pinot Noir and Zinfandel producer Woodenhead Vintners. Soak up the miles of vineyards, wildlife and groves of eucalyptus and redwoods along the way.

Café Aquatica: 10439 Highway 1, Jenner, 707-865-2251, cafeaquatica.com

Perched on a rocky knoll just above the Russian River estuary, this casual beach shack is an insider’s secret. Not only does the café micro-roast its own coffee (with excellent pour-overs), but also makes its own soups, breads and other baked goods using organic and non-GMO ingredients each morning. The food is ridiculously good, especially when you’re sitting outside watching paddleboarders float by.

Looking for something a bit more upscale? Just up the road is River’s End Restaurant, with haute coastal dining and a seasonal Dungeness crab tasting menu. 10048 Highway 1, Jenner, 707-865-2484, ilovesunsets.com

The drive: Head north on Highway 1 from Marin for a scenic ocean drive, or along Highway 116 through Guerneville and Monte Rio, following the Russian River. The latter takes you past historic F. Korbel & Bros. winery, groves of redwoods and the tiny hamlet of Duncans Mills, where you can visit galleries, Mr. Trombly’s Teas and Sophie’s Cellars, a wine purveyor favored by some of the businessmen and celebrities who stop by during the annual Bohemian Grove gathering.

Rocker Oysterfeller’s: 14415 Highway 1, Valley Ford, 707-876-1983, rockeroysterfellers.com

As the restaurant’s name implies, local Tomales Bay oysters are a specialty at this quaint Valley Ford spot, served on the half shell, baked with bacon and cream cheese, or with a little garlic butter. But this isn’t just an oyster shack. Owners Shona Campbell and Brandon Guenther serve up some serious grit-kicking Southern flavors, including buttermilk-fried chicken, oyster po’ boys, cheese grits and collard greens, along with plenty of seasonal specialties. There is a full bar and weekend brunch.

The drive: From Petaluma, take Bodega Avenue west to Valley Ford Road. The next 10 miles wind through the center of North Bay dairy country, with rolling hills and family-run ranches as far as the eye can see. The vineyards are fewer, and sheep, cow and chicken sightings are plentiful. Along the way to the restaurant in “downtown” Valley Ford, you’ll pass Bellwether Farms (known for its sheep’s-milk cheeses and yogurt) and Bloomfield Farms, which has you-pick produce and casual brunches in the fields during spring and summer months.

Fremont Diner: 2698 Fremont Drive, Sonoma, 707-938-7370, thefremontdiner.com

The Fremont Diner, hidden away among Sonoma’s grapevines and pastures, is the sort of place every traveler dreams of stumbling upon, but rarely ever does. Oozing “nouveau decrepitude,” a heavy dose of John Deere chic and the irresistible lure of a butter- and pork-soaked menu that would bring a tear of recognition to grandpappy’s eye, the diner is everything good about, well, roadside diners. Here, “Praise the Lard” isn’t just a quirky tagline but a mission, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.

The drive: It’s a roughly 35-minute drive from Petaluma to the diner. There are faster ways to get there, but take the winding drive from Lakeville Highway to Frates Road, which ends where it hits Adobe Road. There you’ll find Green String Farm, a Biodynamic farming project that has incredible local produce year-round and a quaint market open most days. Continue southeast on Adobe Road, which becomes Stage Gulch Road. When you come to Arnold Drive (Highway 116), turn right, and then take a left on Fremont Drive (aka Highway 12/121). On the way, you’ll meander through pastures, vineyards, wetlands and some of Sonoma’s lesser-traveled back country. If you continue past the diner (corner of Fremont Drive and South Central Avenue) a few more miles, you come to Highway 29, which takes you up the Napa Valley.

Backyard: 6566 Front St., Forestville, 707-820-8445, backyardforestville.com

Unlike a thousand other restaurants with twee Mason jars and artisan farminess slathered all over their menus, Forestville’s Backyard restaurant gets its dirt cred authentically. Chef-owner Daniel Kedan sources from his own backyard culinary gardens and those of his ranch and farming neighbors. The alum of Ad Hoc in Yountville has created a friendly, community-focused restaurant that relies on seasonal produce, foragers and whole-animal butchery as its foundation.

The drive: From Sebastopol, drive north on Highway 116. Before you leave town, be sure to check out The Barlow, recently converted from an old apple-processing plant to a shiny new artisan food mecca. There are distilleries, breweries, wineries, restaurants and coffee roasters, as well as a large community grocer. As you drive along the highway, you’ll see apple orchards, some of which are now being used for the region’s burgeoning cider production. Merry Edwards Winery and Paul Hobbs Winery are among the noted producers you’ll pass along the way. At the intersection of Guerneville Road and Gravenstein Highway, stop in at Mom’s Apple Pie for a flaky, fruit-packed treat or grab a quick takeout order of fried chicken at Red’s Apple Roadhouse next door. Turn onto Ross Station Road for a side trip to Iron Horse Vineyards or stop at nearby Kozlowski Farms for its great gift store featuring the family’s jams, pies and sauces.

The Seghesios simply wanted to preserve family traditions, offering VIP visitors to their Healdsburg winery tastes of a cured salami they produced from recipes brought from the old country when the family emigrated from Italy in 1886.

Then in the summer of 2011, Seghesio Family Vineyards ran into modern health regulations.

It turns out that the state requires a mind-bogglingly detailed plan for producing meat, spelling out exactly where and how every scrap will be handled. It’s either that or find a U.S. Department of Agriculture-approved facility to do it for you, and there isn’t one of those anywhere near the winery.

So former CEO Pete Seghesio, the third generation of the family in Sonoma, decided to shift his focus from grapes to building a state-of-the-art facility to produce the family recipes and help other artisan meat producers make their products without running afoul of health inspectors.

“It’s really about trying to preserve family traditions but make (them) marketable and saleable in a modern marketplace, and to do that, you’ve got to be USDA-certified; you’ve got to be willing to invest to be able to do it,” said Seghesio as he stood on the unfinished second floor of the building in Healdsburg that he hopes to open later this year.

The family sold the winery in 2011, and Seghesio decided to invest a considerable sum (he declined to say how much) to build a gleaming new facility to be called the Healdsburg Meat Co. The building is located north of Healdsburg’s plaza, at the site of the post office that burned down in 2010. The investment will allow him to produce and sell to the public cured meats, a process that by law must be done under the watchful and pervasive eye of USDA inspectors.

His story isn’t unusual. Artisan food and beverage producers often run up against regulations that are out of date or designed for huge industrial operations rather than cottage industries. From meat producers to salsa makers, from small farmers to makers of spirits and ciders, the details of local, state and federal regulations can shape the way they do business, or put an end to it entirely.

Evan Wiig, founder of agriculture networking site The Farmers Guild, learned this a year ago when he and some business partners tried to produce hams in the style of prosciutto, speck and Iberico, from livestock raised on their small farm near Valley Ford. After a few delicious experiments shared with friends and family, they began to look into the regulations for selling their products to the public.

That stopped the project cold. Before Wiig and his partners even broke ground, the costs of making their own cured ham at the farm near the Sonoma-Marin county line began to spiral insanely out of control.

“Frankly, we stopped counting at $150,000,” Wiig said. “It would have kept going up from there. How high, I don’t know.”

Seghesio’s planned business will feature a café and butcher counter that sells locally sourced meat products. But the heart of the operation will be completely outside public view: the tightly regulated workshop where carcasses will be broken down and processed into chops, sausages and salumi. Temperature will be precisely controlled, access sharply limited, sanitation rigorously enforced. A regional USDA inspector will have full access to the facility during operating hours, and the business must maintain an office onsite for the inspector’s exclusive use.

“It costs a lot, it’s a lot; the USDA portion, it’s pretty prohibitive,” Seghesio said. “That’s why you see all the USDA facilities are large, large, large facilities.”

Meat isn’t the only artisan product that runs into regulatory obstacles.

Sonoma County cider makers Ellen Cavalli and Scott Heath ran into roadblocks with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), a division of the Treasury Department.

They want to reintroduce Americans to apple-based cider, once a common drink in Colonial homes, but since Prohibition a nearly extinct art form. Their Tilted Shed Ciderworks near Forestville is part of a small but rapidly expanding renaissance in the artisan cider world.

Heath wants to explore a small specialty form of cider known as New England style. Colonial cider makers in the icy Northeastern states would try to preserve barrels of fall cider through the long winter by adding molasses to boost the alcohol level and sprinkling in raisins to promote a slow, steady fermentation that covers the surface cider in a protective blanket of carbon dioxide.

“There are New England ciders that are really beautiful, these little touches of molasses, vanilla things, other flavor profiles that come out with it that are really special,” Cavalli explained. Yet the TTB, which is primarily responsible for collecting taxes on alcoholic beverages, also exerts tight control over the naming and labeling of wine, beer, cider and spirits. As far as the feds are concerned, what Tilted Shed wants to produce and sell isn’t cider at all. By adding raisins, Cavalli said, the beverage would have to be called something like “apple wine with spices and other natural flavoring.”

“That just sounds like you’re making crap,” she said. “There’s no credibility to that kind of thing, so we’re not going to do it.”

For small-batch liquor distilleries, meanwhile, the problem isn’t tax officials, but rather state laws that block their ability to get their products to the consumer. California distillers do not have the right to sell their goods directly to consumers, as breweries, wineries and cideries do. That means they have to rely exclusively on the wholesaler middlemen to get their spirits into stores, bars and restaurants.

A wholesaler is under no obligation to carry small-batch products, so distillers can’t afford to take the risk of producing something odd or innovative, for fear they would be stuck with hundreds of gallons of liquor they can’t sell, according to Timo Marshall, co-founder of artisan distillery Spirit Works in Sebastopol.

“Say we wanted to do one barrel in a very particular way,” he explained. “We may finish it in a different cask or in a particular way; we may blend two of our whiskies together to get a particular flavor. That’s the kind of thing that happens all the time in the wine and beer world, where producers can test the market by selling experiments and mistakes directly to the public.”

Distillers, however, “literally cannot sell that product, because they can’t find a distributor willing to take on that product,” he said.

Spirits producers won a small victory in the California legislature in 2013, gaining the right to offer tastings at their facilities, but their campaign to allow direct sales to the public died when it ran into stiff resistance from distributors.

Other artisan industries have been more successful. The Bale Grist Mill in Napa Valley, for example, is likely to be partially exempted from state and local health regulations by the state Legislature this year, freeing it to sell its flour and corn products ground on the huge grindstones powered by a towering waterwheel.

The mill ran afoul of local health regulations in 2008 when inspectors found that the newly restored mill did not meet modern health codes for factories producing flour and similar products. The mill, built in 1846, could not be completely sealed against wildlife such as bats and mice, and the wooden structure would have to be modified with floors, counters and other surfaces that are deemed impervious and washable.

Since then, the mill has operated under an awkward compromise in which it gives its flours away in 1-pound bags, with a $5 donation requested. Bags must be stamped, “not for human consumption,” although humans do consume the products with no reported illnesses or injuries, according to the Napa County Regional Park and Open Space District, which operates the mill.

State Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, is pushing a bill that would create an exemption for such historic mills (the Bale Grist Mill is the only one in the state, as it turns out). Her bill had been headed for easy passage in the 2013 session, but was stalled at the last minute when the state Department of Health asked for some changes. Wolk said she does not anticipate any difficulty reviving the bill and allowing the mill to sell its ground grains legally.

Home cooks scored a partial victory in 2012 when the legislature passed the California Homemade Food Act, permitting home producers to sell a wide variety of products directly to the public without having to rent space in a commercial kitchen, an expensive proposition. That opened up farmers markets and other venues to sell home-baked breads and tortillas, candies, jams and jellies, pasta and home-roasted coffee. But the act left untouched the ban on items considered hazardous if mishandled in production, including cured meat, cheese, pies or pastries that require refrigeration, pickles and anything based on tomatoes. The tomato ban alone cut out the potentially large market for homemade pasta sauces and salsas.

“It’s still pretty narrow,” said Christina Oatfield, policy director of the Oakland-based Sustainable Economies Law Center, which tries to help small producers deal with regulatory hurdles.

In some cases, regulation seems to be getting more stringent. Small farmers nationwide are nervously eyeing a new set of regulations proposed by the federal government after a 2006 E. coli outbreak in bagged spinach, and set to go into effect in 2015. Those rules dramatically tighten limits on the use of manure and compost, compel stricter water treatment for irrigation and washing, and require farmers to block wildlife of several kinds from the fields.

In a recent round of comments on the proposal, small and organic farmers warned that the regulations would be prohibitively expensive and undermine organic and eco-friendly traditional practices. They hope the Food and Drug Administration will relax the rules or carve out exemptions for very small growers.

Modern regulations tend to be tailored for large-scale production facilities, which have deeper pockets and can offset extra cost with greater efficiency. That leaves the little guys struggling to find a way to live with rules drafted without them in mind.

“We have a very good food safety system in this county, but it is large and industrial, and the cost to play in that game, it forces people to be very large,” Seghesio said. “And when you’re very large, you lose your creativity.”

At DaVero Farms and Winery, the grays of winter give way to spring’s unfolding palette. First come yellow acacia flowers and red-breasted robins on sloping green hillsides, followed soon by pussy willows at the edge of the pond, a snowy white frenzy of wild plum blossoms and the soft hues of narcissus, hyacinth and lilac. They all evoke memories of DaVero co-owner Colleen McGlynn’s childhood in Wisconsin, where every farm has a row of lilacs and day lilies.

“You can spot the bones of old farms by the flowers,” she said.

DaVero, near Healdsburg, stepped onto the culinary stage in the mid-1990s with the release of an extra-virgin olive oil, a blend of five varieties imported from Tuscany. Over the years, other DaVero products — olive oil soap, condiments from estate fruit, an estate Meyer lemon olive oil and a selection of wines from purchased grapes — joined in and before long, a small vineyard of Sagrantino was added above the olive orchards.

A few years ago, DaVero opened a tasting room on Westside Road in Healdsburg, and in 2013 completed construction of a small winery adjacent to the tasting room. There are herb and vegetable gardens, an orchard of Meyer lemon trees, white Alpine strawberries, persimmons, hens for eggs, sheep and a few pigs. What began as a foray into the world of olive oil has blossomed into a diverse family farm.

With all the pruning done and bud break in the vineyards likely still weeks away, there’s a bit of leisure. Tiny olive blossoms will begin to appear soon, but there’s little to be done except to hope it doesn’t rain during pollination. DaVero’s monthly Sunset Suppers start on the final Friday of May. These dinners, open to club members and the public, are sweet and intimate, with about 30 guests sitting at one long table in the tasting room, savoring estate wines and the garden’s bounty, along with ranch eggs, estate pork and lamb, and seafood from the coast. (Dinners typically cost $85, with discounts for club members.)

“You can plan your day a bit,” McGlynn said of this time of year, “and, if you’re lucky, take time for dinner.”

Dinner is often with Loretta Keller, owner and chef of San Francisco’s Coco500 restaurant. Keller is a longtime friend of McGlynn and her husband and DaVero co-owner, Ridgely Evers, and has a cabin near their ranch. She comes up frequently from San Francisco to relax and enjoy the season.

“Because everything is budding, you can feel the garden and the woods stirring under your feet,” Keller said of spring in Sonoma. “It is so full of promise. And the first asparagus, sweet and tender in an omelet!”

With spring afoot, the braises of winter and McGlynn’s beloved clay pots give way to lighter techniques, though fire is still central to her style. She’ll fire up the wood-burning grill for fresh favas, garlic scapes, asparagus and, perhaps, a butterflied leg of lamb massaged with spring herbs. The living room fireplace has a Tuscan grill. Evers, whose business resume includes leading the team that developed the QuickBooks bookkeeping software program for Intuit, can be found at the grill, turning homemade bread for bruschetta or cooking a spatchcocked (butterflied) chicken. An outdoor wood-burning oven, built on the north end of the farmhouse’s wrap-around porch, is at the ready when more than the two or three gather around the table.

The farm fills most produce needs year-round, along with eggs from hens that roam freely and the occasional lamb from a small flock of sheep that keeps weeds in the olive orchard and vineyard in check.

The gardens, overseen by Mary Foley, are not quite a full acre, with one patch at the farm and another at the winery, about an eighth of a mile away. A mix of perennials, vegetables and herbs, the gardens produce enough for McGlynn, Evers and their employees, who are free to harvest what they like. Some of the bounty goes to local food banks, and now and then the harvest makes it into the tasting room, where it used for the monthly suppers and sometimes sold to visitors.

“An onion is a hard sell,” McGlynn said, “but tourists can manage ripe tomatoes. They don’t typically have kitchens (where they stay) but can imagine taking a ripe, juicy tomato on a picnic.”

The tasting room at DaVero Farms and Winery is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. 766 Westside Road, Healdsburg, 707-431-8000, davero.com.

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SPRING VEGGIES

Not long after those first brave shoots of asparagus poke their tiny tips through the warming soil, spring’s harvest begins to unfold. Soon there are piles of spring onions and garlic, garlic scapes (the curly green tops) and tender fava beans begging to be shelled.

Cooking becomes simpler than in the dead of winter and when it comes to seasonings, chef Colleen McGlynn relies on little more than her DaVero Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil, fresh lemon, crunchy Maldon sea salt and herbs from the garden. Here are some of her favorite ways to enjoy the delicate harvest of spring:

Artichokes: Braised, with peas, mint, lemon and olive oil

Asparagus: Grilled (“Of course,” she says.)

Fava beans: Grilled whole, in their pods, drizzled with olive oil, lemon and Maldon salt; shelled, in risotto, with peas and pea shoots

Baby beets: Roasted, slightly smashed, with a splash of balsamic vinegar

Baby fennel bulbs: Braised in olive oil; shaved into a salad

Garlic scapes: Grilled, drizzled with olive oil, lemon and Maldon sea salt

Spring herbs: Green Goddess dressing with mint, tarragon and parsley over Little Gem and butter leaf lettuces; massaged into leg of lamb

Nettles: Pasta with nettle pesto; soup

Spring onions: Grilled

Pea shoots: Wilted; in pasta; in stir-fry; in risotto

Sorrel and spinach: Sauteed with shallots and spooned onto grilled bread; in soup

Radishes: Shaved, lightly dressed and topped with soft-boiled farm eggs

Rhubarb: With strawberries, in pies and galettes

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WINES