Trip Home

The trip home begins at a reasonable time as we travel British Airways from Lyon to London to San Francisco. We take several taxis, buses, trains and planes and of course we leave from a boat. Our flight from London to San Francisco was on an A380 which holds 33% more passengers than a 747 but given its 2 levels we didn’t experience the hugeness of it. We get home in time to go to bed at a reasonable time given the time change of 9 hours.

The long trip gave us time to reflect on our travels and what a good trip we had.  We realized that we didn’t write enough about the winemakers on our cruise. David Mounts from Mounts family winery was responsible for getting together 5 families that have been in the farming and wine making for many years and they have known each other and worked together since the 1970s. Many of the dry creek farms go back three or four generations.

This resulted in much story telling about themselves and how the dry creek valley has changed over the years. They talk about when there were 14 wineries and today there are 167. It is a premium wine growing region in northern Sonoma County that produce wines of excellence from a wide variety of grapes, including the world-class zinfandel for which we are best known. This diversity is due to the unique characteristics which comprises many different soil types, elevations and exposures to sun, wind and water, all within a narrow 16-by-2-mile valley. It’s our favorite area.

It was a wonderful trip up the Rhone. The 144 people on the boat drank 1,104 bottles of wine from 5 Dry Creek Valley wineries (plus 600 bottles of local wine from Ama Waterways), explored 8 towns and cities while sailing through gorgeous French wine regions on the infamous Rhone river, heard from 5 wineries over winemaker dinners.

The Wine Makers

The Wineries