Santa Rosa
24 open around Sonoma County
The county seat does the drinking. Six brewers, two barrel rooms and a wine bar sit among neighborhood kitchens, and two more rooms wait south down the 101 at Cotati and Rohnert Park.
The towns
Restaurants18
Inman Family Wines
Solid · Santa Rosa
booking essential
Kathleen Inman dry-farms Pinot Noir on ten and a half acres of Olivet Road and times the skin contact on her rosé by driving out for two tacos and back.
Rosso Pizzeria & Wine Bar
Solid · Santa Rosa
book ahead
Fried chicken coated in arborio rice flour, on smashed potatoes loaded with butter and cream, under a caramelized pancetta glaze.
The Spinster Sisters
Solid · Restaurant · Santa Rosa
book ahead
Asparagus and maitake go into a tempura batter that comes out champagne-colored and stays crisp, with a soy, ginger, daikon and sake sauce beside it.
Bird & The Bottle
Listed · Santa Rosa
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Mark Stark cooks over a custom grill that weighs 1,600 pounds and runs near 800 degrees, with a V-channel cut into it to catch the fat and baste the meat back.
LIOCO Wine Barrel Room
Listed · Santa Rosa
book ahead
Matt and Sara Licklider press their whites hard with no sulfur, on purpose, and put zero new oak on anything they make.
Shady Oak Brewing Company
Listed · Santa Rosa
walk-inthe room’s own account
Started in 2013 as one person filling bottles by hand. It now runs a taproom on the corner between downtown Santa Rosa and the SOFA arts district, six nights a week.
Stark’s Steak & Seafood
Listed · Santa Rosa
book aheadthe room’s own account
The beef is dry-aged in house, and the house burger is ground from the same aged meat as the steaks. An 1892 building in downtown Santa Rosa, open since 2008.
The Beverage People - Fermenter's Warehouse
Listed · Santa Rosa
walk-inthe room’s own account
Eleven ferments on the list, and olives, vinegar and cheese are three of them. Open Mondays during harvest, which tells you who shops here.
Willi’s Wine Bar
Listed · Santa Rosa
book ahead
Mark and Terri Stark were running small plates out of an 1886 roadhouse from 2002.
Balletto Vineyards
Listed · Santa Rosa
book aheadthe room’s own account
John Balletto was seventeen when he took over the family farm in 1977. He built the largest vegetable operation in Northern California, then pulled it all out and planted Pinot Noir.
CIBO Rustico Pizzeria
Listed · Santa Rosa
book aheadthe room’s own account
Roasted zucchini flowers for $18 next to a wood oven, in a Santa Rosa complex that also holds a brewery and a set of micro-wineries.
Dierk's Parkside Cafe
Listed · Restaurant · Santa Rosa
walk-inthe room’s own account
Mark Dierkhising cooks a Country Benedict and a duck confit hash on Santa Rosa Avenue, and finishes with his grandmother's cinnamon-sugar pull-aparts.
Fogbelt Brewing Company
Listed · Restaurant · Santa Rosa
walk-inthe room’s own account
Named for the belt of coastal fog between Big Sur and the Oregon border where the redwoods grow. The barrel-aged and experimental beers are cellared at this original Santa Rosa site.
Punchdown Cellars
Listed · Santa Rosa
booking essentialthe room’s own account
A custom crush facility on Hopper Avenue, which is where small labels without a winery of their own go to make wine. Not a tasting room.
Sunce Winery
Listed · Santa Rosa
book aheadthe room’s own account
A Santa Rosa winery on Olivet Road, with no hours, no fee and no visiting terms published anywhere. Call before you drive out.
Wattle Creek Winery
Listed · Santa Rosa
book aheadthe room’s own account
Wattle Creek's only listed address is a tasting inside DeLoach Vineyards on Olivet Road. Nothing published says whether that arrangement still stands.
Craft beer3
HenHouse Brewing Company
Solid · Brewery · Santa Rosa
walk-in
Big Chicken is the beer people chase, a limited-release double IPA out of an industrial room off Bellevue Ave. There is no kitchen. Popcorn is free, and Red Horse Pizza parks out front.
Moonlight Brewing Company
Solid · Brewery · Santa Rosa
walk-in
Brian Hunt opened the first microbrewery in Santa Rosa in 1992 and still decides a beer is done by sight, smell and taste. Death & Taxes is the black lager people come for.
Russian River Brewing Company (4th St)
Solid · Brewery · Santa Rosa
walk-in
The original downtown pub, 725 Fourth Street, open every day from 11 until 10. For two weeks each spring it pours Pliny the Younger and people start queueing at five in the morning.
Producers3
Paradise Ridge Winery
Solid · Producer · Santa Rosa
book ahead
The Tubbs Fire took every building on this hill on 8 October 2017 and the Bycks rebuilt it underinsured.
Woodenhead Wines
Listed · Producer · Santa Rosa
book aheadthe room’s own account
Nikolai Stez does not own a pump. The wine moves by hand, the caps go down by hand, the press is a basket, and the yeast is cultured, which he says out loud.
Pellegrini-Olivet Lane
Listed · Producer · Santa Rosa
book aheadthe room’s own account
Vincent and Aida Pellegrini planted this in 1975, forty acres of Wente-clone Chardonnay and twenty of Martini-clone Pinot Noir, when California had about five hundred acres of Chardonnay in total.
Elsewhere around Sonoma County