[Silly Little Cars] Santa Cruz Mountains Silly Little Wine Tour

[RENZO SEES]

this post from Arcane Autos:


We've setup a tour for the Fiat America group, but would like to
invite some additional arcanity. It's a fairly short and relaxed tour
although there are mountains to climb and twisty roads.

Let us know if anyone would like to attend. You can contact us
directly, or try using the link below to fill in an online form

https://spreadsheets0.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dDVRNjAwZlRNdm1Uc2FuVWUxMzI1ZEE6MQ#gid=0

Cheers Adrian & Laurel


Starting in Los Gatos, we will have a short drive via some of the
local Santa Cruz
Mountains wineries, with lunch at Adrian & Laurel's house. There will
be a full tour and tasting at the winery and cave at Byington Winery
in the morning, then we’ll drop by
Savannah Chanelle and Cinnabar in the afternoon, with an optional
visit to Hakone
Gardens, ending up in Saratoga. There will not be much more than an
hour of driving
in total, covering 30 miles of twisty roads, with plenty of time to
sip and chat, and with alternatives for non-drinkers who just want to
go out for a ride.

Directions
Meet at Peets Coffee, 798 Blossom Hill Rd., Los Gatos, at 9:30am for
breakfast, etc. To get there from Highway 17 going southbound, take
the Lark Avenue exit immediately after the Highway 85 junction, turn
left (east) over the freeway to the end of Lark, then turn right
(south) on Los Gatos Boulevard. Go 0.9 miles to Blossom Hill Rd.; turn
left, go 150ft and Peets is in the shopping center on your right.

At about 10:00am, we’ll leave Los Gatos, go south on Highway 17 to
Bear Creek Rd. Some twisty mountain roads will take us to Byington
Winery at about 10:45am. Scheduled for 11:00am - 11:45am, we have a
tasting and guided tour of the winery, which has caves tunneled deep
into the mountain. Cost is $10/person, and anyone who just wants to
come along for the ride can admire the view or play bocce ball for
free.

Around Noon - 12:30pm, we head over to Adrian & Laurel's house on
Skyline Blvd. via State Highway 35, which is a single-track road with
lots of blind corners in this section; it takes about 15 minutes to
get there. Lunch will be provided, so we need to know roughly how many
people to expect, and any dietary requests.

The afternoon timing is flexible; at about 2:00pm, we’ll head further
along Hwy.35/Skyline Blvd, which at this point is a nice, open road
and down Hwy. 9 to Saratoga. They have tightened-up the speed limit on
Hwy. 9, so we will dawdle down to Savannah Chanelle Winery for an
informal tasting or a walk amongst the redwood trees.

Alternatively, for non-drinkers there is a beautiful Japanese garden,
Hakone Gardens, on the road between Savannah Chanelle and Saratoga:
http://www.hakone.com/visit-us/visitor-info.html .

Finally, a little further on, we’ll arrive in downtown Saratoga and
the Cinnabar Winery tasting room is one of the first buildings on your
right, where the tour ends. Cinnabar has six wines to taste for $10:
http://cinnabarwine.com/tasting-room/ .

The tasting room and gardens both close at 5:00pm, but dedicated
tourists may like to stay for dinner in Saratoga. Staggering distance
from Cinnabar is The Basin Restaurant, which opens at 5:00pm and is
excellent: http://www.thebasin.com/ - let us know if you want to join
us there.
RSVP to adrian.cockcroft at gmail.com or our home phone 408-395-3984. We
would like to know how many people there will be for the Byington
tour, lunch and dinner. The rest will be flexible on the day.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sillylittlecars.com/pipermail/silly_little_cars-sillylittlecars.com/attachments/20110723/3148e8d4/attachment-0004.htm>