Acorn Winery is a small family winery in Healdsburg, appointment only . We were there for about 1.5 hours talking and tasting with the owners, who were super-friendly. Their wine is very good.~ Art work by Wine Artist Agata Zaborowski – Agata Art Gallery

Stewart Dorman is very responsive to phone calls for tasting appointments, which is not always the norm in the winery world. Once there, you taste in a large warehouse surrounded by barrels. I personally enjoy being so close to the production. If you want to really have a personal, intimate tasting experience and don't want to do be lost among the usual wine country tourists, not to mention tasting something that you'll never find in any store, as distribution is essentially the winery plus several restaurants, then you'll want to make it here.

The Amapola Creek story began in 2001 when Richard and Alis Arrowood discovered a very special place on the western slope of the Mayacamas Mountains—those magnificent mountains that rise between and separate the Sonoma and Napa valleys. From the first moment we set foot on the 100-acre ranch that the Arrowoods now call home. It was almost as if we had known and loved the place in anoter lifetime. There is, in fact, a deep connection to the past here. The red-brown volcanic soils reveal the mountain’s fiery history, and traces remain of the old stagecoach road that once ran through the property. Stone walls still stand where Chinese immigrants built them more than a century ago.

The Dry Creek wineries produce a wider variety of wines and styles of wines than the traditional PN and Zin crowd along the Russian River. The Amphor tasting room location is in the same parking lot as 10 other wineries tasting rooms - right off Dry Creek Road. Stop at this location and you will be able to taste wines from Amphora, Collier Falls, Dashe, Forth, Philip Staley, Peterson, Lago di Merlo, Kokomo, Mietz and Papapietro.