Wine Country

I've been vacationing the past week in California with my family. We've been treking around the Bay Area and spending a few days in Sonoma Valley. The lure of California is strong. Since being out here, I've been so relaxed, enjoying the beautiful weather, looking at scenic hills with cows grazing, yellow flowers blossoming from row after row of vines. There's been so many times this trip where the beauty has literally made me catch my breath and stop.

This beauty comes at a hefty price. As we've been taking tours of wineries and eating in fine restaurants, I find myself surrounded by a group that I've rarely encountered in the past year in West Philly. My favorite part of the trip so far has been in Sonoma, when a local bar manager took my sister and I on a segway tour around the rural roads. While whizzing around, we passed joggers with their large dogs, residents of a town where it takes a pretty penny to live. We went to the back of a cheese factory and walked in on some the people who rolled the cheese. They joked around with us in spanish for a bit as they covered the cheese rolls with cocoa. I had so many questions I wanted to ask the cheese roller man. In a land of expensive houses, where does he live while working at the cheese factory? Where is he from? How long has he been here and is there any crossover between him and that rich lady with the big dog?

While driving on the beautiful country roads, I wish I could stop by the small shack on the side of the road surrounded by rusty tractors and spend an afternoon just seeing what the culture of a migrant farm worker looked like. We see the product, a $90 bottle of wine, but there seems to be so much more depth in the culture of wine country than just the fine things that I enjoy while vacationing.