SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS - JULY 2006
This month, guests at the 44-room Vintners Inn in Santa Rosa, CA, are enjoying a family-style dinner that includes chilled melon soup and crab with fava bean salad and Meyer lemon syrup; grilled tuna with white bean salad with basil oil; fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade; spit-roasted California game hens with organic creamed yellow corn; and the "world's best strawberry ice cream sandwiches" with house-made gelato and a trio of toppings for dessert. The same guests are washing it all down with top Pinot varietals such as Dutton Goldfield, Martinelli, Gary Farrell, and Hanzell* that were selected from 50 Sonoma Valley vintners.
Welcome to the good life, as practiced by California wine country, 24/7. With an influx of interest in Vintners Inn and other hotels, inns, and resorts; and wineries like Ferrari Carano (pictured), the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau features a range of meetings properties and unique viticultural venues like wine caves, and offers a handy map on its website, www.sonomavalley.com. Last year, Sonoma County Tourism Bureau was established to bring more meetings business to the county, a diverse region that spans from neighboring Napa to the Pacific coast. "Over the past couple of years more meetings have come into the area, and our properties are responding with more offerings targeted at that audience," says Andrea Carvey, CMP, director of sales.
Like the diminutive Vintners Inn, which completed a new 6,000-sf event & conference center last month, many of Sonoma County's properties and venues are on an intimate scale-even brand properties, like the 97-room Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa, which recently added the $25-million Sonoma Golf Club House, with 2,400 sf of function space at the resort's 18-hole course. Another, the 182-room Lodge at Sonoma, A Renaissance Resort and Spa, offers private groups the experience of "wine roulette," a reception featuring a blind tasting, followed by dinner with wine pairings, in the winery-like Stone Building, part of the property's 22,000 sf of function space.
"Over the past few years, we have seen a tremendous rise in the number of meetings coming to wine country," says Stephen Andrews, director of sales and marketing for Vintage Estate Hotels, two properties in the heart of Napa Valley, near petite, chic Yountville. In June, Vintage Estate Hotels opened the new Vineyard Pavilion among the historic winery buildings between its 80-room French country-style Vintage Inn and the 112-room Tuscan-inspired Villagio Inn & Spa. The new 16,000-sf outdoor venue, with its gardens, event arbor/stage, and kitchens, can serve elaborate gatherings for up to 700 people, augmenting the hotels' existing 10,000 sf of meeting space. For incentives, the boutique, 25-room La Residence has teamed with the Napa Valley Wine Train, offering a five-course dinner on board the train, two nights in the property's "mansion suite," and a vinotherapy in-room massage.
Accessing the wine country experience is easy for planners to arrange at places like Yountville's Domaine Chandon winery, according to expert Rene Averseng, who has been sharing vintage wisdom with meeting planners from his store, Du Vin Wine & Spirits, in West Hollywood, CA, for 27 years. "It is very informative and customer-oriented, and has a great restaurant that has always been ahead in the culinary world," he says. Last month, the restaurant was relaunched as etoile, after the winery's signature wine. Chef Chris Manning oversees the new pairing experience with wines served to the group at various locations along a private tour, followed by lunch or dinner in the restaurant. "Such events are good for someone who doesn't know anything about wine, or for someone who does," says Averseng.
One-on-one opportunities with the winemakers and chefs of Napa and Sonoma are also crowd-pleasers. Peter Griffith, owner of Sonoma's Ravenswood, offers an event for up to 50 people where he helps the group create their own wine blend, then bottles the results for them to take home. Gourmet Retreats Culinary School in Calistoga presents hands-on cooking classes where participants go along with the chef to pluck their ingredients from the on-site herb and vegetable garden. And within the grand stone building that began as the Christian Brothers Winery in 1889 and is now the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, possible culinary events range from cooking (and eating) with the chef in one of CIA's teaching kitchens, or a cooking class in a specialized theater, to lunch in one of the charming rooms at CIA's Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant.
*Robert MacMillan, California wine expert for West Hollywood, CA-based Du Win Wine & Spirits, selected these from a list of 42 Sonoma Valley Pinots.