Sailboats frolicked in the bay like impish elves, rocking lightly in the wake of yachts that cut through the water like dolphins, as the sun slipped out of sight in Sausalito. I was back in this same little haven-by-the-sea in north California, in the Ondine restaurant with good friends, sipping good wine -- pinot blanc, sauvignon blanc, viognier -- while awaiting a meal prepared by Ondine's much-acclaimed young chef Seiji Wakabayashi.
Of all the glorious ways to enjoy wine, this is emphatically one, and great stress relief as well. In addition, just thinking about visiting Guenoc Winery, 150 km north of San Francisco, was starting to soothe my travel-frayed nerves. In a month I'd packed about 25,000 air miles into an already airtight wine-world schedule, and I had another 10,000 air miles coming up. But I was buoyed by the "Ondine experience." Beyond the restaurant's wide floor-to-ceiling windows the Pacific stretches out as far as the eye can see, a pastel panorama that nostalgically wanes away as day drifts into dusk.
This was the perfect preface to visiting Guenoc Winery to sample its wines, see its extraordinary vineyards and hear the Japanese "Yujiro story" from Guenoc's multitalented owner, Orville Magoon, a world-renowned coastal engineer, a descendant of Hawaii's royal family and a producer of wagyu beef cattle as well as world-class wines. In 1981 the U.S. government recognized Guenoc Valley as a distinctive viticultural area and as America's first appellation under single proprietorship.