Again, not knowing if you’ve been to the area before, I’ll just nudge you with a little more advice. The Ridge event is lots of fun, you’ll get to taste a fair amount of great wine, have some nice food, spectacular views, assuming the weather is clear (a little questionable right now for this weekend, but Saturday looks decent, partly cloudy). You can easily spend a couple of hours there, or more, just taking in the wine and views. And once you’ve been at Ridge, drinking their wines, any other winery you get to that day will be a notch down.
I’ve never been to the Mountain House, but I’ve been at that location many times (there’s a big art fair there very year, just on the other side of the road). Unless you have some particular reason to want to go there for dinner, it’s really out of your way, and a long drive back to Santa Rosa. I would urge you to consider skipping it, and instead stop in San Francisco on the way back for a nice dinner, which puts you that much closer to betting back. Just a friendly suggestion.
BTW, my wife and I will also be at Ridge on Saturday, let’s figure out how to say hi.
If you make it all the way to Santa Cruz, there are at least about 10 tasting rooms on the West Side of town off of Mission to Swift St. at Ingalls. Some of those listed above are there. MJA has a nice outdoor patio if the weather is nice but the wines are nothing special. The best of the group is Rexford.
Please allow me to reiterate something that has been mentioned a few times. Bay area traffic, even on, or especially on, weekends in the places you are interested in.
Santa Rosa to San Francisco is an hour maybe an hour and a half with no traffic. Same for San Francisco to Saratoga. However there is no such thing as “no traffic”. I would plan at least twice as much time, say 3 hours for each of those drives. If you get lucky and there is less traffic, you’re just there a little early.
Excellent advice. Driving down on Saturday morning should not be a problem, though assuming you come across the Golden Gate, you’ll still have to crawl down 19th and all its traffic lights to get to 280. Truthfully, the worst traffic on weekends these days is in the east bay, not 280 or even 101. You’ll presumably be staying on 280, so should be fine, just map it first to make sure there isn’t an accident somewhere.
Nice thing about SF restaurants is you have a great selection of price/quality/style. And everyone is fine with you bringing a bottle so you can enjoy something you may have just picked up from Ridge .
Thread hijack to pick up on the traffic question - I have scheduled a tour/tasting at Mount Eden at 2:00 on a Friday. Right now, at 4:30 pm PDT on a Monday, Google maps is telling me that with “heavy traffic, as usual” on some alternate routes, taking 280 gets me there from near the Transamerica Building in SF in 1 hour, 25 minutes. For a Friday at noon, it’s telling me 1:05 to 1:30, either via 101 or 280. Would you all agree? I can leave SF by 12:30, but not much earlier. Thanks!
Unless they paved the driveway plan on adding +/- 10 min. just to get up and to get back. If the tasting is at the old Cinnabar facility just allow 5 min. up the driveway.
Do take 280, much nicer drive and almost always quicker. If you need to get on 101 you can cut over at 380 or just keep on 280 as it will cross 101 and turn into 80.