1 Mound Avenue is in Kenwood, California, an unincorporated village in the Valley of the Moon, one of the multiple “hearts” of Sonoma County’s Wine Country. Wine Tasting is generally the main objective of almost everyone who stays with us. But from here, you can take many different adventures throughout Sonoma County and neighboring Napa County, just to the east, (over the Mayacamas mountains).
Catherine and Dave Jefferson, the proprietors, believe understanding this territory in advance of arrival greatly benefits guests, who typically are staying for three-day periods, a relatively short time for such a diverse area. As enjoyable a place as this is, there are constraints such as traffic, topography, restaurant and tasting room capacities, and the like, which insiders can help you navigate. Most vacation rental services, such as Airbnb, are not capable of explaining the “lay of the land” in advance. Accordingly, we invite prospective guests to review this website’s information and determine for themselves if what is offered will fit their objectives, time availability, budgets, and styles. If so, please contact us and let’s see if your schedule and ours fit.
We have two guest accommodations- the Big Red Barn and the Creekside Cottage. Our high season runs from Spring into Fall, roughly April through November, when occupancy of both units approaches 100%, especially during wedding season.
If you are a first-time visitor to Sonoma Wine Country and plan to extensively tour the Napa Valley Wine Country while here, please realize that most Napa wineries are an hour’s drive from Kenwood due to the mountains between the two valleys. Accordingly, if most of your desired tasting experiences are in Napa, we generally advise visitors to stay in Napa instead, despite the usually much higher cost of lodging there. (There are only three roads from Sonoma to Napa (south through the City of Sonoma, directly over the Mayacamas via the very twisty Trinity/Oakville road, or north via Calistoga Road.) A one-day adventure in Napa from here is quite do-able, but more would entail too much time spent in the car. There are 100 wineries in Sonoma Valley alone, not to mention all of Sonoma County, so our accommodations are best for Sonoma wine tasting.
To assist in planning your potential stay and addressing the above issues, we have on our site:
- A map of Sonoma and Napa, and distances and times to other relevant locations, such as the San Francisco and Oakland airports, and the website for the Sonoma County Airporter (terminal bus service to/from both airports).
- A listing of key wineries in the Valley of the Moon and other local attractions, such as Jack London State Park, and restaurants which we recommend.
- A map of the multiple AVAs of Sonoma County, which collectively contain over 500 bonded wineries. "AVAs" are American Viticultural Areas, the sub-regions of Sonoma County (such as the Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, and so on), for which each has its particular micro-climates and grape growing differences. In general, we recommend after visiting our local Valley of the Moon wineries, you choose an interesting AVA and visit only wineries in this regions that day. Such an approach saves a great deal of time otherwise wasted and yields greater knowledge and enjoyment of these lesser known but interesting wine areas. Sonoma is a very large county, so conserve time in the car.
Lastly, while running our hospitality operation has expenses, we usually can generate an annual surplus which enables us to take “busman’s holidays” of our own, frequently overseas, where we often stay in lodges or inns. Such trips require extensive planning at which Catherine has become expert. Many of our friends and guests have expressed an interest in following in our footsteps, and want to understand our previous itineraries. We have concluded we would do so with photo galleries with accompanying texts which you can click through on this site.