The rolling hills and vineyards of the Sonoma Valley are just part of a natural tapestry that has beckoned art-lovers and wine connoisseurs to this region for decades. Indeed, the fathers who founded missions here were growing grapes hundreds of years ago. Then, in the late 1850's, a fellow named Col. Agoston Haraszthy figured it all out.

Haraszthy was a Hungarian immigrant who convinced the state of California to send him to Europe on a fact-finding mission to see just how European growers created what were acknowledged to be the best wines of the time. He came back convinced that the soil in the Sonoma Valley was ideal for growing grapes, and that locally produced wines could rival those in Europe. He founded the Buena Vista winery and, by 1876, the Sonoma Valley was producing more than 2.3 million gallons of wine per year.

Today, the Sonoma Valley and the nearby Napa Valley are the cornerstones in a winery industry that continues to grow well beyond Northern California. Whichever wine-going region you choose in California, you'll be experiencing some of the best wines anywhere.

And so Sonoma and Napa keep packing in visitors seduced by the fertile landscape, the charm, the history and now the variety of wineries that each region has to offer the California traveler. Stately inns and luxurious resorts have sprung up alongside the hundreds of wineries in those regions today, each accommodation offering a getaway experience that becomes almost spiritual in the way it transports the visitor to a completely different way of life.

In Sonoma Valley, you're likely to see more family-run wineries and fewer of those owned by international conglomerates. The landscape is similar to Napa but everything seems just a bit more "small-town."

Our first visit to Sonoma was during one of its many festive events held down in the Plaza