Gourmet Food & Wine Tours is the work of founder Renée ReBell, a Bay Area native who came up through the wine trade, an account manager at Wine.com and founder of the small-production San Francisco Wine Group, before turning her attention to the table. In the spring of 2014 she set up the first food tour to circle the Sonoma Plaza, then built her pairing tours around it; the Sonoma walk remains the company's flagship, the one ReBell calls the tour that started it all. The philosophy is farm-to-table and unhurried: gourmet dishes from local chefs and proprietors, each matched to a (mostly local) wine, with reverence for the growers, partners, and communities behind every plate.
The flagship runs three hours, roughly 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., as an easy walk around the Square broken by four sit-down courses: gourmet plates from locally-owned restaurants, each poured with about a half-glass of local wine, for 2.5-plus glasses and more than enough food to stand in for lunch. Between stops, the guide threads in the things that make the place: Sonoma's history and landmarks, biodynamic farming, sommelier tasting technique, and a working sense of what sets Sonoma and Napa apart. Groups stay small (usually up to eight, occasionally ten) and the tour runs rain or shine; private and custom departures can be arranged for parties of four or more.
