Summer

Pour + Explore is Sonoma County Vintners' traveling tasting series. Each evening lands at a different host winery and gathers more than twenty-five Sonoma County producers around a single theme, a grape, a style or a group of appellations, for a walk-around tasting with light appetizers. The series is produced with sommelier Christopher Sawyer. Keller Estate hosts an evening devoted to the Petaluma Gap and the West Sonoma Coast, and Gloria Ferrer has closed recent seasons with a night of sparkling wine.

Every June, Healdsburg hands its evenings to jazz. For ten days the Healdsburg Jazz Festival books internationally known musicians into wineries, restaurants, public plazas and historic theaters around town, so one weekend can run from an afternoon set among the vines to a theater seat at night.

The festival is presented by Healdsburg Jazz, a nonprofit that also stages a winter festival and teaches music in Sonoma County schools. Bassist, bandleader and educator Marcus Shelby is its artistic director.

The North Coast Wine & Food Festival is a single June afternoon at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa with one simple rule: every wine poured has won gold. The bottles come from The Press Democrat's North Coast Wine Challenge, which judges wines from Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Lake, Marin and Solano counties.

Local chefs set up food stations between the pours, live music keeps the afternoon moving, and the tasting spreads outdoors across the center's grounds.

The Summer Wine Trail is one Saturday in July when Wine Road wineries across Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley and the Russian River pour for a single ticket. There is no check-in winery and no wristband: you buy online, show the ticket on your phone at each door, and taste the flight that winery has chosen for the trail. It belongs to Wine Road's seasonal Wine Trail series, which comes back through the year in spring, summer, harvest and holiday editions, each with its own short roster. Recent summer lists have run from Alexander Valley Vineyards and Pedroncelli to Merry Edwards and Foppiano.

Pinot Forum is a three-day immersion in Russian River Valley Pinot Noir for the wine trade. Around sixty trade guests from across the country spend the days in the valley with its growers and winemakers, moving between vineyards, cellars, seminars and tastings. It is presented with the Russian River Valley Winegrowers and is not open to the public: wine professionals apply, and places are limited. LocaleTerroir lists it for the record, as a window on how the valley presents itself to the people who buy its wine.

Gay Wine Weekend is Out in the Vineyard's three-day July gathering for the LGBTQ+ community and friends, rooted in Sonoma Valley. It opens with a VIP reception and moves through winemaker dinners, guided winery tours, the signature Twilight T-Dance, a drag queen brunch with a wine auction, and a closing pool soirée. Tours have ranged from Carneros to the Russian River, and one of the most memorable stops is Three Sticks, which pours in a historic adobe by Sonoma Plaza. Most events are booked one by one, so the weekend is yours to assemble.

Every August, Sebastopol throws a two-day party for the Gravenstein, the tangy local apple that ripens as summer turns toward fall. Ragle Ranch Regional Park becomes a country fair built around the harvest, with an Apple Alley of Gravenstein treats, a home-baked pie contest, and the county's farmers, makers and musicians in one place.

Sonoma County Farm Trails runs the fair as its major fundraiser, and proceeds go to keeping Sonoma County farms farming.

The Sonoma County Fair fills the county fairgrounds in Santa Rosa each summer with the full county-fair repertoire: livestock shows and farm animals, a carnival of rides, live music, rodeo nights at the Chris Beck Arena and a themed flower show that turns an exhibit hall into a garden.

Around the main attractions run the contests that give the fair its character, from the Scarecrow Festival, where entries are built on the spot, to an Elvis impersonation contest, along with the competitive exhibits that local growers and makers enter each year.

On summer Wednesdays, The Barlow's open-air market district throws a free concert among the tasting rooms, breweries, and food makers — Sebastopol's after-work answer to a beer garden with a band.

The Springs' own market brings fresh produce and a lively food scene to Boyes Hot Springs — a warm, working-neighborhood market that reflects the area's strong Latino community, just up the highway from the Sonoma Plaza.

Forestville's certified farmers' market is a Tuesday-evening affair, 4:30 to 7:30pm through the summer, in the small park at the heart of downtown, under the oaks and at the trailhead of the West County Trail. The Forestville Chamber of Commerce sponsors it, and it keeps a village scale: local farmers, specialty food makers and arts and crafts stalls, with hot food and baked goods so most people shop and eat in the same visit.

Sonoma's Tuesday Night Market sets up on the Plaza every Tuesday evening from May into September, 5 to 8pm, on the Horseshoe in front of City Hall. Small local farms bring produce and fruit, food vendors cook everything from oysters to Thai, artisans sell their work, and live music plays through the evening.

The City of Sonoma runs it with the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce, and the season is a fixture of summer in the valley.

Tuesdays in the Plaza is Healdsburg's summer evening concert series. From late May to late August, the City of Healdsburg puts a different band on the downtown Plaza every Tuesday from 6 to 8pm, fourteen weeks of free music on the square. Every week brings a new act, so no two Tuesdays sound quite alike.

The lineup is deliberately eclectic, built to reach every kind of listener, from funk and soul to rock and dance bands.

On Wednesday evenings from early May to mid-September, Sonoma Botanical Garden in Glen Ellen stays open until 8 for Acoustic Sunsets. Live music plays 5:30 to 7:30pm in the garden's grassy outdoor amphitheater, local Sonoma County vintners pour tastings, and guests bring picnics. Well-behaved dogs on leash are welcome.

The series is included with garden admission and free for members. It is a small, unhurried concert in a big garden, the kind of evening that ends with people lingering on the lawn after the last song.

Every Wednesday evening through the summer, Peacetown fills Ives Park in Sebastopol with free live music. The season runs fifteen weeks, from early June into September, and most nights put two bands on the bill under the park's redwoods, with local artists showing their work alongside the music.

On summer Wednesdays, downtown Santa Rosa closes Fourth Street and Old Courthouse Square for the county's big night market. For fourteen weeks from mid-May, farmers, chefs, artisans and makers set up along the streets, with local street food, craft beer and wine, and a concert stage running from 5pm until 9:30.

Admission is free. It is built for strolling: start at one end of the square and eat your way to the other.

Guerneville's certified farmers' market sets up on Thursday afternoons through the summer, from 3 to 7pm between June and August, at the corner of Fourth and Church streets in the middle of town, behind Hubert's Hall. It is an evening market as much as a grocery run: growers bring the peak of the Russian River summer, and some vendors cook to order for people coming in off the river.

It is run by the nonprofit that also operates the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market, the oldest in the county.

On summer Thursdays, the Windsor Town Green becomes the town's backyard. The certified farmers market and food vendors open at 5pm, and a live band takes the stage for the evening concert, with families spreading out across the lawn until 8.

The Town of Windsor and the Windsor Farmers Market run the series together, and the season runs into late August. Bring a blanket or a low chair, and assemble dinner from the market stalls on the spot.

Every Friday evening from late May into early September, the Cloverdale Arts Alliance turns the town plaza into an open-air venue. The street fair and market set up first, with local vendors cooking savory and sweet, and then a different band takes the stage each week for the evening concert.

Admission is free. Beer and Sonoma County wine are poured by the glass at the beverage booth, and what you spend there goes back to the Arts Alliance, which presents the series and books the music.

On Saturday afternoons from May to November, Walnut Park in downtown Petaluma hosts a certified farmers' market from 2 to 5pm. Local farms bring produce, eggs and honey, alongside meats and fish, artisan cheese and bread, canned goods, prepared food and handmade crafts, all set out under the trees of a small town square at Fourth and D streets.

It is run by Agricultural Community Events, the nonprofit that also manages Petaluma's year-round East Side market.

At the county's northern edge, Cloverdale's certified farmers' market sets up on Sunday mornings, 9:30am to 1pm, from April through November on West 2nd Street in the old downtown. It brings together local farmers, food purveyors and craftspeople, and it is run by the nonprofit behind the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market, the oldest in Sonoma County.

The scale is small and the pace unhurried: a Sunday errand that turns into a stroll through a quiet main street.

For a short run of Sundays in high summer, Old Courthouse Square at the center of Santa Rosa becomes a certified farmers' market, open 11am to 2:30pm from July into September. Agricultural Community Events, the nonprofit that runs the city's year-round Community market, manages it. Local agriculture comes first, with produce from the county's farms, followed by artisan foods, prepared food and handmade goods across the square. Growers at a certified market sell what they raise themselves.

Sundays in the Plaza is Healdsburg's summer afternoon concert series: two free hours of live music, 1 to 3pm, in the shade of the downtown Plaza from June into August. Each week a different local band or performer takes the stage, separate from the town's Tuesday evening concerts.

The bill changes from week to week: flamenco and Latin guitar one Sunday, country and Americana or a jazz and groove set the next.

Sunday mornings from April into early December, the Windsor Town Green in Old Downtown Windsor fills with the Windsor Certified Farmers Market. Growers bring fruit, vegetables, meats, fish, honey and eggs; food makers add bread, cheese and preserves; local artists fill out the rows. In summer the market also runs on Thursday evenings, as part of the Summer Nights on the Green concert series. The market sets up at McClelland Drive and Market Street, on the green at the center of town.

The Healdsburg Farmers' Market is one of the oldest certified markets in California, and it now has a home of its own: the Foley Family Community Pavilion on North Street, a short walk from the Plaza. The Saturday market runs 8:30am to noon from April to December, and a Tuesday market runs 9am to 1pm from May through September. Both are run by the nonprofit Healdsburg Certified Farmers' Market.