Wine Country

If you're planning a tour of Virginia's wine country, you'll want to do your wine tasting on a full stomach. You'll also want a cozy and comfortable place to sleep. What follows, then, is a short guide to attractive eating and lodging facilities in the Middleburg area. One of the best restaurants for tasting Virginia wines is Leathercoat in The Plains, at Loudoun and Stuart Streets (703-471-5327), not far from the wineries mentioned. You can taste more than 10 wines by the glass.

We're taking a group to San Francisco and are seeking information on tours to the wine country of Napa and Sonoma Counties. Where can we find out about them? J.H., Havertown. Wine-country tours attract millions of people each year, many just driving themselves from vineyard to vineyard. Then there are the van and bus tours, and even a few horse-drawn wagon or stagecoach tours. Among touring companies: HMS tours, 1057 College Ave., No. 206, Santa Rosa, Calif. 95404; phone 800-367-5348.

GEYSERVILLE, Calif. - Think a winery visit means bellying up to a bar with a couple of glasses and a spit bucket? You haven't been to wine country lately. These days you're likely to find all kinds of added attractions, from restaurants to farmers' markets to cocktail bars. And then there's Francis Ford Coppola's latest venture which, once construction is complete, will include a swimming pool. The idea is to create something more than just another stop on the wine trail at a time when competition for shrinking tourist dollars is fierce.

It's high season for wine country tours - buses full of out-of-towners visiting vineyard tasting rooms - and Hideko Sugiyama might do well to think about investing in running shoes. She rushes from table to table, delivering glasses of her company's product to visitors. First, she brings a chilled glass of the brew. After that comes a warm sample. Wait a minute. What's the gimmick? Now they're pushing heated wine in one of the nation's most celebrated wine regions? Well, yes and no. The liquid that Sugiyama proffers every day at her work at Kohnan Inc.'s Napa tasting room is not the typical wine of the area.

My boyfriend, Thomas, and I were vacillating on whether to stay an extra day at Jele's sobe, or guesthouse, in Dubrovnik, but it turned out to be the most magical day of our two weeks floating along the Dalmatian coast. I struck up a conversation with a young girl, a native of Croatia, who raved about her day-long adventure over the rocky coastline and valleys of Croatia's wine region, the Peljesac peninsula. Croatia has a thriving wine region, and you can drive there for the day - who knew?

It took Gerald Forest and his family 14 years of pressing grapes to move their bottom line from red to black. The Forests planted their first grape vines in Buckingham, Bucks County, in 1966. Today, the Forest family grosses more than $400,000 annually selling 12 wine varieties - all priced at $4.75 a bottle or $42 a case. The wine is sold from their lone outlet, the Buckingham Valley Vineyard and Winery, on 42 acres near New Hope. "We've sold every bottle of (mature)

Just spinning your wheels? This is the place to do it - on a bike trip through California's wine country, with tastings at vineyards along the route. And Healdsburg, a small agricultural town 70 miles north of San Francisco and nestled smack-dab in the middle of the vine-rich Alexander, Dry Creek, and Russian River valleys, is the perfect pedaling-off point. Though less famous than the Napa and Sonoma wine lands to the south, this tri-valley region also is less tourist-trampled.

Franklin Salek tends to his vineyard with paternalistic care. He wades through muck after a summer rain to make sure every branch, every leaf is secure, nourished and thriving, the better to make a grand wine. The retired engineering professor could be doing this in California's Napa Valley or near the Loire River in France, but he does it in what he thinks is another, more underrated, wine-making region of the world - rural South Jersey. "When you think of it, it is much like Bordeaux," said Salek, whose winery and vineyard, Sylvin, is in Atlantic County.

Coolest Small Towns in America Based on 439,411 votes on an online poll by Budget Travel magazine: 1. Ely , Minn. pop. 3,470; The best backyard in the country . 2. Cloverdale , Calif. pop. 6,716; Wine country without the fuss . 3. Brevard , N.C. pop. 6,716; Blue Ridge views, Appalachian pride . 4. Saugatuck , Mich. pop. 954; A lake town where time stands still. pop. 5,273; Where everyone roots for the home team . 6. Bandon , Ore. pop. 3,295; A farm-to-table coast . 7. Cuero , Texas pop. 6,571; Old West meets modern art . 8. Nyack , N.Y. pop. 6,737; Creativity 9. Medicine Park , Okla.

Make 2012 your year to visit an eco-friendly destination with your family. Here are five places where green is good: 1. Oregon. This northwestern haven for all things green is possibly the most eco-conscious state in the nation. With more than 300 miles of stunning coastline preserved as public land, families can visit pristine beaches, bike in two-wheel-friendly cities including Portland and Eugene, and raft on wild and scenic rivers. You can also explore high deserts, farm and wine country, and the Columbia River Gorge, all on one grand holiday.

Make 2012 your year to visit an eco-friendly destination with your family. Here are five places where green is good: 1. Oregon. This northwestern haven for all things green is possibly the most eco-conscious state in the nation. With more than 300 miles of stunning coastline preserved as public land, families can visit pristine beaches, bike in two-wheel-friendly cities including Portland and Eugene, and raft on wild and scenic rivers. You can also explore high deserts, farm and wine country, and the Columbia River Gorge, all on one grand holiday.

GEYSERVILLE, Calif. - Think a winery visit means bellying up to a bar with a couple of glasses and a spit bucket? You haven't been to wine country lately. These days you're likely to find all kinds of added attractions, from restaurants to farmers' markets to cocktail bars. And then there's Francis Ford Coppola's latest venture which, once construction is complete, will include a swimming pool. The idea is to create something more than just another stop on the wine trail at a time when competition for shrinking tourist dollars is fierce.

Coolest Small Towns in America Based on 439,411 votes on an online poll by Budget Travel magazine: 1. Ely , Minn. pop. 3,470; The best backyard in the country . 2. Cloverdale , Calif. pop. 6,716; Wine country without the fuss . 3. Brevard , N.C. pop. 6,716; Blue Ridge views, Appalachian pride . 4. Saugatuck , Mich. pop. 954; A lake town where time stands still. pop. 5,273; Where everyone roots for the home team . 6. Bandon , Ore. pop. 3,295; A farm-to-table coast . 7. Cuero , Texas pop. 6,571; Old West meets modern art . 8. Nyack , N.Y. pop. 6,737; Creativity 9. Medicine Park , Okla.

My boyfriend, Thomas, and I were vacillating on whether to stay an extra day at Jele's sobe, or guesthouse, in Dubrovnik, but it turned out to be the most magical day of our two weeks floating along the Dalmatian coast. I struck up a conversation with a young girl, a native of Croatia, who raved about her day-long adventure over the rocky coastline and valleys of Croatia's wine region, the Peljesac peninsula. Croatia has a thriving wine region, and you can drive there for the day - who knew?

A cheap table red compared to the rich pinot that was Sideways, the similarly oenophilic Bottle Shock takes place mostly in Napa Valley, circa 1976 - when a few maverick California growers turned out legendarily fine wine, and not a soul took them seriously. That is, until a snooty Brit brought a case back to France for a blind tasting against the world's best known labels, and the Californians won. A great story - and a true one, more or less - Bottle Shock nonetheless fails to deliver much in the way of entertainment.

For decades, beer has been the adult beverage of choice in NASCAR. Times are changing. Richard Childress is seriously involved in wines. How serious? Childress, who won six Cup series titles with the late Dale Earnhardt, has launched Childress Vineyards. The vineyards are only 5 miles from the Childress racing headquarters in Welcome, N.C. Most people don't think of North Carolina as wine country. "Before Prohibition, North Carolina was the top commercially wine producing state in America," Childress said yesterday from his ranch in Montana.

Julie Knight hears "Sideways" chatter all day long. But the convivial pour girl at the Fess Parker Winery has to laugh when visitors to her tasting room act out a particularly spirited scene from the Oscar-nominated film. It happens when actor Paul Giamatti's Miles character picks up a spittoon with both hands and guzzles the contents. "People come in and lift up the bucket and say, 'This is what he did!' " Knight said. "I would have to be paid mass quantities of money to drink out of one of those things.

It's not Napa Valley, where undulating hills and sips of famous wines can dizzy and delight one's senses. But South Jersey, in all its nondescript flatness, has a growing number of picturesque wineries, where fresh nectar is poured freely for the connoisseur and the curious. Many also offer tours of wine cellars, where fermenting grapes in wooden vats ooze tempting whiffs of their latest varieties. You can now follow "wine trails," outlined on maps that send you from winery to winery for tastings, sometimes over back roads meandering past lakes, woods and farms.

Horizontal is the preferred position for intimacy. In the piercingly funny buddy film Sideways, it is also the default position for inebriation. Alexander Payne's crabwise comedy plucks grape as metaphor. The result is as finicky, elusive and rewarding a varietal as the pinot quaffed here by an endearing schlub (Paul Giamatti) and a puppyish playboy (Thomas Haden Church) who embark on a bachelor debauch to Santa Ynez, the poor man's Napa Valley, days before the playboy is to be wed. Think Road Trip with emotional layers and arguably more mature characters.