The Best Wine Country Parties

CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS WITH BARNDIVA

Healdsburg may well be a small town with a glittering international reputation these days, but in the run up to the holidays we’re reminded that the celebrations that truly sparkle still come from the heart of what it means to ‘live’ in wine country

They start when the grapes and apple harvests are all in, early morning fogs begin to roll over the valleys, garden lights cast longer shadows. It’s the time of year our love of landscape comes alive and we’re able to celebrate the year that’s just about over and toast the one ahead over tables resplendent with the fruits of our labor.

For us, the restaurant’s move into the Studio this year fulfilled our desire to host more public and private events. Now, as we begin to book holiday gatherings of all sizes, we are able to stretch out into all our rooms and gardens, filling them with candlelight, seductive florals, and homegrown treasure.

We hope you will have many invitations this Holiday Season - from family, friends and people you work alongside all year. We’d love it if you would consider joining us - In the Barn or the Studio - for one (or more!) of those memorable evenings.

Studio Barndiva reservations, here

Dinner Parties of guests 8+ contact orders@barndiva.com

Dinner Parties + Cocktail Parties 20+ contact susan@barndiva.com

We were thrilled when STAY HEALDSBURG asked us to co-host their kick-off week-end of  ‘A Season to Sparkle.’ Their only request was that it capture the ‘sparkling’ joie de vivre of Barndiva’s Pink Party and Fête Blanc, our signature spring and summer events. Both these annual-sold out collaborative events showcase remarkable wines, and this is what our Holiday Sparkling Soirée on November 17th will most certainly do, with a stellar list of producers hand-picked by Barndiva Wine Director Emily Carlson. This being Healdsburg’s official launch of the Holidays, we’re putting on the dog with live music, elegant hors d’oeuvres, and interactive taste and aromatic experiences that capture the ineffable spirit of sparkling wine. This being a Barndiva Event, there will be holiday florals and decorations galore. Join us for an unforgettable evening of delicious surprise and sensual delights. Tickets available here.

We fell in love with Kathryn Philip’s incredible passion for cinema years ago when she and her merry band of cinephiles from Cloverdale and Healdsburg were still The Alexander Valley Film Festival. Incredibly, they rode out those early years, which included a lock-down the film industry has yet to recover from, and this year broke ground on an audacious film center right here in the heart of Healdsburg. True West Film Center will include three screening rooms with a plethora of offerings to the public that will include children and Senior programming. It will showcase international and short films, both sorely served since the closing of Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa. There will even be film editing suites above the screening rooms open to young filmmakers, many on True West scholarships. And yes, there will be food and drink available for film goers before and after the shows. While no one could have predicted AVFF would grow into a cinema juggernaut, True West Film Center shows what passion and dedication, with great community support, can do to move the dial when it comes to vital but underfunded cultural goals.

We’ve had a lot of fun helping them fundraise over the years - see the film noir flyer above - and we are thrilled they have chosen to host their ground-breaking year fund-raiser as True West in Studio Barndiva, on Saturday November 16. Come raise a glass to the future of film culture in Healdsburg! We will eat, drink, enjoy short films together, and as a very special treat honor the wondrous career of this year’s True West honoree, actor Steve Zahn. Tickets available here.

The Makers Market has been a beloved community event for many years and we are thrilled that its founders Kim Dow and Karin Tredrea have invited Conversation Worth Having to participate this year by expanding the market to include Barndiva and the Studio. This will be an all day capstone to our year-long CWH community series that focused on how to achieve a sustainable future by making different choices in what we eat, wear and use. We’re calling it a ‘Cradle to Cradle Xmas’ or C2C Chanukah (which happens to start on Christmas Day this year) and it will showcase local innovative ‘makers’ in multiple fields that only use sustainable materials and ingredients in the production of their wares. You can pay it forward with an array of gift certificates, fill your Holiday Larder or gift one, find incredible art, textiles, ceramics, and clothing. Everything will be discounted on the day- and everything on offer will have been produced with care, talent, and sustainable materials here in the Sonoma County.

The original Artisan Collective will once again be at Moore Lane so be sure to allow enough time to visit both locations! Workshops on how to throw a cradle to cradle holiday will be offered throughout the day, food and drink abundant to fortify you for a mind blowing holiday shopping experience. Here in the studio Scottie will be batching speciality cocktails, Emily pouring her favorite wines and Jordy Morgan- resident sculptor - will be grilling up a storm in one of his own creations in the garden. Stay tuned for WHO the makers will be at both venues- some surprises here - mark your calendar for December 8 now and plan to make a day of it!

AFTER HARVEST COMES A SEASON TO SPARKLE ✨ Join us to raise a glass!

Best White Wine Party Ever!

Barndiva’s Event Director Susan Bischoff at Sunday’s Féte Blanc

We promised the most exciting white wines of the season and we delivered. We promised an elegant Féte and thanks to our guests in their sparkling whites and the sumptuous shades of high summer florals we delivered there as well. The music, the food, all a delight, but with respect, last Sunday’s Féte du vin blanc delivered something much more important: a perfect if brief respite from the heat and drama this summer has already delivered, and it was clear everyone there knew it. The world and its many problems would wait a few hours: rediscovering what we love about our wine shed and why we love to drink together as a community delivered what we needed most and it was the energy and good will of everyone who attended who brought it home.

Thank you to everyone who participated pouring or sipping away the afternoon, for your savor faire, your care in balancing fun with serious contemplation of what was in the glass, and your support of Corazón Healdsburg. We had a blast.

This coming Sunday we turn our attention to another special event, our 3rd Conversation Worth Having, The Future of Fashion. Tackling difficult subjects with compassion is what Barndiva life is all about for us, making them beautiful, delicious, and sustainable. We promised to ‘mix it up’ in this, our 20th year in Healdsburg, and we intend to deliver.

Barndiva Wine director Emily Carlson with the tasting crew of Sutro Wines

Wine Director Emily Carlson’s brilliant line up for Barndiva’s Féte du vin Blanc 2024: RAEN Pax Sutro Idlewild Copain Daniel Hirsch LaRue Monroy Littorai Brick&Mortar Bon Vivant Breathless Moshin Carpenter Comstock Dot Wines Maggy Hawke Handley Gros Ventre Radio Coteau Marine Layer Merry Edwards Desire Lines Quivira Overshine Reed Holland Roederer Estate Sharffenberger T. Berkeley Three Sticks Trail Marker Wines …. Raffle Benefitting Corazón Healdsburg!

We all need more moments to show affection to one another but time and place, boy do they affect our ability to live in the moment. The time and attention to detail to pull off our annaul collaborative wine events in-house, as our dedicated staff continues to turn out an extraordinary dinner services Thurs-Mon along with hosting a variety of spectacular private events is no mean task. We wish to thank Chef David Morales and his team for the delicious food at Féte blanc, DJ Collin Peacock for the cool sounds, and last but not least, Misha Vega, Barndiva farm director and the owner of her own nursery and flower design company @philo.floral.flowers. Along with Emily, Cathryn, Charles, Scott, JASON and his staff, this was a dream team.

All photographs in this blog: Chad Surmick.

Plastic? Think Again.

The community gathers for Conversations Worth Having #2 : Trash Talk, February 16th, in Studio Barndiva

Full Disclosure: we initially had great concerns making Trash the subject of our second Conversation Worth Having. But something happened after our first conversation, Gorgeous Garbage, that made the conversation about trash imperative. Of the many things we took away from our first community evening the realization that haunted us, as never before, was that even if we managed to divert more organic waste into making compost and soil, even if everyone we knew got better at recycling, even if these things began to miraculously happen all over the world, humanity would still go on filling the oceans with plastic, building higher and higher landfills of toxic waste. All the things we no longer have use for - our trash - endlessly circling and befouling the globe.

CWH is all about gathering community to have Serious Fun. We want to talk about important issues in a way which enables us to come away from these conversations making better choices, strengthening a commitment to live lighter on the ground. We don’t want to give up our creature comforts. We care about design. We want to live in a world with the ability to surround ourselves with useful, beautiful things. How do we make this compatible with individual actions, taken consistently, that signal true change in the way the social order works?

As life would have it, over 50 years ago I forged a beautiful, lasting friendship that among its many gifts brought a wondrous goddaughter into my life. And as luck would have it - for me and everyone who attended our February 16th Trash Talk - she has made it her life’s work to build just such a near future, or at least the possibility one might exist. we’re talking about businesses that take honoring a healthy ecology and a respect of the earth into every step of their supply chains. We’re talking about the products and the conduits that bring them into our short and precious lives.

Her name is Zem Joaquin. A founding member of Cradle to Cradle, for many years her company Eco Fabulous espoused the philosophy that we did not have to live lives of deprivation to be good global citizens. If we knew where to look, showed extreme care about how and where things were made, we could be as fabulous as we dared. She dared.

For the past five years she has grown an astonishing community of brilliant, innovative leaders- self identified disrupters to status quo supply chains- made of up scientists, inventors, doctors, designers, artists, and producers of all the things we use in our lives. It’s called The Near Future Summit and through it she has become a champion for businesses that “accelerate solutions to improve societal, individual and planetary health.” Dawnelise, Susan, Amber and I did our due diligence and research into how best to position Trash Talk - we toured Recology SF, met with the wonderful Deborah Munk, director of the artist in residence program. We listened to fascinating sustainable producers at a Women Founders Talk at the Ferry Building. We read and researched. Finally, after an edifying three day experience at 2023’s Near Future Summit, Zem guided our choice of speakers who graciously traveled to Healdsburg to talk to a sold out crowd in Studio Barndiva on Friday, February 16 for Conversations Worth Having, #2, Trash Talk.

It was delicious but serious fun, as you know if you attended. If you didn’t, we missed you. Here is a visual taste of this throughly stimulating evening.

Our Speakers: LEFT: Toby Corey, COO of Cruz Foam, a sustainable foam packaging company that sources fully bio degradable materials made from shrimp shells, mushrooms, and recycled paper as an alternative to styrofoam. Cruz Foam was a PentAwards Bronze winner and one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2023; CENTER: Gorgina Alcock, of GaeaStar, a ceramic zero waste alternative to single use plastic cups and vessels made of a clay, water, and salt sourced close to where it is 3’D printed (our CWH branded cups were produced in San Francisco from Sacramento clay); RIGHT: Beth Rattner, a director of the The Bio-Mimicry Institute, who walked us through the essential bridges we must start building between biology and design by advancing the adoption of nature inspired strategies. Highly recommended reading: Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature, by Janine Benyus, who founded the Biomimicry Institute, and The Second Body, by Daisy Hildyard.

ABOVE: Julia Marsh who with her Husband Matt founded Sway, also joined our speaker forum. Sway is a start up whose goal is to harness the power of seaweed to create home compostable replacements for plastic. For their efforts they were the Winners of the Tom Ford Innovation Prize for 2023.

Sway embodies a central premise of circular economies around design that was a take away from the evening: design out waste, keep materials in use, regenerate natural systems. And this: as a consumer, make better choices.

We were proud to have several local businesses who share our concerns about sustainability contribute to this Conversation Worth Having. Formost among them was Little Saint Healdsburg Healdsburg, whose chef, Stu Stalker, provided exquisite bowls of Little Saint Farm Vegetables with spreads of Carrot Tahini w/ dried chili, Cultured Cashew w/ Tomato Chutney, and Green Lentil Hummus. Little Saint’s director of beverage and sustainability, Matt Seigel collaborated with Barndiva’s Scott Beattie on both the spirit and NA cocktails: A Caipirinha made with Novo Fogo Carbon Negative Organic Cachaça, and Rangpur Me Another, our NA cocktail made with Rangpur lime as a cordial, anise hyssop tea, coconut yogurt, and Ritual N/A rum.

For those enjoying wine in their GaeaStar cups, we were honored to serve Delta Wines for Change made by our friends at Brick and Mortar, Alexis and Matt Ioconis. In bringing the climate conversation to the dinner table, Delta addresses greener packaging, reduces their carbon footprint in every aspect of wine making and supply chain choices, and donates 10% of all sales to the Surfrider Foundation, Cool Effect, and groups fostering environmental education- like Conversations Worth Having.

We also wish to thank Hotel Healdsburg’s Circe Sher for hosting some of our speakers and providing a discount for those traveling for the event. Coming soon: GaeaStar cups in the Hotel Healdsburg Spa.

And for anyone who missed the event or just wanted to keep the conversation going the next day, Flying Goat Coffee on center street hosted a pop-up on Saturday Feb. 17th using GaeaStar cups, which they gave away with every coffee sold.

A dinner for our speakers and a limited number of ticketed guests was held after the event in barndiva, which Daniel Carlson and I filled with foraged arrangements from our forest in Philo. We were so pleased he was able to join us for this CWH.

The Conversations Worth Having team is Dawnelise Rosen, director of Farmpeneurs, Susan Preston, of Preston Family Farm; Jil Hales, all things Barndiva, and Amber Keneally who researched and created our medicine cabinet art installation.

It is our goal to keep Conversation Worth Having events small enough so the actual conversation we have after listening to our speakers is forthright and meaningful. To find out about future events, sign up for the Barndiva Blog, Eat the View, or follow us @barndivahealdsburg.

Fete Blanc 2023

Barndiva wine director Emily Carlson with the wonderful Féte Blanc 2023 entourage, along with the dedicated ladies from Sonoma Family Meal who directed the raffle - six cases of all the wines poured, donated by every winery attending.

Each of Barndiva’s three collaborative wine events have a different personality. Pink Party always brings a ‘Summer is Here’ festive madness to it and trends younger, while Féte Rouge is the most community centric, with a focus on harvest and the upcoming holidays. Féte Blanc is a stand out because it hits all the notes winemakers look for in a wine tasting event. Sure, Féte Blanc guests love dressing up and socializing, you could feel it in the air on Sunday. But these are serious wine lovers. When they put their heads down and inhale, then taste something special, you can just tell the winery has made a lasting connection if not a future wine club friend. It was a great crowd that left very very happy, as you can tell from these images shot by the incomparable Chad Surmick.

We wish to thank Chef Mike Degan and his crew for the divine pizza’s, Barndiva Event Manager Natalie Nelson and her incredible staff, and our Chef Erik Anderson for the platters of deviled eggs with trout roe, charcoal grilled duck skewers, salmon tartar with egg yolk jam, and very special Barndiva farm fig tartlets- summery hors d’oeuvres from our currant event menus - along with our infamous goat balls with lavender honey.

For all who joined us, especially those who participated in the raffle benefiting Sonoma Family Meal, we thank you for sharing your Sunday with us in the gardens.

Collaborating with Slo-Flower farms we admire to create extravagant floral displays has become a hallmark of our bigger wine events. This year we were thrilled to welcome Rita Bates to organize and design the arrangements that filled both gardens for Féte Blanc. In addition to her ‘day’ job at the family farm - that would be The Philo Apple Farm - she is an incredibly intuitive and talented gardener floral designer. For Féte Blanc 2023 Rita ordered some blooms from our friends at Longer Table Farm and SinglethreadFarm, but the bulk of these late summer flowers were harvested at Barndiva Farm by Misha Vega, and from The Apple Farm’s extensive gardens. If you haven’t visited this extraordinary family farm in Philo, make hast to book one of their incredible Sally Dinners and be sure to stay over in one of their cottages, set amidst the apple orchards, right now heavy with fruit.

Bittersweet: the blackberry vines that graced the main Harvest Table arrangement were a long ago gift from the late, dearly missed Myrna and Earl Fincher, who owned and ingeniously farmed Early Bird Place for many years in Healdsburg. In the first decade of Barndiva’s life, Earle and Myrna suppled vegetables and gourds and we spent memorable time with Earle at their farm. The Berries have never been prodigious producers, but I never had the heart to cut them out. Seeing how much joy they gave folks on Sunday, knowing the history, I doubt I ever will.

The 'official' Pink Party Album

A familiar complaint we’ve all heard around town of late is about the dearth of genuine community in Healdsburg. It’s a grumbling refrain that holds particular meaning from anyone that remembers Healdsburg when the words quaint and small town charm could be said about it with a straight face. The usual culprits are a mind boggling collection of new businesses, hotels and restaurants that have opened over the past few years to capitalize on the town’s ‘success’ as a destination location, but the quickening pace of our lives, and the emotional distancing of technology certainly contribute to the disconnect at the heart of the discontent.

The way we see it, community isn’t stagnant, is should and must accommodate change. It’s a layered human construct that is constantly telegraphing across the web of seemingly random connections we make with the people whose paths we cross as we go about our lives, working, shopping, dining out, walking the dogs or, yes, coming out on a beautiful afternoon to taste wine.  Of course It can be locational, found in the church hall, a sporting event, working alongside neighbors at the local food pantry, but we are creating it all the time, with every interaction.  It starts with a desire to connect, is sustained by courtesy, respect, and common interests, and, if you are lucky enough to find them, shared goals.

If the only goal is to make money, if you don’t truly care about your product, respect or spend the time getting to know the people you live and work alongside, you cannot sustain genuine community. Especially in small towns like ours, relationships reverberate in subtle ways when you pay attention; good will resonates whether you’ve known someone for years, or just met them by chance. Community can happen in an afternoon – as it did on Pink Party Sunday. The thing that makes it real is the genuine presence you bring to it, no matter what role you play.

The winemakers who gathered in our gardens to pour their Rosé’s at this years Pink Party, who charmed and educated the guests who came to meet them and admire their craft, are a community with like minded goals, just as the slow flower farmers who grew the blooms we sourced to help create dazzling displays, and the food purveyors like Chef Mike Degan, The Healdsburg Bagel Company, Chef Anderson. Our wonderful staff here at Barndiva, the amazing Corazón crew lead by Ashley Mauritson, Alexis Ioconis who steered the wine ship for us for this years Pink on top of everything else she does, Amber Kneally who sewed our Pink Party Pirate flag at the last minute simply because we asked her to - these are the members of our community we depend upon who bring quality and meaning to our lives as we work through them. Dawnelise and Ari Rosen, last seen leading a joyous if bittersweet progression at the closing of campo fino with patrons who very much considered themselves a community - came to help raise funds and awareness for Corazón, the community organization they founded that focuses upon strengthening families at the very heart of hospitality in Healdsburg. Community is everywhere you choose to see it, and engage with it.

I want to give a special shout out to the many beautiful women in their pink dresses who danced together at the end of the day, as the rest of us looked on beneath the wisteria enjoying the same breeze and listening to the music. It felt so good just to be together and celebrate spring, and the abundance of Healdsburg.

The fabulous Pink Party Line Up for 2023:

@bloodrootwines, @almafriawines, @prestonfarmandwinery, @raftwines, @mauritsonwines, @idlewildwines, @jolielaidewines, @drinkseppi, @cruxwinery, @amistavineyards, @bricoleurvineyards, @brickandmortarwines, @stephane.vivier.wines, @reevewines, @daniel_sonoma, @handleycellars, @flowerswinery, @roedererestate, @grosventrewines, @breathlesswines, @dunstanwine, @tberkleywines, @marinelayerwines, @scharffenbergercellars, @hirschvineyards, @domainesott, @matanzascreekwinery, @liocowineco, @cruesswine, @leosteen_wines, @theharrisgalleryandwine, @ernestvineyards, @rootdownwines, @county_line_vineyards, @copainwines, @drinkkally, @altaorsowinery, @captûrewines, @untiwines.com, @guv_hales, @natalienelsonkirby

Special Friends who always bring it: Chef Francisco, Alexis Ioconis, Ari Rosen & Geoffrey Hales, Scott Beattie (in search of a cocktail no doubt), the irrepressible Susan Preston, Lukka Feldman in from London, Releigh and Asijah, Barndiva’s wine Director Emily Carlson, Eric Sussman, Dan Fitzgerald, Jil Hales & Chappy Cottrell, Dawnelise Rosen, and another belle of the ball in her pink frock, Birdy.

Our thanks to all the winemakers for donating to the raffle benefiting Corazón.

Healdsburg has an abundance of vital community organizations that welcome new energy - join one!

All photographs by the incredible Chad Surmick can be shared. TM us @barndivahealdsburg. And heads up: If you are one of many who missed attending when The Pink Party because it sold out so early, consider signing up to receive our newsletter, Eat the View, so you are first to know about future public events. we’ve got some doozies up our sleeves.

Tickets are now on sale for Fête Blanc, August 20.

@dragonfly_floral, @singlethreadfarm, @longertablefarm, @filigreenfarm, @frontporchfarm, @whodoestheflowers!

@airick72, @franciscoa_, @healdsburgbagel, @chefdegan