Delicious Wine, Welcoming Hosts and Bucolic Picnics Are Found an Hour South of Silicon Valley

It is a trek to Windy Oaks Estate Vineyard & Winery in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, a journey that includes passing through a forest damp with coastal fog. Storms battered Northern California this winter and, at one point along the route, a chunk of asphalt had tumbled into a soggy creek. A carpet of moss covered a stone bridge built in 1939, its markings now barely legible. It was as if nature was taking the road back. Oak trees and wood fences — even an old parked motorcycle — were consumed by lichen.

But beyond the mottled redwoods and moss-covered oaks, rows of grapevines appeared on a sunny hillside in Corralitos, where Windy Oaks was built on a former apple orchard with sweeping views of Monterey Bay. Windy Oaks is one of a growing patchwork of wineries an hour’s drive south from Silicon Valley that are making and serving prizewinning chardonnay, pinot noir and other estate vintages. If winemakers in Sonoma and Napa Valleys, farther north, are viewed as sophisticated siblings, the wineries in the triangle formed by the towns of Corralitos, Morgan Hill and Hollister are their relaxed country cousins. They are related, but each has its own quirks.

There is a bucolic charm in these less-traveled byways. Local beekeepers sell honey out of the backs of their pickup trucks. Bags of Meyer lemons, $5 apiece, are stacked in self-service roadside cubbies. Goats graze just about everywhere. And if you take a wrong turn, you might find yourself at Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville, where you can pick your own berries and eat a slice of apricot pie.

Mostly, though, newcomers to the area are delighted that the busloads of noisy tourists that clog Napa Valley’s Silverado Trail in summer don’t exist here. That means you can enjoy a quiet picnic in the middle of a vineyard. Who knows? Maybe the server pouring wine that day might be the winemaker herself.

At Windy Oaks I was greeted by Cookies, a portly feline who followed me to a table at the edge of a row of vines. Two couples had arrived before me and laid out a feast of cheese and sausages from Corralitos Market & Sausage Co. One of the picnickers offered me a Polish sausage, rich and peppery, that paired nicely with the 2020 Henry’s Block estate pinot noir I was tasting.

In 2001, Windy Oaks’ founding winemaker, Jim Schultze, and his wife, Judy, released their first 36 cases of pinot noir. The Henry’s Block I tasted was from the original three-acre vineyard planted in 1996 and named after…