It’s finally summer. Sell your textbooks, pack your bags, put the boards on the roof and hit the road. To experience a unique surfing culture where waves meet wine, visit Sonoma County in Northern California. Roughly 45 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge on the West Coast, the region is defined by rolling hills lined with vineyards. Welcome to the wine country. After a surf session at Doran Beach or Salmon Creek in Sonoma County, head to Healdsburg where you will find some of the most delicious and internationally acclaimed wines in the world.
Walking into the Long Board tasting room, you’d swear you were walking into a surfer’s garage in the 1970’s, but with a modern twist. A variety of bright surfboards decorate the wooden ceiling; classic longboards, a stand-up-paddle board from the 1930’s, even a 1960’s board bought from Sears is suspended from the ceiling by rope. The wine tasting bar is constructed from a hand-crafted balsa wood longboard from Waikiki while a flat screen continuously running surfing films is mounted on the wall at the end of the bar. Oded Shakked stands behind the counter in his Longboard hoodie and jeans. He’ll greet the visitors, pull out the wine list and pour one of five different wines Longboard Vineyards offer for tastings. As you relax with your first glass of Sauvignon Blanc you will quickly sense that the surf culture is as authentic as the wine in Sonoma County.
Sonoma County is internationally renown for harvesting some of the world’s best wines, the moderate temperatures and diverse region of northern California offer ideal growing conditions for winemakers. The vineyards attract wine lovers from around the world to taste wine for $0-$15 depending on the winery. Barrel tasting and wine tours invite guests twenty-one and over to buy a wristband (about $30 cost) to taste at nearly twenty wineries in Sonoma County. Many also provide food and live entertainment.
The winemakers of Longboard Vineyards value balance and authenticity above all. “We’re about making good wine that ages well, at decent prices,” said winemaker Oded. While some wineries exude sophistication with the act of tasting wine, Oded and the staff at Long Board Vineyards take a more relaxed approach, his mantra being, “You should spend more time in life having fun and less time reading the backs of your wine labels.”
The laid back winemaker grew up in Israel where he surfed and built boards for one of the two companies surf companies in the country. “It’s not great, but there’s decent surf in the Mediterranean,” Oded said. “Whenever we heard there was an earthquake in Greece we would wax our boards because we knew we would get some waves.” Oded moved to California to pursue viniculture at UC Davis and after working for another winery for eighteen years, established Longboard Vineyards in Sonoma County. “I see a lot of parallels in winemaking [to surfing], it’s really fun for me to kind of close the circle.” By naming the vineyard “Longboard,” Oded paid homage to his love for surfing. Not everyone could see the connection between the two cultures but to Oded, it was obvious. “They’re both things that require patience and passion, you’re not the boss, and when you learn that you can’t be in control, that’s when you start really enjoying it,” he said.
From tales of surfing on cardboard to seal attacks, Oded has a lifetime’s knowledge of surf culture and enjoys talking story with visitors, while pouring wine. Speaking on women’s surfing, he recalled one woman surfer in all of Israel whose father brought the first surfboard to Israel in the 1950’s for the lifeguards. While surfing culture develops, women still represent the minority at most every surf break. To explain the gender difference, Oded retraces surfing back to the 1950’s and 1960’s, and considers the physical limitations on women at a time when the boards were constructed longer and much heavier. He reasons that cultural stigma could contribute to some discouragement from women in the water because some male surfers feel territorial in the lineup, “If someone penetrates that circle,” Oded said, “it makes them feel uncomfortable because they can’t be jerks any more, you gotta watch you language. I hope we get beyond that at some point, what are we in the dark ages or something?”
For the winemaker, surfing is a religious experience. “To me, the great part of surfing is the spiritual part,” he said. “Going into the water is my church. I go sit in the water, bob up and down waiting for a wave, relax, decompress and think about life.” Award-winning wine made by a surfer with soul, Longboard vineyards attest surfing and wine to be a harmonious pair in Sonoma County.
For the winemaker, surfing is a religious experience. “To me, the great part of surfing is the spiritual part,” he said. “Going into the water is my church. I go sit in the water, bob up and down waiting for a wave, relax, decompress and think about life.” Award-winning wine made by a surfer with soul, Longboard vineyards attest surfing and wine to be a harmonious pair in Sonoma County.
