If you're in the northern region of Sonoma County, wine tasting in the Cloverdale area, it's worth your while to travel a bit further north on highway 101 into Mendocino County to spend some time in the friendly little town of Hopland. Beer lovers will find this detour to be a special treat, given Hopland's colorful past and equally exciting present.

Hopland owes it's name to the hops industry that began in 1866. The damp soils of the Russian River's floodplains were suitable for the cultivation of hops, whose flowers determine the bitterness and the aromatic properties of beer. In it's heyday, Hopland had four stores, four saloons, three churches, a meat market, and a hotel. Six passenger trains and two freight trains stopped daily, and business boomed.

The wine business gave Hopland the shot in the arm it needed, inspiring a group of growers to restore a century-old brick building in town and turn it into a brew pub.

Ukiah, further north, eventually became the more important shipping center, however, and the pace of life slowed down in Hopland. It almost came to a complete stop when hops usage in brewing dropped dramatically and the plant ruined the remaining plantings. The wine craze of the early 70's started shaking Hopland back to life.

The beautiful and pastoral Anderson Valley, an isolated viticulture district of the Mendocino Plateau in the Coastal Mountain Ranges, is 100 miles northwest of San Francisco. It is a valley two miles wide and twenty five miles long extending from Anderson Creek to the Navarro River at the Pacific Ocean. This premiere viticulture region is famous for producing Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, and White Riesling for the production of classic still wine and sparkling wine made in the "methode champenoise."

A trip to Mendocino can be an excursion in its own right or it can be combined with stops at other nearby destinations. The wine and apple region of the Anderson Valley, including the town of Boonville and its famous hotel, are less than an hour away. Hopland, just north of the Junction of Highways 128 and 101, offers wine-tasting as well as dining, shopping, and a sense of the old West. Fort Bragg and the Skunk Train are just a few miles up the road. Further north, almost to Eureka, is the quaint Victorian village of Ferndale.