The drive to Bolinas is just long enough.

The roads – mostly two-lane blacktop - wind south and west, and the new home construction along the 101 corridor is soon replaced by the meandering hillsides and valleys of Southern Sonoma’s dairy country. Then, a subtle shift occurs as the roads swing south into Marin.

This is not the Marin County of hot tubs and latte, but a bucolic and peaceful countryside that transports you back a half century – pastoral meadows, deer at graze, two room schoolhouses, clapboard framed farm homes – all speak of a way of life that has all but disappeared from our memory.

Then, suddenly, you emerge at Point Reyes Station – a charming coastal town, and center for the arts in western Marin. A southward jog puts us on Highway 1, curving through groves of eucalyptus and by placid hillsides, past Inverness and through Olema – closing on our destination.

By local custom, and to the great amusement of the locals, the turnoff to Bolinas is not marked – no street sign, no arrowed "this way to…", no marking of any sort. Indeed, it took Sean Thackrey far longer to explain it all to me than it took for me to negotiate. A brief swing west along coastal waterways, a few turns, and there it was: the world’s largest outdoor winery.

Page 2:  The interview

Page 4:  On the topics of typicity and terroir