Story by Susan Hiland provided by Daily Republic
Suisun Valley greeted a group of out-of-town travel writers with a bounty of beauty, food and wine over the weekend.
They toured just about every winery, olive oil factory, candy-making company and barley brew-maker in the area.
This was the result of the Fairfield Conference & Visitors Bureau reaching out to Geiger & Associates, which has put together these travel tours for several communities including Lodi.
“This is the first time we have done something like this,” said Anand Patel, president/CEO of Visit Fairfield. “The goal was to get people thinking about Fairfield and Suisun Valley.”
He said he hoped that the travel writers would see the beauty of the valley and share that with their readers. The writers came from Portland, Oregon, Southern California, Northern California and even Quebec, Canada.
“We hope people read their articles and get interested in the valley,” he said.
The group of writers included Susan G. Hauser, Elyse Glickman, Vaughn Lowery, Wendy van Diver, Cortney Erndt, Carla Waldemar, Ruksana Hussain, Wendy Lemlin, Janet Boileau and Robin Raven.
The writers arrived Thursday and enjoyed an afternoon at Jelly Belly Candy Co., where they took the tour, sampled sweet treats and shopped.
“Every single stop we hope they learn something new,” Patel said.
Boileau, a writer and publisher for Taste and Travel International Magazine, which is a culinary publication with 20,000 subscribers across Canada, had no idea about Suisun Valley.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “But this is a very impressive part of the wine country.”
She was enjoying how relaxing the area was with some wine from Suisun Valley Wine Co-op along Pleasants Valley Road. The stop offered an opportunity for everyone to sample a variety of wines from the area in one place.
Lowery is the president of 360 Magazine, a lifestyle magazine that goes out to thousands of subscribers from Los Angeles to Japan.
“Anyone visiting here needs to stop at Il Fiorello Olive Oil Co.,” he said. “It was a sensory overload.”
They sampled a meal with each of the foods having been created using produce from the company’s garden.
“This is a great cross of Napa and Sonoma,” Lowery said. “It’s a place you can take time out and is very drivable.”
He said he was envisioning himself returning with a convertible, rolling the top down and just cruising through the back roads as a vacation.
“We tasted the grapes at Wooden Valley Winery. They were so sweet, I thought no way that was real,” he said.
“Fairfield is just a great town for a great road trip,” he said.
