A Sonoma Vineyard Estate

Photo Courtesy of Aidlin Darling Design

Sonoma Vineyard Estate Employs Stunning Design Artistry -- Just Luxe

Joshua Aidlin and David Darling are the partners behind Aidlin Darling Design, renowned for their luxury accommodations. The gorgeous Vineyard Estate won the company the 2008 Chairman’s Award from the International Interior Design Association as well at the 2007 Merit Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects, among other honors. The beautiful 14,000 square foot home is located in Sonoma, California on 140 acres of land. The estate includes the main home, as well as a caretaker’s residence, barn, irrigation center, water storage, as well as sculpture gardens and an orchard.

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My Comment: The architecture for this house certainly alters one's traditional view of what a house should look like in the middle of a vineyard.

Wine Tasting In Sonoma

Vineyards along Duhig Road are in the Carneros region of Sonoma, which has an abundance of growers and wine choices. Photo: Lianne Milton / Special to The Chronicle

Top Sonoma Places For Wine Tasting -- SFGate

With the city of Sonoma less than an hour's drive north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a trip to Wine Country doesn't get much easier. The following Sonoma wineries, including two of the state's oldest, Buena Vista Carneros and Gundlach Bundschu - both more than 150 years old - have earned at least 2 1/2 out of a possible four stars for their tasting rooms:

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My Comment: My favorite is Buena Vista Carneros Winery

Bill Foley Is On A Winery Buying Spree

Bill Foley, owner of Foley Family Wines, is now hunting for more distressed wineries along Napa Valley's fable Route 29. Photographer: Jeff Minton/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

Wine Turns Mortgage Title Mogul Into Entrepreneur of Viticulture -- Bloomberg

On a crisp winter’s day in 2010, Bill Foley was exploring a troubled winery for sale in Sonoma County, California, when he was taken aback by the sight of an enclosed horse-riding ring the size of an airplane hangar.

Foley, who made a fortune selling mortgage title insurance during the housing boom, also recalls seeing a California mission-style chapel and a regulation-sized football field and baseball diamond at the Chalk Hill Estate. These extravagant structures had nothing to do with making wine and helped saddle an estate valued at more than $100 million with excessive debt, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its March issue.

“My wife said, ‘There’s no way you can buy this,’” Foley recalls with a mischievous grin.

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My Comment: He is 66 .... but that is not stopping him. What can I say but good luck.