'Lock Down
Wine and Cocktails in Healdsburg

In Sonoma, you've got your tasting rooms and you've got your locals bars. Separate but equal bastions of consumption.

Until now.

Introducing Medlock Ames Tasting Room and Bar, Healdsburg's first thirst-quenching hybrid of a tasting room and speakeasy den, opening tomorrow.

You'll remember this corner spot as the site of the run-down Alexander Valley Store & Bar. Now, it's a distilled version of the Medlock Ames ranch up on Chalk Hill, made infinitely better with the addition of a reincarnation of the century-old locals bar steps from the tasting room.

Basically, you could roll up here at 10am and stay put. Start in the tasting room with a flight of Medlock Ames's wines at one of the two-seater booths under reclaimed mining lamps. Then spend the afternoon in the cocktail garden (think: olives, Kaffir limes, kumquats, mint) with a few bottles chilling in the ice-filled trough conveniently built into the picnic table.

All of this is prelude to when the bar opens. That's when you'll head into the dim, tin-ceilinged den reminiscent of its former woodsy, Victorian hideout and switch to cocktails made with produce from the garden and local spirits like Charbay's beer-distilled bourbon.

There's also a revolving "under the counter" stash that's available on an "ask-only basis."

But you didn't hear that from us.