The London Lodge holds a special place in my heart. When my husband Dan and I were dating, he sometimes took me up to his family’s home on a small vineyard in Kenwood. That house was magical, on a slope overlooking eight acres of Chardonnay grapes. For miles, all you could see was vines and sky. I was drunk on love and wine.
Part of our routine on these excursions from San Francisco to Sonoma was to stop at the Jack London Lodge in Glen Ellen for a welcome-to-the-wine-country bevvie before we arrived at the house. Sometimes we’d have a drink in the saloon, a red brick, frontier-style building with a wide front porch. It’s easy to imagine swinging saloon doors and cowboy silhouettes lounging in the frame. More often though, we’d sit creekside on the back garden patio to drink wine and swoon. The London Lodge became part of our personal mythology. It seemed natural that we should get married there.
So five years ago, we booked all 22 rooms with friends and family on the day of the big event, and took over the joint. The Lodge itself is just that, a lodge — spare, efficient and motel-like — but it’s adjacent the lovely garden patio, pool and hot tub, and is quite affordable by Wine Country standards ($90-$125 per night in low season; $125-$185 in high season). It lies in the tiny center of Glen Ellen in the Valley of the Moon, one of the sweetest spots in all of Sonoma Valley. Affiliated with the Lodge is the Wolf House restaurant, who masterfully catered our wedding.
Just up the hill behind the Lodge on London Ranch Road, is the 85-acre Benziger Family Winery, one of my favorite wineries in Sonoma. The Benziger clan is a warm, friendly bunch who employ biodynamic farming techniques in their wine growing and making. Tram tours of the stunning property offer education about the intricate biodynamic process, the highest form of organic farming, which involves insects, birds and bats to delicately balance the eco-system.
If you drive to the top of London Ranch Road, you’ll reach Jack London State Park, where the magnificent stone ruins of London’s “Wolf House” solemnly rest, destroyed by fire in 1913 before the legendary writer/adventurer was ever able to inhabit it. He and his wife were living in a nearby cottage during the construction and woke to flames early that morning. The park has hiking trails to the ruins and to London’s grave. Horseback riding through the park and surrounding vineyards is perhaps the best way to explore the Valley of the Moon.
