Summertime, and the living is easy …

What a crock. The living’s no easier in the summer. Work goes on every day as normal, tourists flood the farmer’s market and a thick blanket of fog ensures that I lose my hard-earned trucker tan. Summer, feh.

But it is easy to get a small taste of the simple life, to bask in a carefree afternoon of food, friends and frivolity under a balmy summer sun. Certainly chief among the reasons we love living in San Francisco is fast and easy access to the wine country.

DPaul and I make excursions pretty frequently; in fact, we explicitly joined a few wineries’ clubs just to have the excuse to get out of town once in a while. We’ve long been big fans of the Dry Creek Valley area in Sonoma County, but for the last year and change we’ve been enamored with Carneros, the region alongside the north side of San Francisco Bay that straddles the southern ends of both Sonoma and Napa counties. And even more specifically, we’re best buds with Bouchaine.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Bouchaine rocks. I won’t pretend to be any kind of wine expert, and certainly cannot rank their wines against comparable quaff from more esteemed producers (though their rosé of syrah got good marks in our taste-off). All I know is that I enjoy their wines immensely. But what Bouchaine does excellently, better than most, is deliver a flawlessly enjoyable wine country experience. No tour buses and limos, no snotty bling-laden tourists and harried winery staff. Just a sun-dappled back deck overlooking vineyards and serenity interrupted only by a cooling bay breeze.

Bouchaine is an ideal spot for a picnic, and so for DPaul’s birthday last week, that’s precisely what we did. Ten of us met to enjoy a flight of tastings alongside some tasty treats. Bouchaine does offer a picnic program, where you can purchase baskets of meats, cheeses and other goodies, and that’s all well and good. But I thought it would be fun to bring our own picnic of wine-friendly foods to enjoy.