You are invited up the mountain for dinner. Stonestreet is a winery outside Healdsburg, and most of its grapes grow high above Alexander Valley on the Alexander Mountain Estate rather than down on the valley floor. The evening is held up there, at 1,800 feet, in the part of the vineyard called Upper Barn, so you travel up out of the valley to reach it.

Your hosts are Chris Jackson, who owns Stonestreet, and Dustin Valette, the chef who owns Valette Wines along with the Valette and Matheson restaurants in Healdsburg. Both families have spent their lives in Sonoma County, and they are hosting this evening together.

The Valette kitchen team is cooking a dinner of several courses using what is in season, and every course arrives with a wine chosen to suit it, so you are never left to work out what goes with what. Some of those wines are Stonestreet's and some are Valette's, and the evening puts the focus on wines grown here on the Alexander Mountain Estate.

Pocket Peak is a Cabernet Sauvignon that Valette Wines makes from grapes grown on the Jackson family's vineyard up here. The new release is poured for the first time at this dinner, so you'll be among the first to taste it.

Growing grapes this high up is hard work, because the soil changes from one part of the estate to the next and the slopes are steeper than most growers would attempt, so Stonestreet has spent years learning which patch of ground grows what. This evening is the two families putting that work on the table together, with cooking to match, and they would like you there.