Sonoma County: Robust, With Rich Cultural Undertones

California's wine country is linked in the mind's eye with timelessness: verdant vineyards stretching to the horizon, grapes ripening under the warming sun, forever.

But in fact, the wine country is always changing.

Sonoma Valley -- an hour north of San Francisco -- is fairly bursting with new wineries, restaurants with new chefs and new menus, hotel makeovers and expanded spas.

The Jacuzzi family, of whirlpool bath fame, has opened Jacuzzi Family Vineyards (866-522-8693) across highway 121 from its sister winery Cline Cellars.

Built in classic Italian style, the winery has been open only since July, but it has the look of a place that's been there for decades. Maybe it's the mature fig and olive trees brought from the family's ancestral home in Italy that give it such a rooted quality.

	Courtyard - Jacuzzi Family Winery

After tasting Jacuzzi's wines, it will be hard to associate the name with hot water again. Jacuzzi's 2006 Giuseppina Chardonnay is buttery and smooth. Its 2004 Valeriano blend of red varietals is big, but rounded and nicely structured. Jacuzzi specializes in Italian red varietals from the Carneros appellation at the southern end of the Sonoma Valley, where the new winery is located.

Jacuzzi shares its Carneros site with the Olive Press, recently relocated from Jack London Village, a funky wooden jumble of shops and restaurants outside the hamlet of Glen Ellen to the north.

	Jacuzzi Family Winery

The Olive Press makes golden extra-virgin olive oil on-site, sells books about olive trees, olive oil and, of course, olives, and sets out as many as eight olive oils for daily free tastings -- ranging from the delicate and grassy to the robust and peppery. You pour a small amount into a paper cup and dip bread in it; or you can sniff the bouquet and roll the oil on the tongue as you would with wine.

Slender 500-milligram bottles of fine oil retail for $25. Parties of 10 or more can book a guided tour of the Olive Press' immaculate, modern olive oil production plant by calling ahead (800-965-4839).

Half a mile north of Jacuzzi and the Olive Press on Highway 121 is Cornerstone Place (707-933-3010). This imaginative collection of shops, art galleries and wine-tasting rooms is graced with mature olive trees, but the metallic, hip-industrial style of the buildings gives it a just-finished, almost raw look.

Several shops, such as Asian-themed Opia, specialize in sculptures and planters for home gardens. Also at Cornerstone Place are more than 20 garden "rooms'' set off by hedges and fences. Each is designed by a landscape architect, and each is distinctive.

Blue Tree 2, by Montreal's Claude Cormier, wraps a weathered tree in eye-pleasing, sky-blue plastic balls. The Serenity Garden, by Osaka's Yoji Sasaki, has finely raked sand and a view to the ridgeline beyond. Cafe Blue Tree makes flavorful, healthful soups, salads and sandwiches (lunch for two with bottled water: $16).

In hotel news, MacArthur Place, located four blocks south of the Spanish-built plaza in the town of Sonoma, has just finished converting two spacious guest rooms into "garden spa suites.'' The 62-room hotel has long had a professional spa for massages, facials, aromatherapy and the like, but in the new garden spa suites, you do it yourself (800-722-1866).