Ledson Winery

Santa Rosa civic architecture is bland and boring but a lot of the wineries make up for it with their grandiose designs.. A good portion of its original downtown was destroyed by the same earthquake and fire that destroyed large parts of San Francisco in 1906. The replacement structures are boring and utilitarian. We lived in Santa Rosa for almost a year before I figured out which of the low brick buildings downtown was actually City Hall.

There is, however a category of architecture here which I call 'winery pseudo architecture', so today I took a five minute down the Sonoma Highway from our house in the heart of the Sonoma Valley wine country. The Ledson Winery is classic pseudo  Gothic/French/Norman architecture,  even more over the top than the Tuscan/Mission style of its neighbor St.Francis, or the French Chateaustyle of Chateau St Jean. Here's what Steve Ledson, a fifth generation winemaker has to say about it:
Our 16,000 square foot winery is known as "the Castle" around the world. Originally designed as our family home, the contractor and designer in me got carried away and it quickly became clear that the architectural showpiece was much better suited to house our planned winery.... 
He goes on to use words like 'breathtaking' and 'majestic' which strike me as a bit overwrought, but maybe  that's just because it was only built a couple of decades ago and seems to me totally out of place in Sonoma County vineyards, although 'showplace ' might be a more suitable description of many new wineries.

Another factor in choosing this picture to represent local architecture is the fact that, as you can see, it is at the foot of Hood Mountain which was heavily burned in the recent fires which burned to within a half mile of our own house. Although the vineyard is clearly charred, the vines will probably survive and no doubt protected the winery building itself which was damaged but not destroyed. The catastrophic fires which roared through our town last month destroyed 5,500 homes and businesses, and will have a great effect on the future architecture of the town as they are rebuilt.