Bike & Brew

Drink all night, then work off the calories by riding all day. What a deal! Well, as they say on the Hertz commercials, 'Not exactly.'

By DARIA LABINSKY

It sounds like the ideal vacation: a bicycle tour of California's wine country, during which you get to sample the wares at some of the state's best brewpubs. Drink all night, then work off the calories by riding all day. What a deal!

Well, as they say on the Hertz commercials, "Not exactly." After riding all day, the idea of partying all night doesn't sound half as good as taking a long bath and falling into a big, soft bed. Plus, the Backroads California Microbreweries Tour offers so many opportunities for indulgence that the best you can hope to do is maintain your original weight and not return home as round as a hippo.

Backroads is a Berkeley, Calif., tour company that specializes in "active" vacations -- the kind where you hike, climb, raft, cycle, etc., in gorgeous locales around the world. The wine country trips are some of the company's most popular tours. Most of them focus exclusively on wineries, but the tour I took throws five brewpubs into the mix. It covers more than 200 miles in five days, not counting the day spent driving to the departure point, and is rated "moderately easy" to "challenging."

All vacations should be learning experiences, and this one, unfortunately, taught me some painful lessons. But by the time our journey ended, I felt like I had really accomplished something -- and treated myself to a hedonistic five days to boot.

Day 1 -- The Warm-Up

Our merry band of 13 riders and two guides meet in downtown San Francisco on a damp October morning. All 15 of us squeeze into one van for the trip north to Mendocino, which makes getting acquainted practically mandatory. The guests range in age from early 20s to early 50s and include people from British Columbia, Bermuda, Hawaii, Florida, California, Washington state and Illinois. Five married couples, two women traveling without their husbands, one single guy. Seven women, six men -- more women than men on a beer trip!

"Yes, but this is also a wine trip," notes Jamie, here from Hawaii with his wife, Pauline. Our level of cycling experience ranges from beginner to expert. Some have cycled a "century," or 100 miles in a day, on many occasions, while others think 30 miles sounds like a lot; I'm in between. None of us is looking forward to the hills. "I'm here more for the microbrews than the biking," says Dennis, who is on the trip with his wife, Rosemary, and lives near Sacramento. Here, here!

John, the single guy, from Bermuda, says he's on the trip to escape the stress of his job for a while. Bob and Sandy, from Southern California, are here with their daughter, Leslie, and her husband, Brett, who live in Florida. Pauline bid on the trip in a charity auction, and others simply found it an appealing vacation idea.

We stop at the storefront Mendocino Brewing Co. in Hopland for lunch. Hopland, as the name suggests, was once at the heart of California's hop-growing region. Today, grapevines blanket the land as you head into town.

Mendocino Brewing's brewpub is the oldest one in California, established in 1983. It's a comfortable place with a trellised beer garden covered with vines, and picnic tables for communal seating. The small pub room has pressed tin walls and wood flooring, a small wood-and-brass bar with tall stools and the trademark Mendocino hawk apparent everywhere. A brick archway leads to a second room that has pub tables and low chairs and a small stage for live music.

We sit in the shady garden and pass pitchers of dry Black Hawk Stout, Peregrine Pale Ale, and the best of the bunch, the renowned Red Tail Ale. Tavern manager Jim Kurzava greets us and explains a little about how beer is made, as we munch on various kinds of malt while perusing the Tex-Mex-inspired food menu.

A special treat is New Albion Pale Ale, which is not very impressive but worth trying for historical reasons. The unfiltered American pale ale is based on the one made by the country's first modern microbrewery, the New Albion Brewing Co., and is made with the original yeast, as are all Mendocino's beers. Mendocino master brewer Don Barclay was with New Albion.

"Usually when we're here it's really hot, and everyone drinks all the beer," says Holly, one of our guides. "Then they all sleep in the van for the rest of the trip."

By mid-afternoon, we arrive in the coastal town of Mendocino, which long ago traded its logging past for a new identity as an art and tourist town. Some wise civic leaders set aside the land hugging the cliffs as state parkland, so the Pacific Ocean views are spectacular. We check into the historic Mendocino Hotel, an elegant inn furnished with antiques. Our rooms are big enough to hold a dance in, with fireplaces, huge armchairs and sunken tubs.

I spend the afternoon exploring the town and plodding along the cliffs. The group meets up at Paddington's, a crowded Irish pub, to share pints of imports and micros before dinner. The trip is already proving indulgent, and we've barely started. Under the rules of the tour, we can order anything we want off the menu -- "you can have two dinners if you want," Holly says, and these are restaurants where the typical entrée is more than $20. Alcoholic beverages are not included, however, except for beer at the brewpubs we visit. We usually eat breakfasts and dinners together and pack lunches each morning before the ride. Guides Skye and Holly are constantly plying us with snacks, as well.

Day 2: On to Boonville
Day 3: Bed down in Calistoga
Day 4: Touring Sterling Vineyards
Day 5: A long ride in Marin County
Day 6: The payoff, Golden Gate Bridge