A notable addition to Sonoma’s real estate inventory is the home of astronaut Russell “Rusty” Schweickart, who piloted the Apollo 9 lunar module that made way for the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The well-traveled Schweickart settled on a sweet patch of earth on Sonoma’s east side, where he has called home since 2000.

The three-bedroom, three-bathroom, 3,071-square-foot dwelling is now listed for $2,500,000.

At the entrance, the light-drenched, high-ceilinged foyer shines in this circa-1991 home. A grand double staircase leads to the upstairs, which includes a library.

An orangerie — a home addition designed to serve as a greenhouse — has repeating French and transom windows, plus skylights. The structure creates a light-flooded seating area with generous views to the gardens and, predictably, the stars.

The home includes an updated kitchen. The grounds are lush with mature plantings.

For more information on this home at 760 Fifth St. E. in Sonoma, contact listing agent Kathleen Leonard, Compass Real Estate, 135 W. Napa St., Suite 200, Sonoma, 707-287-4314, kathleenleonard.com, compass.com

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A grandly scaled, Spanish-style home in Sonoma is currently listed for sale. The five-bedroom, six-bathroom estate and guesthouse sit on 6.25 acres with a pond, pool and gardens teeming with many varieties of flowers and trees. The sellers are seeking $8,800,000.

The 5,736-square-foot home has rustic and traditional styling: iron fixtures, plaster walls, arched doorways, wide-plank wood floors and paned windows.

The home has other charming and not-often-seen amenities. There’s a spectacular four-way fireplace centered in the open living room area. The gourmet kitchen has a live-edge walnut countertop and the butler’s pantry is sun-lit thanks to a good-sized window with shutters.

The guesthouse on top of the garage has a wraparound balcony. A below-ground wine cellar in the home is clad in the area’s native rock. There’s an illuminated greenhouse for growing plants year-round.

For more information on this home at 18455 Half Moon St. in Sonoma, contact listing agents Matt Sevenau, 707-934-5630, or Maurice Tegelaar, 707-484-8088, Compass Real Estate, 135 W. Napa St., Suite 200, Sonoma, compass.com

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 A luxury home in the Sonoma hills — complete with distant San Francisco views — is available for sale. The new three-bedroom, three-bathroom, five-half-bathroom dwelling has a detached office or guest room. It sits on 15 wooded acres that include a pool and tennis court. The asking price is $12,000,000.

The modern building has three split-level stories of offset spaces that allow for rooftop patios on the second story. Bold brick-red siding accents the mostly white exterior and is repeated in the outdoor lounges and on the detached office.

Floor-to-ceiling windows and the open-concept layout allows for showstopping views throughout the home. The interior design’s clean lines and white interiors yield to the outdoor setting, but many indoor finishes provide a beautiful counterpoint.

Amid tranquil whites and creams, there are saturated design surprises. Super knotty wood planks on the great room ceiling crown the airy space with rustic elegance. Walnut-stained shelves offer an all-over richness in the library, as do chocolate brown walls in the dining room. A sagey-gray tile backsplash and a teal upholstered banquette pop in the kitchen. A bathroom is accented via a pixelated floral backsplash made of white and ochre micro-mosaic tiles. Hanging teardrops of brass and glass create an unconventional room divider in a living room.

Amenities include a cabana, outdoor fireplace and spa perched high on an upper patio with valley views. The woodsy property also enjoys a meadow that is ready to become a vineyard, an event space or whatever the homeowners can envision.

For more information on this home at 17355 Norrbom Road in Sonoma, contact listing agent Holly Bennett, 707-484-4747, 707-935-2500, Holly.Bennett@Sothebys.Realty, Sotheby’s International Realty – Wine Country – Sonoma Brokerage, 793 Broadway, Sonoma, hollybennett.com

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A renovated, mission-style home in Sonoma is currently listed for sale. The four-bedroom, three-bathroom, 2,722-square-foot home was built in 1974 by architect Lawson Willard. A 2023 renovation using exquisite decorative finishes has transformed the dwelling into an inspired space. The asking price is $3,595,000.

Warm-hued, stained-wood cabinets throughout are capped with the high-contrast coolness of prized marbles like purple-veined Calacatta Viola, Dolomite and Arabescato. Tiles are sourced from notable designer Ann Sacks. 

Modern light fixtures offer whimsical contrast to the transitional space. Outdoor lights are mission style, handcrafted by the Santa Barbara Lighting Company.

Textile choices are showstopping. Hand-painted red de Gournay wallpaper in one bedroom is a bold and sumptuous choice. In another bedroom, de Gournay wallpaper with a forest scene, complete with foxes, blends beautifully with mission-style beveled doors.

The yard is full of lush plantings, and the pool, patio and awning have a simple angular geometry, allowing the setting’s understated wood tones and creamy textiles to share focus. 

For more information on this mission-style home at 16800 Estrella Drive, contact listing agent John “JL” Townsend, 415-601-2227, or Emily Beaven, 415-730-9759, Compass Real Estate, townsendgroupsf.com, compass.com

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A newly built estate and guest house on 2 acres in Sonoma is currently listed for $15,500,000. Set by a vineyard and centering around a courtyard, the modern five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bathroom home achieves a powerful elegance through premium materials, pleasing geometry and restrained but inspired use of color.

Neutral, rich hues of brown throughout the home’s design evoke Pantone’s 2025 color of the year, Mocha Mousse. The home’s warm design and color palette earned it a feature in Cottages & Gardens magazine.

Limewashed walls, marbles, handmade tiles and wood cladding are just some of the premium materials that sing through the design. Simplicity and detail combine to make spectacular design “moments” throughout the 6,859-square-foot home.

The layout of every room has a strong sense of balance, punctuated with contrasting finishes. For example, custom white oak cabinets flank large slabs of Calacatta marble in the kitchen. The stone is placed so the variegation runs at alternating diagonals, creating visual movement in the quiet space.

A built-in bench runs the length of the hallway, on which sit a series of tonal pillows to provide comfort but also a sense of movement down the hall. Accent lighting illuminates the vertical trio of alcove shelves.

The tranquil palette of white oak, hemlock and Accoya woods on the floors, cabinetry and ceiling provides a warm backdrop on which gentle touches of color shine. The honey-hued walk-in closet is enlivened just enough by a plum ottoman that provides a comfortable spot to sit. Vertical tiles lend a gentle blue to the wet bar’s backsplash. An avocado green chair and headboard provide some rich jewel tone in the bedroom.

One bathroom has lime-washed walls combined with Zellige tiles in a deep gray — a departure from the rest of the home’s palette that is surprising and successful.

The smoothness of lime-washed walls yield focus to the soft geometry of the home’s repeating arches. The roundness is echoed in the custom-made and selected sofas, chairs and recliners — all of which come with the sale of the house. 

Each room has a view into the courtyard with a pool and spa. The main room enjoys the setting through 14-foot sliding glass doors.

The home is the work of Ridge Design + Build, a local, family-owned business started by the late Alan Jay ‘A. J.’ Tudisco. The firm is now run by his children Allegra Diggins, Aaron Tudisco and daughter-in-law Sena Tudisco. The elder Tudisco was a designer and builder who, according to Aaron, “cared deeply about the details.” His children consider themselves “stewards of his passion and of his craft.” 

For more information on 1608 Ridge Valley Road in Sonoma, contact listing agents Gina Clyde, 707-529-8504, Daniel Casabonne, 707-494-3130, 707-939-2222, Sotheby’s International Realty – Wine Country, ventanasonoma.com

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A Forestville home — perched in the hills on three-fourths of a forested acre — was recently featured in a New York Times real estate story on $1.1 million homes in California. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom renovated home, now under contract, was listed for $995,000. 

The circa-1949 home’s remodeled interior includes wide-plank hardwood floors, a kitchen backsplash with handmade Heath Ceramics tiles and a fire feature in the great room.

The mainly white interior features lots of high contrast accents via select black walls, a blue room and a gray wallpapered room. But lots of natural light and end-to-end forest views steal the design show. 

The yard includes decks and a courtyard with a fire pit. Lots of seating areas give several vantage points from which to bathe in the views.

The Russian River dwelling is the second local real estate listing recently featured in The New York Times. In December of 2024, the Times spotlighted a Santa Rosa home in the hills of Montecito Heights.

For more information on this property at 10820 Canyon Road, contact listing agent Paul Ybarbo, 415-640-7281, 415-901-1724, Sotheby’s International Realty – San Francisco Brokerage, 117 Greenwich St., San Francisco, Canyon10820.com/mls

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A transitional style home on an acre in the Mission Highlands area of Sonoma is currently listed for sale. The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom, 3,800-square-foot dwelling has an asking price of $2,495,000. 

The interior is airy and light-drenched thanks to several double-hung windows, French doors and an open floor plan. Wood floors, cabinets and grandly sized ceiling beams on the inside warm the design.

The exterior enjoys the warmth of a shingled siding, which is crisply contrasted with white trim. Show-stopping tree and valley views are accessible along the length of the home via windows and balconies.

Amenities in the main bedroom include a gas fireplace, a private balcony, and a soaking tub and walk-in shower in the en suite bathroom.

The 1-acre property includes a pool with fountains, palms trees and a large surround of greenery.

For more information on this home at 17371 High Road in Sonoma, contact listing agent Aaron Kopelman, 510-517-5453, Sotheby’s International Realty – Wine Country, Sonoma Brokerage, 793 Broadway, Sonoma, sothebysrealty.com

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A deep-rooted connection to the landscape marks the rustic home of architectural designer Lisa Steinkamp and winemaker Scot Bilbro. On 5 rural acres in Healdsburg (“but just two minutes from Big John’s Market,” Lisa says), the couple and their son live in a simple, barnlike structure with broad connections to the outdoors from nearly every room.

“The thing we’ve always loved about this property is no matter where you are on it, whichever structure you’re in, you’re just looking at more wilderness,” says Scot. “It feels like you’re on a much, much bigger property than you are.”

The couple, who met in the early 2000s, were living in downtown Healdsburg in 2013 and had been looking for rural land for several years when Lisa got a tip from an old friend that the property was for sale. Though the outbuildings were in rough condition and overgrown with brambles, they could see the contours of the land held a beautiful shape, overlooking a sweeping view of a pond populated with herons, turtles and other wildlife.

“I was just itching to be able to walk out onto some meadow, to have some larger confines around us,” says Scot.

He and Lisa designed the home together and undertook much of the construction themselves. They endlessly discussed the framing of the view through the antique windows they’d found, accumulating repurposed doors and redwood siding — even teaching themselves how to use SketchUp to draw their plans. Lisa envisioned a classic California indoor-outdoor home with pocket gardens and living spaces that blurred the distinction between inside and out.

“The thought process was to create a very small envelope of curated space around the house,” she explains. “It’s very clean, intentional. It was important not to have an immaculate garden space, but to feel like we were living in nature.”

Downstairs is one large room with separate spaces for living, dining, lounging and cooking. There’s a single bathroom that the entire family uses, and a bedroom for their son, as well as multiple sets of doors with views out to the pond and fields.

Scot and Lisa’s room is upstairs, reached via a set of stainless-steel scaffolding Scot repurposed from his winery. They’re the type of stairs more commonly used to access the tops of wine tanks during fermentation.

The interior, including 25-foot-tall walls in the main living space, is clad entirely in gorgeous, inch-thick, foot-wide reclaimed redwood boards.

“We were almost finished, and Scot kept saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you sheetrock the walls,’” recalls Lisa. “And I said ‘I can’t. I can’t do it.’ I didn’t know what I was waiting for. But then I got a call from our wood guy, who had found some secret stash of barnwood sitting under a tarp somewhere. So I jumped in his truck and we got the wood, and that clad the entire space.”

Though built less than a decade ago, this is a storied home, one layered with a history and personality that reveal much about the family that built it. The living areas have wide comfy couches and lots of pillows for reading and nesting. Lisa is drawn to pieces with a background: a chandelier draped in fringe, opera costumes purchased for a song at a sample sale, handmade ceramics, an antique upright piano.

“The place is from the heart,” says Lisa. “It’s cozy — which is weird to say with 25-foot ceilings, you know.”

Their design decisions have been guided by a feeling of what is right for the home and the property, even if their choices seem unconventional or unusual.

“Our signal that we’re doing the right thing is whenever somebody says, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What do you see in this property?’” says Scot. “Basically, whenever someone tells us we’re crazy, we’re like, ‘Oh, we’re on the right track.’ Usually Lisa and I are totally in sync in terms of feeling there’s potential and magic in a place. And it’s all the better when nobody else can see it.”

The couple are proud to be passing along their creative values to their son, Booker,
who was just a toddler when they first moved to the property and is now 13 years old.

“We are doing a really good job of training our kid that used is good,” says Lisa. “In a world where fashion is in constant turnaround and quality has gone down and mountains of throwaway clothing are sent far across the ocean, he’s learning all that’s not necessary.”

Booker, who wants to be a pilot, spends his summers outside fishing for bass on the pond or tinkering with motorcycles and model airplanes. With a cheeky high-schooler’s sense of humor, he names all of the goslings on the pond Ryan. There’s a whole bevy of Ryan Goslings hatched each spring.

“Booker’s exposure to all this has gotten us to the point where he’s the one who reminds us how to play outside. He gets us out on the lake, out on the paddleboard,” says Scot.

The family lives in tune with the seasons, throwing the doors wide open
each morning and eating outdoors on the patio most nights. Scot likes to grill whole fish or lamb, while Booker rolls out pasta from scratch. The three of them make big salads with produce grown in raised beds made from half-ton bins from the winery.

“Being in the wine industry, having every seasonal change mean something’s happening is really fun,” says Scot. “It makes you feel connected to your job and what’s going on and where you live in a different way.”

“I work really hard to be present. When you’re working in agriculture, you’re always looking ahead. There’s a similarity between working on projects at the house and growing grapes and making wine. You’re in the midst of a perpetual transformation — you’re watching the leaves come out, you’re watching the canopies. Suddenly there’s fruit, and suddenly again, it changes color, and then you’re in the cellar. I just think it’s an amazing process… It’s like one big choose-your-own-adventure story.”

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Alice Warnecke Sutro has always looked to the land for inspiration. The rugged Warnecke Ranch, a 265-acre property in Sonoma’s Chalk Hill region with over a mile of frontage along the Russian River, has been in her family for six generations. The ranch is the place that feeds her soul, she says — the place where she can be the best version of herself.

“It’s why I manage the vineyard, make the wine and do the work. It’s all about the connection to the ranch.”

Growing up, the river was a peaceful place to swim and explore. Now, she takes her two children there to do the same. “It’s so beautiful down there. It’s imprinted in my mind as the most energizing place I can go.”

Alice — a grapegrower, winemaker and visual artist — studied art history at Stanford. She once held one of those student jobs that seem to only exist in the movies: maintaining works of art in the university’s outdoor sculpture garden. While soaping down a priceless Rodin bronze, she realized she was drawn to explore the places that had been home to the great artists she loved. Being able to touch and experience art in person was grounding to her artistic practice. Alice later lived and worked in Florence and Moscow before returning to the Bay Area’s California College of the Arts for a master’s degree in fine arts.

It was in graduate school that the young artist experienced a bit of a creative crisis. A professor had questioned aspects of her work, and she retreated to the family ranch to regroup. Alice found herself sitting on the ground, with her drawing paper beneath her, inside a large pigeon coop. Looking up at dozens of white pigeons, which had been raised on the ranch for 30 years, she simply began to draw what she saw.

“It’s hard to draw a bird because they always move. It was exciting, drawing faster and looser. Letting go of control made me more creative, exploratory and adventurous — and then the line in my work didn’t seem stale,” she says.

Today, Alice continues that freely given expression, and has become known for life-size figurative line drawings as well as live art performances. She likens the performances to drawing under pressure — a concept she explores in the tradition of artists like Niki de Saint Phalle, one of her creative inspirations.

At Healdsburg’s Gallery Lulo, where she first explored the concept of live drawing, she’d sit in the gallery and invite people off the street to step inside, where she would draw them live and then give away digital copies of the portraits to the subjects.

“I don’t think museums are always the best places for art. They make it rare and inaccessible,” she says, pointing out that long ago, art was a form of ritual and often didn’t culminate in a single, stand-alone work.

Last summer, Alice created a monumental outdoor piece set in an olive grove at Petaluma’s McEvoy Ranch. Her “I’m On a Roll” mural spooled out in one 100-foot-long roll of paper, with 20 life-size portraits of real-life people, solicited on the spot and drawn in a span of 12 hours — an experience she likens to running a marathon, as she dug deep for the physical strength and focus to finish the work. 

“I was looking at subject matter and drawing, so my brain was working there. While talking to them, I was an active listener and active in the conversation and tried to remember things about them, but then I was also aware of the people around me. They are my audience, also.”

The live performance aspect of her art creates a deep connection with people.

“At the heart of my projects, there is always a person-to-person interaction,” she says. “Drawing from life gives my line a certain quality and helps make my work look how I want it to.”

Her recent installation, “Mistress of Memory,” at Healdsburg’s Harmon Guest House plays with the concept of hotels as transitive spaces, featuring life-size figurative drawings of women holding balloons over their bodies. Alice created art for six guest suites, as well as a large mural in the hotel restaurant — all accompanied by a flash-fiction writing project where hotel guest are invited to interpret the works. It’s a narrative, she explains, about making, and perhaps losing, memories.

“I like to open up my practice to other people. I think of it more like theater, like having a director or set producer.”

But drawing under such intense circumstances can take a toll. She utilizes her ranch as a place to recuperate “before getting back out there.” Her small, rambling studio, filled with family antiques and artifacts from around the ranch, was once used by her father, a landscape architect, as a drawing studio. It smells of the redwood from which it was built.

Alice says the studio is a place to look inward and work privately on smaller art pieces as well as short stories for an upcoming book.

“The internal work balances the public-facing part of the art,” she explains.

In late summer and early fall, Alice’s art takes a back seat to her duties as a rancher, grapegrower and winemaker. Alice and her aunt, Margo Warnecke Merck, manage an 80-acre vineyard, which produces some 350 tons of grapes that they sell to labels like Decoy, Matanzas Creek and Herzog. Alice holds back an additional 20 tons of fruit for her own label, SUTRO Wine Co. Her favorite fruit to work with is Cabernet Sauvignon, she says. “It’s the variety that can do the most. I love the grippiness and bitter taste.”

“I do often think about tannins as deep shadows on a painting.”

With a heavy harvest workload, Alice typically pauses larger works for a few months. Though, she keeps a list of musings and ideas close at hand and manages to create some time to write. She also occasionally uses an app on her iPad to “finish the stories” on drawings that are not yet complete. But the time away from more ambitious projects is another chance to recharge.

“I like that distance from it. I get reinvigorated to return to art-making with the seasons.”

Ever the farmer, with the promise of the future in mind, Alice is hopeful that this fall’s harvest will be the best vintage ever. After all, she says, “All farmers are idealistic romantics at heart.”

Alice Warnecke Sutro’s installations will be on display at Harmon Guest House through September, and she is also currently at work on a new exhibition at Escolar on the Santa Rosa Junior College campus in November. For more information, visit alicesutro.com. To shop Alice’s wines, including a crisp Sauvignon Blanc as well as her favorite Cabernet Sauvignon from Warnecke Ranch, visit sutrowine.com.

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A newly built Sonoma home on 3 acres is secluded from neighboring properties by two creeks and a dense surround of oaks, maples and an olive grove. The property is currently up for sale for $12,500,000.

The four bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom dwelling on Fisher Lane centers around a pool and separate covered pavilions designed to accommodate large groups of guests.

The work of hospitality architect Juan-Diego Perez-Vargas, the L-shaped structure somewhat echoes the style of a modern longhouse with a steep gabled roof that runs the length of the home. It is clad in board-and-batten vertical siding. The home includes pitched interior ceilings, from 10 to 16 feet tall, as well as more intimate spaces. A large great room that houses the kitchen, dining and lounge areas. 

The use of beiges, blacks and whites create a tranquil palette. European white oak cabinets throughout give a gentle warmth and black quartzite counters offer graceful high-gloss contrast. White walls and the 10 to 16-foot ceilings lift the look. A restrained use of full-spectrum artworks – sculpture and drip paintings by Francisco Valverde — provide stunning blasts of color.

A loft and half-bathroom above the garage can function as guest quarters. Covered pavilions offer open-air lounging and dining areas to drink in the bucolic Sonoma setting. An outdoor kitchen features a grill and pizza oven.

For more information on 200 Fisher Lane, contact listing agents Joseph Zichelle, 415-279-2221, or Christine Krenos, 707-227-8661, Compass Real Estate, Krenoszichelle.com, 200fisher.com

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