I’ve been on the Highway 101 wine road for two days and gps mapped the wine towns of Paso Robles, Solvang, and Los Olivos.

We’ll soon add them to our online maps. I’ll also use this info to produce a video of wine towns next summer.

As usual I stopped into the Tastes of the Valleys wine bar in Solvang. This cozy and inviting basement hideout is always a great place to meet interesting people and taste local wines of very limited production. The staff is always engaging and friendly. I would be there often if I didn’t live 4 1/2 hours away. I left with three very interesting bottles to taste with Katya.

- jim

There are three small Murphys / Calaveras County, CA wineries that are close together, rather bundled for a day trip, and are full of warm personality and taste variety.  The three are on Highway 4 between Angels Camp and Murphys so it would be hard to get lost.  Try all three for a day trip and then head into Murphys for dinner, or another tasting room + dinner.

1)  Twisted Oak is on a hill to your right as you approach Vallecitos.  You can’t miss the big sign on the barn.  Make a quick right on that side road and another right up a loooong driveway to the top.  You’ll pass through the “Rubber Chicken National Forest” and other such odd attractions in the forest.  This is the most unusual approach to a winery in California.  The view from the top is incredible.  The wines are interesting blends that are a wonderful taste adventure.  (I’ve previously blogged about them.)  We love Twisted Oak wines with Italian food!  Unfortunately there isn’t a window behind the tasting bar so you could both taste and enjoy the view.

2)  Irish Vineyards is just up the highway on the right past a side road and bridge.  Irish produces a large selection of tasty blends and varietals.  I would tell you a bit more about the wines but we drank them months ago.  Loved ‘em but can’t remember the details.  You taste in the working winery with winery stuff in all directions.  The family is entertaining and informative.  Owners often pour.  There is also a winery dog.

3) Chatom Vineyards is further up Highway 4 toward Murphys.  This is a woman owned winery with a good selection of varietals.  Their wines are refined, soft, and with medium body.  These are gentle sipping wines.  We particularly enjoyed their 04 Cab and Zin.  The tasting room is warm and cozy in the winter and the staff is always friendly.   The surrounding area is well landscaped and there are picnic tables under a trellis.

While there are many wonderful winery tasting rooms in the Murphys area these and Ironstone we rarely pass up.  See their Wine Questers portfolios for more information and photos.

Next summer we’ll start production of a video on California wine towns.  Murphys will be featured.

- jim

I added an olive oil tasting room category to WineQuesters.com.  This was requested by a Paso Robles olive oil company.  So now there is one online but others will probably join.  We may add these to our Tweetup Tastings!

There are maybe a dozen olive oil tasting rooms in California wine regions.  St. Helena Olive Oil Company, Temecula Olive Oil Company, and Pasolivo in the mountains west of Paso Robles are the better known ones.  If we can help them establish more of a market then we should see more such tasting rooms.

- jim

Last Saturday we brought six bottles aboard a 32′ Catalina sailboat sitting in a marina south of San Francisco. Accompanying the all red wines was a huge focacia meat loaf sandwhich.

Eleven people came and went during the long afternoon. The bottles slowly emptied, the spicy meatloaf sandwhich slices seemed to evaporate, and the conversations in the cozy cabin became more interesting.

Every faster loved every wine. No rejects. All are robust enough so we could enjoy them with full flavor and aroma for each varietal. None were so soft to be boring.

The favorite was the Estates 04 Paso Robles Petite Sirah. This is a wine club only selection but we “stole” it. It was lost in oak for over a year, yes, ignored and abandoned. We voted for Hahn to loose all the wines from now on!!

Other wines we selected in the tasting room which we really enjoyed.

Hahn Estates 06 Cab Franc
Hahn Estates 05 Malbec
Hahn SLH 06 Syrah
Hahn SLH 06 Pino Noir

We left a bottle of Pino aboard as a gift to Gil and his new boat. Everyone ageed we need to do this again. Maybe even sail first!

- jim

On Saturday December 13 we had our first Wine Questers Tweetup Tasting.  Three of us from the Twitter wine community met for lunch at Gerre Vineyard and Winery’s wonderful cafe.  We then proceeded to taste and micro-blog our impression on Twitter at 6 wineries starting with Garre’s tasting room for the next five and a half hours.  (We poured out.)  Many in the wine community followed and discussed our impressions during the tasting room visits.  Our Tweetup was exposed the hundreds of tasters around the US and the world.

We will be developing the Wine Questers Twitter Tastups into regular events.  The wineries quickly recognized the value of live micro-blogging at their tasting bars and offered us nice discounts.  If you are interested in joining us and being in the wine media for a day please join the Tweetup Tasting group!

Below are the wines that I bought that I considered to be particularly interesting to taste. Red Feather and Little Valley had some killer wines that they wouldn’t sell us because their labels weren’t approved yet.  We tasted them and wanted to try them in a home context.  I’ll be blogging about the wines below as we try them.  If you are looking for interesting and tasty wines please try these and comment on them.  None are too soft to be boring but they won’t bite you.  The list below is in the order I pulled the wines from the case and bags.

Charles R Vineyards:

• 2006 Livermore Valley Zinfandel.
• 2005 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.

Crooked Vine Winery:

• Stony Ridge Malvasia Bianca undated sparkling wine.
• Stony Ridge 2005 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.
• Crooked Vine 2004 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.
• Crooked Vine 2007 Livermore Valley Charve - Chard & Viogneir blend.
• Crooked Vine 2004 Aromatica Dessert Wine.

Red Feather Winery:

• 2004 Livermore Valley Merlot.
• 2005 Livermore Valley Jaiden’s Dessert Wine - unusual, dry, and tasty!

Les Chenes Estate Vineyards - specializing in very small case lots of Rhone style wines:

• undated Livermore Valley Deux Rouge - red wine.
• 2007 Livermore Valley Roussanne.
• 2007 Livermore Valley Mourvedre.  We finished the bottle over two days and sipped before dinner, during, and after.  Katya and I considered it better after it had time to breath and open up. Good quality and interesting but it this varietal takes a little getting used to for those unfamiliar with it.  Worth the “learning curve” though!

Little Valley

• 2002 Livermore Valley Cab Sauv.

Gerre

• 2005 Livermore Valley Syrah.
• 2006 Livermore Valley Merlot.

I tried really hard not to stay over in Murphys last Friday night.  I only needed some fall colors for our upcoming video series on California wine regions so I could have blown through the region in a couple of hours and arrived home to have dinner with Katya.

After some photography I made the mistake of stopping into Ironstone’s tasting room.  The friendly staff tempted me by disclosing that the next day, Saturday, they would have a parking lot wine sale with great prices.  This was part of the local holiday event that included 13 Murphys tasting rooms open until 9 PM on Friday night along with food in the tasting rooms and a parade.

I tasted at Ironstone and then drove up the hill to Twisted Oak to taste and buy a little wine.  Again I was told I should stick around for the events.  The weather was terrific and I couldn’t resist.  After booking a room at the Murphys Hotel I drove out through the hills to Stevenot’s remote tasting room and enjoyed their fine hospitality and incredible ambiance.

Back in town I had a wild boar sausage and stone ground mustard lunch with wine at the old bar in the Murphys Hotel then out on the street to sniff around the tasting rooms with my video camera.  To prepare for a bit more wine tasting in the evening I hiked up Main Street to Noto’s, an Italian restaurant, and chef Lorenzo prepared me a to-die-for ravioli plate with thick meat sauce and accompanied by a local Zin.

By now it was dark and Main Street in this quaint old Gold Rush town was full of people.  I had missed the parade while I stuffed myself with ravioli but the tasting rooms were packed, warm, cozy, social, and most had tasty munchies.  After trying to help Twisted Oak’s Jeff Stai with an electrical outage to his holiday tree I was compensated with his tasting room’s truffles.  (We failed to fix the problem but the truffles were great with red wine!)

Chatom Vineyard owner Gay Callan informed me that the next day, Saturday, her winery would have special food for their holiday open house.  I’m always delighted to be at Chatom for an event.  The various munchies are tasty and interesting and the wines are full of nose and flavors.  The winemaker was pouring reds in the barrel room, the staff is always very friendly, and Gay was darting about being the perfect hostess.

Saturday was a warm fall day in the Sierra Foothills with some color left on the trees and vines.  It was all too tempting to call Katya and tell her I was “weathered in” and couldn’t leave Murphys until Sunday.  Other wineries had food and of course wonderful Calaveras wines to taste out in the sun and often with great views.

I responsibly called Katya and told her I was leaving Chatom, the only winery visit of the day, and heading directly home with over 4 cases of wine.  Two and a half hours later I was home after crossing the foggy Central Valley.

The hills are turning green.  The sky is winter blue but the weather in California is shirt sleeve warm.  Gas prices have dropped to $1.75 a gallon at Chevron so that helps bring down the travel costs.  Also, lodging prices have dropped to less than $100 for decent hotels.  It is a GREAT TIME for a wine tasting road trip!

- jim

Back in June my wife Katya and I were wandering the main street of the Sierra Foothills wine town of Murphys during their passport event and met a very sociable family - the Tanners.  Dick Tanner informed us that they were in the process of opening a tasting room in town.  During that weekend I noticed that just about everyone seemed to know the Tanners and stopped to chat with them.  We kept bumping into them.  Maybe they lived on the streets of Murphys.

The Tanners have been Calaveras County winegrape growers for years and supplied other wineries in the region.  They recently began making wine for public sale and opened their tasting room.

This past weekend was the local holiday event in Murphys and the tasting rooms were open until 9 in the evening on Friday.  Main Street was closed off and people were everywhere enjoying the parade, wines, and socializing.  I dropped into the Tanner tasting room to see what was happening and it was crowded and lively.  Locals kept coming in to say hi to the Tanners behind the tasting bar.  I haven’t seen that at any other tasting bar anywhere.

Dick Tanner gave me a solid tour of their wines and I loved every one of them.  I also loved the context; the friendliness and social life in their tasting room along with the tasty treats to munch on.

So drop in and say hi.  Everyone else in town does.

Our Wine Questers GPS map for the Murphys area.

I will mention that they have one white, very dry, called Vermentino.  I found their 06 Syrah to be a classic full nose and flavor treat.  A little softer where the Petite Verdot, their Melange de Mere blend, and Petite Sirah but still with full nose and flavor with finishes that stay with you a while.

- jim

Last Thursday mid-day I was done with a meeting near Sacramento so I headed up Highway 50 to Placerville for one of my favorite wine tasting road trips.  My purpose was shooting photography for our upcoming video series on each wine region but I hit a few tasting rooms when time allows.

We’ll feature this road trip in a video and map someday but for now I recommend taking Ceder Ravine Road south from Placerville and tasting at the wineries in those hills.  Most of the roads are winding mountain roads covered by oaks and pines.  The smell of pine is everywhere.  All of the wineries are small and as I recall family owned.  Vintners are often pouring for you.  Some wineries aren’t open early in the week.

Travel through the Fairplay area and either return to Placerville for lodging or drive south to Plymouth, Amador City (check the little bakery!), or Sutter Creek for more Gold Rush Town ambiance.  Fairplay has only one restaurant and it is open on weekends and late week evenings.  Food sources are sparse in the back hills of El Dorado County so bring something with you.

The next day drive the loops in Amador’s Shenandoah Valley where you’ll find the splendor of Villa Toscana and Bella Piazzio along with quaint little tasting rooms such as Story and Wildrotter.  You’ll find food at Villa Toscana and in Plymouth.  Dinner at Taste Restaurant in Plymouth is a treat in fine gourmet dinning.

We’ll soon have the winery profiles online for El Dorado and Amador regions for you to select and sort which wineries interest you.  We like every tasting room we’ve mapped in the Sierra Foothills wine regions.

For maps of the regions please visit our California Wine Regions GPS maps!  All locations were GPS mapped by me.  They aren’t geo-coded addresses like all the other online wine maps.  Those are very inaccurate in rural areas.

- jim

I just returned from a three day video shoot of three Sierra Foothills regions; El Dorado, Amador, and Murphys / Calaveras.  I travel and visit hundreds of tasting rooms a year and only buy wines that I find unusually interesting to taste.  As always I’m not going to tell you what you will taste in whatever context you drink wine but if you are looking for a taste adventure try these outstanding wines.

Tanner - Murphys / Calaveras region.  The Tanners have been growers for decades but are recent to winemaking.  They opened a tasting room in Murphys last summer.  I’m very impressed with all their wines but these stand out:

• Vermentino - A rare white grape and VERY dry.  Almost no flavor but interesting taste anyway.  Nice surprise of a wine.
• 2006 Syrah
• 2006 Petit Verdot

Twisted Oak - Murphys / Calaveras region.  This hilltop winery has great views and is very friendly.  The long driveway is, well, entertaining, and will be featured in our upcoming video on the region.

• 2005 Murgatroyd
• 2006 The Spaniard
• 2005 Tanner Vineyard Syrah
• 2006 Pig Stai Calaveras County port

Amador Cellars - Amador region.  This little winery in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley just east of Highway 49 is home to an interesting range of wines.  The winemaker experimented with some older style techniques and the result are the following three robust wines.  Amador makes softer wines that are popular now but for those of us who want plenty of flavor and nose then try these!

• 2004 Syrah
• 2004 Zinfandel
• 2006 Zinfandel
• 2005 Rapscallion - Zin - Syrah blend with oak and taste adventure in a cute little 1 liter jug!

Chatom Vineyards - Murphys / Calaveras region.  Chatom is woman owned and operated with an intimate tasting room and events in their barrel room.  Nice landscaping, very friendly staff, owner pours, and arbor covered picnic area make Chatom one of our favorite destinations.

• 2006 Chardonnay
• 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2004 Zinfandel

Stevenot - Murphys / Calaveras region.  I tasted a few wines at the ranch, their remote and wonderfully romantic tasting room.  This tasting room is in an old house in a deep valley with the winery’s old barns nearby.  They have a picnic area under a grape arbor. $72 for a case of their Red Rover stainless steel aged Chardonnay so I bought a case.  Their other wines are good but I can’t buy everything.  We are always running out of Chard so I stocked up.

Ironstone - Murphys / Calaveras region.  Besides a stunningly beautiful site with great landscaping and one of our Gold Star Picnic Areas, Ironstone has some fine wines at very reasonable prices.  Their Cabs tend to be rather tasteless for me but Merlot, Syrah, and Cab Franc are wonderful.  They had an incredible case sale on Saturday of their export brands so I picked up a couple of cases of Chard for $30 a case.  (We’ve paid as low as $18 a case for decent wine at times.) This Chard is oaky and buttery which goes well with some of our evening appetizer dinners.  Ironstone often has great deals at events.  I would have bought far more if we had any space left at home for storage.

- jim

When Katya and I find a wine that is particularly interesting and flavorful I put the empty bottle in my office and aggregate a few to blog about.  While we like pretty much all the we pick up at wineries around California there are occasionally ones that really get our attention.  As usual I’m not going to tell you it has certain attributes because context changes taste but if you are looking for flavor and an exciting taste experience give any of these a try.

1. Ridge 2005 Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay Home Ranch.  Ridge is a mountain winery with a breath-taking view of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay.  The picnic area has one of the best views in California.   Ridge has a reputation for outstanding wines and we feel their Chard is special.  Santa Cruz Mountains wines tend to have more nose and be more flavorable than elsewhere in California.  There are a few light soft wines made in this region but we find more taste adventure per bottle here and in Gilroy than anywhere else. This Chard fits that.  It is a fascinating blend of flavors that is unusual and we loved each sip.  It is worth going out of your way for.
2. Locatelli 2001 Cab Estate from Paso Robles.  This is a small family owned winery on a hill north of Paso in a rather warm zone.  The patriach arrived in 1898 from Italy and went right into the wine business. This is a classic Cab that doesn’t disappear when you swallow.  The nose is full and fun. The oak and berries and light tannins linger nicely but no burn.  It isn’t soft which is our preference.
3. Narrow Gate 2006 Petite Cuvee from El Dorado County.  Narrow Gate is a rather remote and little known mountain winery in the Sierra pines with the tasting in the working winery.  They have a nice picnic area under pines so it is like camping out in the Sierras.  The winemaker is very approachable and loves to take visitors on a tour de force.  The cuvee is a blend of Petite Sirah, Mourvedre, Zin, and Viognier.  So what is special?  The nose and taste are significantly more interesting than most blends.

OK, now I can clear out the bottles and get ready for the next unusual wines.  There are several from Hahn that are merit special attention and that post is coming up sometime this month.  We have six that we captured at the tasting room so give us time to try them again after a “waiting period”. 

- jim