While driving around searching for wineries with tasting rooms regularly open to the public we wander into some wonderful settings.  Maple Creek Winery is one of our favorites for picnicking.  It is located along the mountainous Mendocino County part of Highway 128 in the Yorkville Highlands AVA area west of Cloverdale in the Alexander Valley.  Route 128 snakes through Napa Valley, Alexander Valley, and the Yorkville area into Anderson Valley then on to the coast.  It is an amazing wine trail and the mountain section in Mendocino County is fun to drive and explore.  

The 180 acre mountain ranch is a terrific setting for a relaxing and scenic winery picnic and we’ve picnicked there twice.

Vintner Tom Rodrigues is a painter and stained glass artist and displays his crafts in the rustic barn tasting room.  Tom and his wife Linda are gracious hosts at their winery events in front of the tasting room and anchored around an old farm truck.

Their 2007 Chardonnay is French oak fermented and rather soft with moderate aroma and finish.  We paired it with sea bass for a nice meal.  For desert we opened their  Artevino brand Cowboy Red blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Carignane which is a nice full bodied aromatic wine.

The 180 acre ranch has edible mushrooms, wild boar, orchards, vineyards, 2 miles of creek and 7 springs.  They can live, and drink, off the land in their wild mountain retreat.   You can drop by, enjoy a wine tasting and picnic, and savoir their lifestyle for a few hours.

- Jim

Husch is a small family owned winery in Mendocino’s Anderson Valley.  The winery was founded in 1971 and is the oldest in the Anderson Valley.  The setting is one of our favorites with a tiny rustic tasting room in an old farmstead and a lawn with picnic tables on the mowed grass or on the deck.  It is calmly romantic and the staff is always delightful.  They produce a couple dozen wines with their estate Mendocino grapes so there is plenty to taste.

While Anderson Valley is well known for Pinot Noir there are many varieties produced in the valley and nearby AVA’s.

We purchased a half dozen bottles of wine and enjoyed each with various foods.  The 2010 Sauv Blanc was big for peaches and aromatics.  Really a delight.  The 2007 Cab Sauv was aged 14 months in French and American oak and is a big Cab but with soft tannins and a nice long enjoyable finish.  We did a comparison tasting of their 2008 Special Reserve Mendocino Chard and the 2009 Vine One Anderson Valley Chard. Both are French Oak aged and are big tasty Chardonnays with great aromas and finish but distinctively different.

Husch is a great place to enjoy a wine picnic on a warm sunny Anderson Valley afternoon.

- Jim

We recently visited the new winery location for Las Positas Vineyards in the former Deer Ridge Winery.  They remodeled the tasting room but left the grounds and architecture as it was.  Very nice mission style ambiance and extra friendly staff with a nice courtyard style picnic area and view.  Wines are excellent.  Las Positas has been in business for a few years and now have a full time tasting room.  When we arrived the owners were pouring which is a special treat.  Lots of info with the tasting.

We like vertical tastings of the same varietal from the same vineyard but different years so we purchased their 2008 and 2009 Livermore Chardonnays and tried them at home.   We paired them with thin sliced BBQ filet Mignon tacos and table grapes on our patio for a light lunch. There wasn’t a big difference in the wines considering the varied climate in those years.  Both were aged in French oak, the 2007 for 8 months and the 2008 for 10 months, so the 2007 had lighter oak flavor and aroma with the 2008 being medium.  Overall the 2007 was lighter but both had a good lingering finish, big vanilla nose with the usual apricot, apple and for me banana flavors.  We love the Burgundian style Chards and these are right in there with the top quality wines at $22 a bottle.

- Jim

We love visiting Clos Pegase in the upper Napa Valley off Silverado Trail. The owner’s pitch it as a temple to wine and art and we agree.  The Michael Graves designed building is both unique and beautiful.  The landscape art is is intriguing.  The wine fits our palate perfectly. 

We attended an event there a couple of years ago and shot some video that will be in our upcoming Discover Napa Valley video.  Fortunately part of the event was a slide show by the owner Jan Schrem about his huge art collection.  The show was in an intimate theater deep in the barrel caves.   If you have an interest in art this is a must see show – and winery.   The giant thumb sticking out of the ground is a Napa Valley icon and popular photographic target for visitors.  The art collection is displayed around the winery grounds, in the courtyard entrance, and inside the tasting room and barrel cave.  It will appeal to a variety of art tastes.

Wine distributor Wilson Daniels recently sent me a couple of bottles of Clos Pegase wines to review.

The 2009 Chardonnay is from Clos Pegase’s Mitsuko’s Vineyard in Carneros at the southern end of the Napa Valley near San Francisco Bay.  This is a popular area for Chard due to the cooler temperatures.  It is a malolactic wine aged 8 months in new and neutral French oak.   These grapes are from the 4th year of low rainfall and the vines were a bit stressed.

We paired the Chard with Trader Joes chicken salad nested in grilled endives and grilled turkey and ham kabobs on our patio on a warm summer evening.  The Chard has a big nose full of bouquet and aromas, full fruit with oak that compares with Rombaur.  My nose picks out soft banana tones, which I love, but many people don’t seem to get that aroma.  Whatever; you’ll find plenty to explore here and a very reasonable suggested retail price of $24.

Next up was the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon.  The grapes are from several vineyards around the winery and were aged 18 months in both new and neutral French oak.  The winery is near Calistoga in the north and hotter end of Napa Valley.  This is the heart of one of California’s most famous Cab regions and home of the big Napa Cabs.  The lower rainfall stressed the vines and produced bigger favors than normal.

The tasting notes supplied by Clos Pegase speak of blackberry, plum, cherry, vanilla, baker’s spices and a hint of licorice.  OK, maybe.  We found a wonderful cherry chocolate with a big nose of aroma with refined fruits that open beautifully in the glass.  Could we detect the specific aromas in the tasting notes?  Yeah, sort of, but we actually don’t care.  Too much work for us.  What we tasted was a drop-dead terrific big Napa Cab with very modest tannins that followed up our light dinner as desert.  While a retail price of $43 is a bit much for our limited and stretched budget, remember that developing WineQuesters.com and our iPhone app Winery Quest cost us over $1M in time and money, this Cab is worth it.  It is a thrill to drink.

We pumped the air from the bottle and opened it the next evening.  The wine was a little softer but still excellent.  The flavors and aromas held up even without using argon gas to preserve them.  Nice.

- Jim

Heritage Oak is a small family winery northeast of Lodi. The tasting room is in the working winery and while the architecture or interior ambiance isn’t special the setting and the people make this winery a good destination. They have one of the larger Zin selections in the area so visitors should be able to find the right wine for their taste preferences.

Heritage Oak Winery in Lodi wine region

The most striking feature of this winery is their river walk nature trail through the vineyards to a secluded beach on the Mokelumne River. Bring a bottle of their wine to enjoy a picnic on the beach or picnic at the winery.

While we enjoyed all of their wines we came home with their Zinfidelity Zin and Cab blend and their Chardonnay. The Zin is medium bodied and pleasant nose and finish. The Chard is non-oaked with no malo-lactic fermentation with fresh fruity flavors. Both are very good wines and an additional reason to stop by this winery if you are wandering around Lodi.

- Jim

Long ago but not far far away I met Fess – in a ditch beside a once rural road in Santa Clara, CA. No, he didn’t drive into the ditch, he stepped into it and sat down to chat with my PG&E line crew as we had lunch. Fess explained that he was just at a nearby old farmhouse and negotiating with a woman there for her farmland. He explained his vision for an amusement park. Years later my family construction company, Preston Pipelines, was digging ditches to lay storm, sewer, and water pipe for Marriott’s Great America amusement park. Fess brought in Marriott as a partner and his vision rose up majestically from that woman’s farm.

Fess died recently and I never met him again after that lunch in a ditch. However, I have found memories of a quality experience. He was at the time a well known star from his TV series about Daniel Boone but for whatever reason he shared our lunches in that ditch and was very sincere and nice.

Fess Parker Winery on the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail

He went on to found hotels, other parks, and a winery near Los Olivos on the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail in Santa Barbara County. The winery is surrounded by large oaks in a narrow valley and includes very nice landscaping for picnicking. It was featured in the famous wine movie “Sideways”; the place where Miles drank from the dump bucket.

Inside the tasting room are various artifacts from his acting days along with touristy stuff such as coonskin hats for sale. The staff has always been as hospitable as Fess when we visit and the wines are first rate.

Two bottles of Fess Park Chardonnay arrived in the mail recently. That happens when you have a major wine site or blog. One was their 2009 Santa Barbara County Chard and the other was from the same year but the grapes where from the Santa Rita Hills region of this county. Katya and I LOVE horizontal and vertical tastings so it was a treat to open both bottles on a warm day and sample them with seafood on our patio.

The Santa Rita Hills version is an aromatic medium body wine with a lasting finish. Nice subtle oak with a soft little buttery finish. Excellent.

The Santa Barbara County version from grapes from somewhere else in the county, that info wasn’t provided or on the Website, is lighter body than the Santa Rita Hills Chard, softer, and less aromatic and oak. Excellent wine also when paired with seafood.

We leaned toward preferring the Santa Rita Hills Chard because we like a little more fruit and stronger bouquet, heavier body, and longer finishes.

The next time you happen to be hanging around Los Olivos pack a picnic lunch and head out the Foxen Canyon Road for Fess Parker Winery.

- jim

We wandered into the small town of Orcutt south of Santa Maria, Santa Barbara County, to visit and map Addamo and CORE tasting rooms. Addamo was the last tasting room of the day so we followed our ancient tradition and hung around to taste some wines. We rarely taste during our winery mapping and data gathering missions for WineQuesters.com because, well, we need to get work done.

The tasting room is inside a nice Italianesque restaurant that serves gourmet meals. We headed straight past the tables to the tasting bar, anxious to finally taste wines after some 25 winery visits, and was graciously greeted by Liz Addamo, the owner – chef. She’s FUN to hang out with, interesting, and we had one of those unforgettable times in a tasting room way off the beaten track.

We very much enjoyed all her wines but I’ll comment on two. The 07 Chard is a slightly oaky soft Chard that we love. We paired it nicely with fresh seafood back home. The 06 Syrah had the full Syrah nose, medium body, and a long enjoyable finish. As usual with my posts I don’t mention berry flavors and such because amazingly the wines taste for you and your circumstances a little different than we experienced in our circumstances.

We’ll definitely detour off 101 to visit Liz again and next time we’ll try her cooking.

- jim

There are a lot of wineries to explore and discover in the Russian River Valley. It is tempting to only hit the biggies. However, there are little quiet sleepers throughout the valley. One of these is the River Road working winery on the west side of the valley near Graton.  This is a little family owned by appointment only winery so call before visiting.  They want visitors so don’t be shy.

The River Road Vineyards winery.

We visited during the recent Wine Road Barrel Tasting event and of course River Road had several barrels open for us. They also poured their finished wines.  We enjoyed their whole collection but came home with their 07 Cabernet Sauvignon, 09 Sauvignon Blanc, and 08 Hopkins Chardonnay.   Nice to find some special whites.  The Cab seemed more robust in the winery than at home but the soft nose is full of fruit, the medium body should work for almost everyone, and the light refined finish did linger around for a while. Not big wines but not wimps either.

A big draw are the wine prices. Here you find very nice wines in the teens and twenties. Tasters walk away with cases.  Combine that with no tasting fee and this is one of the better wineries to stock up for the long haul.

The tasting room is TINY so don’t bring a crowd unless they want to hang around outside. Tasting at River Road is a wonderful experience with the family pouring their wines for you.

- jim

Far up a narrow and beautiful winding mountain road in the Santa Cruz Mountains west of Gilroy is Fernwood Cellars‘ simple barn and winery.  Katya, Lidia, and I stopped by during the last Santa Cruz Mountains Passport Saturday in January and tried their wines.

Fernwood Cellars in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Gilroy area

The winery folks were cheery and gracious.  The pours were generous and the wines were full of flavor with much nose, body, and finish to explore.

We tasted in the working winery next to the barrels and equipment so they have true winery ambiance. The location feels like you are out in the boonies because you are.

While we enjoyed all of their wines we loved the 2006 estate Cabernet Sauvignon best.  This is a medium body but robust wine with lots of nose and finish to explore – just the way we like our wine to be.

Big robust wines are typical of the Gilroy and Santa Cruz Mountains regions.  There are soft wines available at some wineries for those who prefer them but big wines are our favorites.  Fernwood is more than worth the drive and adventure.  BEAUTIFUL up there!  And Martin Ranch Winery is just down the road – another small winery with full bodied wines and excellent hospitality.

- Jim

Tom Kruse moved to California and started his winery west of Gilroy in the southern Santa Clara Valley in 1972.  I first tasted his wines in the tasting room in 1974.  Somehow he recruited volunteers for his first harvest and that has been in his business model ever since. This past harvest we were waiting to volunteer for his Cab harvest but he was over-subscribed before we knew the date and we missed the party.

Tom’s winery is now east of Gilroy.  You taste in the working winery and the tasting “bar” is often staffed by volunteers on the weekends. Tom is usually wandering around and often has time for impromptu tours.

Katya learns Merlot harvesting from Tom Kruse.

This is about as close to a do-it-yourself winery as there is. You can help with harvest, crush, and bottling.  The BYOB event with food and music is always popular.  Bring your own bottles or buy them there and fill a case.

We believe Tom’s full-bodied wines are some of the best we’ve had anywhere. His unoaked Chard is bright and fresh.   His Cabs are robust from the nose to the finish but the tannins won’t burn your throat.  His Zin is consistently full of fruit and dry.  Merlot tends to have a little more body and flavor than most Merlots and we taste lots of them.

Prices for Tom’s wines are some of the lowest in the state.  Case specials as low as $5 a bottle aren’t rare.  The best deals are buying a case or more of course but even the bottle purchases won’t hurt.

For an old-time winery adventure stop by and see Tom.

- jim