Random CA Rambling

[user 38734]

Random California ramblings.

Attached are some pictures from this morning of a few vineyards in San Luis Obispo. Fruit is forming nicely.



It’s pretty shocking to compare the Central Coast AVA vineyards (3 to 4 tons per acre) with the Central Valley high production vineyards (8 to 10 tons per acre).

During the pandemic, my work (construction & development) has taken me through remote areas of Amador county I was previously not super familiar with despite spending most of my life in El Do Co. Some meticulously grown and unknown-to-me varietals are grown there, such as Mission (allegedly the oldest grape in CA). After tasting a few examples (light color, not-light flavor) and sourcing a high quality vineyard whose owner enjoys Alaskan halibut, prawns, and cured Texas wild boar (shot from the ground, not a helicopter), I will probably make a few cases of this next fall.

If anyone here is within driving distance of the Amador County foothills east of the 99, it’s worth a look.

All the best.

 

[CDrew]

Amador is the best kept secret in the wine world. Casual, often the owners are there and pouring. Many places still don’t charge to taste or charge a nominal fee that gets refunded. And I can be there and visiting in 45 minutes.

Can recommend a very out of the way winery:
Morse Wines
Il Gioiello

mostly Rhone wines and Italian varietals. Fair pricing for excellent wine.

 

[NorCal]

Totally agree with @CDrew. Runquist winery won winery of the year a few years ago. Wine is fantastic and a quarter of the Napa prices. @4score has been in communication with the owner/winemaker a number of times, getting the key elements that make his wines full of flavor and soft.

 

[AaronSC]

Another cool thing about Amador is the willingness of the wineries to sell grapes to home winemakers. I'm getting most of my 2021 grapes from relatively well-known wineries who I reached out to and they were so nice to basically share their fruit.

I need to give Runquist another try. The one time I had his wine I felt that every single one of them was overwhelmed by heavy new oak -huge departure from the other wineries in the area. It was like the 90's. I need to give them another try, though if power/impact is your #1 attribute for a red I can see how his wines would be very much a hit.

@Booty Juice I tried an Amador Mission a few weeks ago -really different! Unfortunately it's going extinct and the wine was made from grapes that have already been ripped up. Love to know where you are getting the grapes from (PM me if you're OK sharing the source, I live in Amador county).

-Aaron

 

[CDrew]

Runquist has a number of YouTube videos where he answers questions and talks about the process. They are worth watching. Good wines, good wine club dinners and nice to see local success. I agree he likes oak, but I think he re-coopers the barrels each year and places staves inside the barrels. There is an interesting discussion of that in one of the YouTube videos.

Other places in Amador I can recommend:
Iron Hub--Great place, great wine, nice family. Sit on the patio and enjoy-a real favorite of my wife. Don't miss the Semillion there.
Andis-They had a tough couple of years about 5 years ago and I almost gave up on them but all good now with a new wine maker.
Vino Noceto-great Sangiovese and always worth a stop.
Amador Cellars-Family business, their son is doing most of the work at this point, good wine grower and often in the tasting room
Cooper-Excellent wines, and a bit out of the way. Recently impressed there with the Barbera, Zinfandel and Primitivo
Karmere-Good place to picnic and good wine.
Rombauer-Branching out from Napa with a very high end winery. I'm worried they will cause everyone else in Amador to raise their prices! But a good place, excellent local Zinfandel and Barbera plus of course all their wines from Napa

So for anyone on a California wine tour, add Amador to your list of places to go. Don't expect the Napa hustle or prices. It's still a place where normal people can chase the dream of owning a vineyard and making wine.

 

[AaronSC]

Thanks, CDrew! I checked out Iron Hub, because I hadn't heard of them. Some interesting varietals, like you said, including Semillion. It isn't a "popular" grape but it seems to do really well in the foothills, kind of unexpectedly, like Cabernet Franc. I REALLY like that Iron Hub has full disclosure on their blending -they list essentially everything, even in their varietal wines. I think people are often given the impression that a wine labelled "Syrah" is more or less Syrah. Look at Iron Hub's web page and you'll see what is really the norm for red wines -that the wines tend to be around 75-85% the varietal and then the other 15-25% is other wines blended in, just because it inevitably makes for better balanced wine. Most wineries don't provide this level of information (though Bonny Doon and Ridge do).

Some of my Amador favorites are: Easton/Terre Rouge, Yorba, Bella Grace (especially for whites), Mulet Rouge. I'm a wine club member at Easton and got to try a Barbera they made from fruit from a well-known vineyard -really showed the winemaker's knack. The wine (which I tried at the grower's winery) from the vineyard that had grown the grapes just tasted like fruity oak, you could not really have guessed it was even Barbera. The Easton version with grapes from the same vineyard and year was just sublime -the Barbera character shown through, but was smooth and elegant -a world class wine. I asked the pourer what he thought the differences in winemaking were and he just grinned and said "restraint"!

More I experience wine, the more realize that less is generally more!

-Aaron

 

[Snafflebit]

Around Amador but on the north side of I-80 towards Yuba City is a winery named Grant-Marie. I don’t know the address of the winery but they have a website. Very nice owner who sampled wines at a farmers market in Truckee. Also he was knowledgeable about growing and I asked a lot of questions about grape growing. All the vines are cane pruned including Cab and they grow a lot of varieties so that surprised me. Anyone else know the location of this winery?

 

[user 38734]

My first familiarity with the Amador County foothills was in high school (’75-‘78) when I grew weed on a beautiful piece of land in Fiddletown. Back then there were some vineyards (mostly ZinfandelLand as the Sierra Foothills tend to be), but almost no wineries. After that I almost never went there, never had a reason to. But since ’97 when I moved my family to Pismo Beach, the monthly trip to my ranch in Somerset (El Dorado County) takes me straight through the E16 (Shenandoah / Mt Aukum Rd.) where many, but by no means all, of the Amador County wineries are located. Watching that main corridor grow over the last 24 years and visiting the wineries has been interesting. Re- acquainting myself this last year with the back roads revealed many of the gems mentioned by @AaronSC and @CDrew. Thank you sirs, I will be sure to visit all of the locations you mentioned.

The area is a real wine treasure, mostly undiscovered.

It’s been at least 5 years since I’ve had Jeff Runquist’s wines, but I recall they were pretty good in a modern-day sense, just too oaky for me. Smooth though, which I assumed was glycerin.

A fair amount of the wineries there are, like everywhere nowadays, estateless to some degree. The majority of their grapes are purchased elsewhere. Go back in many of these cellars and you’ll find that they either take delivery or go pick up macro bins of grapes in a box truck, run them through a standard destemmer / crusher, ferment in macro bins with commercial yeast, nutrients and maybe enzymes - all in a marginally temperature-controlled environment before being aged in new or adjunct-added barrels for around a year before bottling and selling.

To me, this represents opportunities for the home gamer to improve on mid level commercial practices:

• Whole berry fermentation.
• Native yeast, no nutrients or enzymes, no or low SO2.
• Maintain a low ambient temp in the fermentation room.
• Extend bulk aging time, including on lees, to 20-30 months.

None of the above are either new or controversial. They are widely adopted by high end wineries and doable by home gamers with access to great fruit, i.e., anyone in California.

Best to all.

 

[user 38734]

More I experience wine, the more realize that less is generally more!

-Aaron

This.

 

[NorCal]

My first familiarity with the Amador County foothills was in high school (’75-‘78) when I grew weed on a beautiful piece of land in Fiddletown. Back then there were some vineyards (mostly ZinfandelLand as the Sierra Foothills tend to be), but almost no wineries. After that I almost never went there, never had a reason to. But since ’97 when I moved my family to Pismo Beach, the monthly trip to my ranch in Somerset (El Dorado County) takes me straight through the E16 (Shenandoah / Mt Aukum Rd.) where many, but by no means all, of the Amador County wineries are located. Watching that main corridor grow over the last 24 years and visiting the wineries has been interesting. Re- acquainting myself this last year with the back roads revealed many of the gems mentioned by @AaronSC and @CDrew. Thank you sirs, I will be sure to visit all of the locations you mentioned.

The area is a real wine treasure, mostly undiscovered.

It’s been at least 5 years since I’ve had Jeff Runquist’s wines, but I recall they were pretty good in a modern-day sense, just too oaky for me. Smooth though, which I assumed was glycerin.

A fair amount of the wineries there are, like everywhere nowadays, estateless to some degree. The majority of their grapes are purchased elsewhere. Go back in many of these cellars and you’ll find that they either take delivery or go pick up macro bins of grapes in a box truck, run them through a standard destemmer / crusher, ferment in macro bins with commercial yeast, nutrients and maybe enzymes - all in a marginally temperature-controlled environment before being aged in new or adjunct-added barrels for around a year before bottling and selling.

To me, this represents opportunities for the home gamer to improve on mid level commercial practices:

• Whole berry fermentation.
• Native yeast, no nutrients or enzymes, no or low SO2.
• Maintain a low ambient temp in the fermentation room.
• Extend bulk aging time, including on lees, to 20-30 months.

None of the above are either new or controversial. They are widely adopted by high end wineries and doable by home gamers with access to great fruit, i.e., anyone in California.

Best to all.

I really enjoy reading your posts. There is a pretty extensive thread on what us home winemakers can do to come closer to a highend commercial wine.