THE COCKTAIL HOUR: Tasting A Trio of New Motherlode Wineries

Now that we're pretty much settled into our new digs in Northern California's Amador County, it's time to visit a few new neighbors. Specifically, three wineries that we've never visited before...plus a quick stop at an old favorite for a fill-up.

First, it's a short seven minute drive to Tanis Vineyards, run by Andrew and Jill Tanis. Andrew is manning the tasting bar today and we taste some exceptional whites...Sauvignon Blanc and his nice, dry Muscat Canelli.

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The reds are very good, too. We especially liked his Petite Syrah and the Dynamite Red blend.

We take a few bottles and thank our new neighbor for his hospitality and move on just as a limo full of tourists amble into the driveway.

Back up on the other side of highway 124, the closest wine neighbor to Tanis is Convergence Vineyards. The wine is not quite in the same league as the similarly priced winery across the way.

We did enjoy their Killer Syrah, their port, and petite syrah. I asked for a bottle each of the port and the Killer Syrah but the overwhelmed lady at the tasting bar put in the El Diablo red blend instead of the syrah. I noticed when we got home...I'll drive back up tomorrow and trade it in for the one that I really wanted.

Before our next new winery, we pop up to the nearby Shenandoah Valley to one of our long time favorites, Bray Vineyards. Bray always keeps a barrel of a red blend handy that has a tap on it to fill growlers. I bring in two of mine for a quick refill and then we're on our way.

Our final stop is Avio Vineyards, up on a ridge overlooking Sutter Creek and Jackson near the Amador County Airport on Ridge Road.

It's slightly crowded in the tasting room but we get our samples to taste. We are pleased with the wines, they're very good and the icing on the cake is the pricing is 1/2 to  2/3 the price of the last two wineries we visited.

We ended up taking their zinfandel, barbera, and estate grown pinot noir home.

These three new-to-us wineries are great additions to our collection of frequently visited Sierra Foothill vineyards but we still have a long way to go until we visit them all.

Cheers!

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: Denver Pub Crawl, Part 1

Colorado bills itself as the "Napa Valley of Beer." With over 100 microbreweries and a couple of major ones...including the massive Coors complex in Golden...the nickname is apt.

Kind of like Munich, you're never going to hit all the spots you want but we'll make an effort all the same.  We did hit enough bars and breweries that we'll have to split this into two parts with the finale coming next week.

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Our first stop was actually not a planned stop.We couldn't find the first one (we rectify that with next week's episode) and the second, Pint's Pub, has no wheelchair access.


Walking along 16th Street Mall, we step into the first bar we see that doesn't look like a chain. That's how we ended up at the Paramount Cafe, the bar and restaurant attached to the Paramount Theater.


It's dark with a lot of red lighting inside.  It's also Happy Hour so we're able to get a little break on the price.  Letty has the house beer, a Big Nose Brewery Wheat ale that is brewed next door.  Tim and I have the New Belgium Trippel.  You might be more familiar with this Boulder, Colorado's other beer brand, Fat Tire Ale.

Both are very good and as a bonus, we get to meet Denver Robo Mike, a fixture on the 16th Street roster of street performers.  He's taking a break and we get to have a beer with him and chat about the NBA.


Next, we walk over to the Brown Palace Hotel, an absolutely beautiful, century old hotel that features a stained glass roof, its own artesian well, wrought iron railing, and the clubby Ship Tavern tucked into a corner off of the lobby.

In this dark little wood-paneled room, we try a Warsteiner from Germany that tasted a little skunky, the Avalanche Ale from local Breckenridge Brewery, and a glass of 10 year old port from Graham's.  See the video above for some more from the hotel, which is an amazing place.

Our last stop this day is another Happy Hour at the Apaloosa Grill back on 16th Street.  Here, all Colorado brews are only $3 a pint during Happy Hour, so I try a New Belgium Blue Paddle Ale, Letty gets the house merlot, and we share a shot of Casa Noble Crystal tequila.  All very good.

That's it for today, be sure to watch the video above for much more detail about the pubs we visited and come back next week as we dig a little deeper into the local beer scene here in Denver.

-Darryl

The Cocktail Hour: Grigio, Schmigio

Still Lent here so we're trying some different wines supplied by the Wine of the Month Club. Today is one I don't normally look forward too.

Pinot Grigio, like Vognier, is usually too tart and maybe a little sour for me. I'd rather have a smooth chardonnay or even a sweet chenin blanc if I'm to drink a white.

Mystery White Wine Six Pack - $49

Still, this is what was in this month's selection...so let's give it a shot.

Sycamore Lane is but one of the brands the Trinchero Estate sells. You might be more familiar with their low budget name, Sutter Home. Their line of low priced wines are better than the price suggest. At the winery, I was told this is because they own everything, the land, the winery...everything.  Nothing is leased, it's all paid for and they don't have to price in their mortgage in the price of their wines.

So, lets get on with it. The bouquet is clean, sweet, with maybe a hint of pineapple.  The taste is more sweet, dry, and less tart than I'm used to. Another sip, and there's that tartness, under the back of my tongue.

Still, not a bad refreshment for this 70 degree afternoon on the patio.

Cheers!

Darryl

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: The Milwauke Pub Crawl

Luckily, we got a ride to and from today’s adventure. Good thing…there was no way we were going to end this one sober…

Milwaukee is the city that beer made famous, so how does it stack up to the self-described “Napa Valley of beer” that we visited last year (Denver)? Very well, thank you.

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We start off with a standalone visit to Benelux in the Historic Third Ward. Yes, you need to capitalize each word.

With a thick bible of beers to choose from, Tim and I have a palette of strong Belgian beers while Letty goes with a bottled sour.  It’s hard to pick from our palette but Letty says the sour, Ichtegem Flemish Red, could have more bite.

Next, it’s on to the actual crawl. We start at the north end of town where the really cool Milwaukee Riverwalk starts. First up is the American absinthe made right here in Milwaukee by Great Lakes Distillery and served at Trocadero. It’s the first time we’ve had it and it tastes like anisette and looks like cloudy water. Not bad but not really my cup of tea either.  I enjoyed the shot of Cazadores Reposado I had better.

Across the adjacent Hudson Street bridge, which has a really cool, wheelchair accessible, pedestrian bridge hanging under the main bridge, we go to Lakefront Brewery to take the tour.  This tour is so fun that it is rated as the number 4 best thing to do in Milwaukee on Tripadvisor. It should be number 1.

Our tour guide is hungover and drunk, but he’s funny, knowledgeable, and keeps our glasses full of our choice of Lakefront brews. I’m partial to their flagship variety, the Stein.

Seven dollars gets you on the tour and four tokens for beer. Answering trivia questions or helping the tour guide gets you more tokens, plus the generous policy of free frequent top-offs means there is much more beer available that most people can handle. I ended up giving my last four tokens away.

Walking along the river, we eventually end up in another historic neighborhood, Third Street…also known as Historic Old World Third Street.  Yes, with the capitals.

Mader’s has been here over a century, serving good but expensive German Cuisine. They also have a happy hour so we go inside to enjoy a $5 ceramic stein of Spaten Oktoberfest and a glass of Pinot Noir.

Afterward, it’s a couple of doors down to get some more Lakefront beer (two mugs for $3) and some Franziskaner Weissbier at Milwaukee Brat House along with some of their namesake fatty sausages and deep fried cheese curds.

With that, we cannot crawl another foot and call for the hotel shuttle to take us back. It’s all in the video above, so come along and watch as we take in as much Milwaukee as we can handle.

Cheers!

-Darryl

Copyright 2012 – Darryl Musick

All Rights Reserved

CALIFORNIA'S HIDDEN WINE COUNTRY

 

CALIFORNIA’S HIDDEN WINE COUNTRY

California has 100 American Viticultural Areas (AVA).  An AVA is a distinct wine grape growing region with boundaries set by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).  Some you’ve heard of…Napa Valley, Paso Robles, Sonoma Valley, Mendocino, Russian River…others may have escaped notice such as North Yuba, Seiad Valley, or Covelo.

Once, the MAJOR wine producing area of the state was 40 miles east of Los Angeles in the Cucamonga Valley, better known today as the Inland Empire.  With commercial vineyards dating back to 1838, it is among the oldest wine grape growing areas in the state.  At over 20,000 acres at the start of Prohibition, it was also the largest.  At that time, it had more vineyard acreage than Sonoma and Napa Counties combined.

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With the booming expansion of the Los Angeles metro area, development pressures hit this area hard.  Skyrocketing land prices found many vineyards being sold, plowed under, and becoming housing tracts, shopping centers, highways, factories, and warehouses.  Little is left of the wide-open countryside I enjoyed as a youth.

Still, the old, historic vines have not completely disappeared but they still face enormous pressure.  Now, two larger producers and a couple of very small boutique wine makers are all that are left.  Sitting beneath the snow-covered peak of Mt. Baldy, this is California’s most endangered wine producing region.

It’s a Saturday with rain off and on, mostly on.  We start our day at the Original Pancake House in Orange County’s Yorba Linda.  After a filling breakfast of 49’r Flapjacks, we head over one of the last rural roads in the area, Carbon Canyon Road, which connects the area to the Inland Empire community of Chino Hills.  From there, we make our way over to our first stop, Galleano Winery in Mira Loma.

My grandmother lived a few blocks away when I was a kid.  We’d ride our motorcycles and horses for miles over the wide-open countryside here.  Now, it’s covered with houses, factories, and warehouses but at the junction of the 15 and 60 freeways, if you look to the east , there’s several acres of grapes being grown in the sandy soil.  On the street, you’ll be surrounded by warehouses.  If you turn at just the right stop sign (at Wineville and Merrill), you’ll enter a time machine and be on a small country lane with barns, farmhouses, animals, and the winery itself. 

This is exactly the way I remember Mira Loma from when I was a child.  It’s also so out of place these days as to be called “historic.”  The area is known for growing big, bold red grapes.  Zinfandel, Grenache, Mission, and Mourvèdre…all good grapes that stand up to the valley’s intensely hot summers.

At the back of the former truck mechanic’s garage is a small house that now serves as the tasting room.  Five tastes are $5 per person, price will be applied to any purchase.  While white wines are available (Galleano sources these grapes from other areas or contracts with other wineries to produce them), the reds are the star of the show here.  Cucamonga Peak Red, Legendary Pioneers Zinfandel, Old Vine Zin, Port, and Sherry are made very well here.

The valley terroir has a strong taste that infuses the wines made here.  Galleano is very good…and also very reasonable in price.  Wines here start at around $5 a bottle…good wine, too.  Many of the wines are also available in 4L jugs which make the price even lower and are great for parties.  We particularly like the haute sauterne, port, and Chianti in the jugs.

Be sure to grab a flyer from Centro Basco, a local Basque restaurant, which includes a coupon for two free glasses of Galleano wine with your dinner.

If you bring a picnic, this is a great place to grab a bottle.  Borrow a couple of glasses from the tasting staff, go outside to their little park, and have a nice relaxing lunch.  Nearby is a small zoo with farm animals such as geese and donkeys.  Hundreds of guinea pigs roam in their enclosure and a few peacocks preen.

I could spend an entire, relaxing day here but we’ve got another stop to make.

A few miles to the north, in the town of Rancho Cucamonga, is the other large wine maker here.  Joseph Fillippi has a winery and tasting room set up on Baseline Road, just east of Day Creek Boulevard off of the 210 freeway and a few blocks north of Route 66.  While there is a very small vineyard here, you can see the houses built right up to the winery’s walls…an eerie reminder that this place may not have too much of a future left.

More businesslike and industrial than Galleano, Filippi’s tasting room is a large retail establishment.  Tasting is not free here…$5 gets you five poker chips.  You trade a chip for a taste of wine.  With over 20 wines available for tasting, those five chips won’t get you very far.  If there are a few of you, share tastes with each other so you can try a larger variety of wines.

We taste several wines starting with the chardonnay and the Alicante rose and ending up with their cab/franc, zinfandels, and a variety of ports.  It’s all good but not quite as good as the wine we had earlier in Mira Loma.  That, and the fact that we just spent our money on tasting, meant that we bought the day’s wines at Galleano…not Filippi.

When will wineries stop being greedy with the tastes?  I always end up buying more where I can at least deduct my tasting fee from my purchase…this is not the case at Fillipi.

Still, they have decent wine and bottles starting at $3.95, which makes them quite a bargain compared to wineries up north and to the south in Temecula.

There is also a small appetizer bar here.  You can buy a bottle to take outside and share an app.  Not a bad way to spend the day.

I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about the area’s other major tasting room, San Antonio Winery off of the 60 freeway in Ontario.  It’s also a nice place with complimentary tasting and they too have a small zoo.  A branch of the main winery in Los Angeles, this winery does not grow or produce wines here in the valley…it is strictly a tasting room.

At the end of the day, we drive back over the Chino Hills to Anaheim and have a nice dinner at the Phoenix Club, a private German club which has a restaurant and pub that is open to the public.  Here we finish the adventure, dining on schnitzel, sausages, and pretzels and wondering how much longer that handful of wine makers over the hill can last.

Darryl
Copyright 2011 – Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

THE COCKTAIL HOUR - White Sangria

My wife had a delicious sangria at Claim Jumper the other night so I tried to recreate it at home.  Pretty delicious and a bit more potent than a normal sangria.

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INGREDIENTS - one drink

Juice of one medium orange
Juice of one lemon
1 oz brandy
1/2 oz triple sec
white wine
vanilla
cut up fresh fruit, pineapples, strawberries, grapes...whatever you have on hand.

Fill a glass half-way with ice.  Put all ingredients except vanilla and wine in.  Put just a couple of drops of vanilla.  Pour to the top with wine and stir.

Cheers!

Darryl

CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH TOWNS: Plymouth

Going up highway 49, at the northern edge of California's Amador County, you'll pass through the small city of Plymouth, population just a hair over a thousand. You'll get a small taste of the past as you drive by the local supermarket, Pokerville Market. Get a bigger taste by going inside to get a snack to go...Pokerville was one of the original names for the area.

During the Gold Rush, the Plymouth Consolidated Mines pulled much of the precious ore out of the ground. The main mine was located east of what is now highway 49 in an empty, wooded patch north of the market and south of Amador 360, a local wine shop and tasting room.

William Tecumseh Sherman...who would go on to make his scorched earth march to the sea in the Civil War...surveyed the area in 1848. Settlement started here around 1852 and there are still a few buildings from that era on Plymouth's Main Street.

In 1856, Adam Uhlinger, a Swiss immigrant, planted a vineyard about 10 miles east of town. Unlike a lot of history that only exists in books, this is living history. You can visit Mr. Uhlinger's vineyard and winery, which is still in operation today as the Sobon Estate Winery.

There is a little jostling as to which is the oldest winery in California. Most point to Buena Vista in Sonoma which was founded in 1857. This winery was not only founded a year earlier, but has been in continuous operation...even during the prohibition...ever since.

Wine tasting is available inside...we particularly recommend their Cougar Hill Zinfandel and their Zinfandel Port. Across the patio, there's a very interesting museum (admission free) where you can stand in the original aging room, dug into the hill like a cave.

In between Sobon and the town of Plymouth, a vast valley of vines and tasting rooms used to be California's largest and most productive wine area. It still is one of the top viticultural areas of the state but is overshadowed by the likes of Napa and Sonoma to the west.

Owing to reminding the settlers here of their native Virginia, it's call Shenandoah Valley and is home to over 40 wineries. Many offer sips of wine for a small fee that's refundable if you buy a bottle. Big bold reds are the specialty of this hot, dry climate. Zinfandels, Barberas, and Sangiovese are grown in abundance here.

Back in town, it's pretty quiet but the focus is on one of the state's highest rated restaurants, Taste. With an ever-changing menu of exquisitely produced dishes, it's the highlight of any trip here.

Plymouth is one of the nerve centers of Amador County's very full slate of warm weather events.

In addition to the county fair...which is hosted here at the end of each July...there are concerts at Helwig Winery's amphitheater. They also host a Friday evening party each week from May through September where the mostly local crowd can dance to local bands while sipping wine and noshing on the on-site restaurant's evening special.

Another very popular event here is the blink-and-you-miss-it farmers market that takes place each Thursday for a month and a half at the end of summer.

More of a local get together than farmers market, it's where the low country residents of the county get together to hang out, chat, enjoy a dish from Taste (which, although just across the street, sets up a table with a simple dish they sell for cheap), drink wine (of course, one of the main things to do in this county), and maybe even buy some produce from the one or two stands actually set up for that purpose.

Plymouth is also home to Amador County's older brewery, Amador Brewing Company, which is located just east of the traffic circle on the road to the Shenandoah Valley (a new brewery in Amador City, Break Even Brewing, just opened making it the 2nd one in the county).

Only open Friday through Sunday, they make great brews and always have a tasty food truck vendor on site.

Of course, the other big thing to do is wine tasting and we also like to take a picnic with us to enjoy some spectacular settings while sipping a nice red while eating our lunch. Some that we particularly recommend are Story Winery, C.G. Di Arie, Dobra Zimlja, Deaver, and Andis.

If you'd like to taste and buy a range of different wineries in one place, stop off at Amador 360 which acts as a tasting room to the many small wineries here that don't have their own tasting room. On the weekends, you'll also find Thomas Allan...Story's winemaker...pouring sips of his own Fate wines, one of the best micro wineries in the state.

Spending the night is no problem. Rest, nextdoor to and owned by Taste, has modern and tasteful rooms, including accessible rooms. The Shenandoah Inn, on the south end of town, has two accessible rooms with a king bed (rollaway available) with tubs, no roll in showers. The Jackson Rancheria Casino Resort, about 10 miles away has both types of accessible rooms available and at the lowest prices of all three. They also have full resort amenities such as pool, spa, casino, and onsite restaurants.

It's a great place to see Gold Rush history and to visit one of the best wine countries in the state before it really gets discovered by the wine drinkers of California.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2020 - All Rights Reserved

The Cocktail Hour - Bi-coastal Riesling Taste Off

We're throwin' down today on the Cocktail Hour.

My friend, Lee Drake, from New York sent me a bottle of some Finger Lakes region Riesling. Of course, since I'm biased towards California wines, that means I've got to challenge it.

I invited my friend Scott over, who is a big Temecula wine fan, got the closest California Riesling in style and price, drug Tim out to the back yard and said..."we've got a challenge, boys."

So here we go...

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In one corner, Dr. Konstantin Frank semi-dry Riesling from New York. In the other, Fetzer's Riesling from Mendocino County in Northern California.

Since we admit our bias, we are doing a blind tasting. My wife, Letty, is pouring the glasses out of our sight and only she knows what we're drinking.

Wine number one, with a fruity bouquet, has a slightly sweet syrupy mouth and throat feel while wine number two has a dry, fall weather nose to it and a much drier feeling on the tongue.

We like both wines but decide that on a real hot summer day, it's the dryer wine that would be more satisfying. 

So which wine is this and which one did we pick?  You'll need to see the video to find out.

Both are very good, though.  You can't go wrong with either one.

Cheers!

Darryl

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: Paso Robles Wine Tasting

(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed) We've done this before but time to hit a couple of new places.

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While California wine tasting used to be a fun, cheap way to pass some time on vacation, wineries have caught on and have made this a profit center. Cheap tasting is getting hard to find. Free tasting is on the endangered list and in extreme danger of going extinct.

Still, have faith...there are some bargains to be had out there yet.

A quick inquiry at the hotel's front desk yields us about half a dozen coupons for free wine tasting here in the Paso Robles AVA.  Two are local, and we'll taste a third under different circumstances tonight.

From our hotel in Atascadero, it's just a few miles south to Santa Margarita where the Ancient Peaks Winery's tasting room anchors the block-long downtown. A display inside has samples of the soil of their growing areas to the north and a map of each type of soil and the grapes grown on it.

Our coupon gets us tastes of everything on the list and we make up a mixed case (10% discount for non-members) of their great cabernet, Sauvignon blanc, and Blanco...a slightly sweeter dry white wine made up of a chardonnay/moscato mix...from the friendly, helpful, and down-to-earth counter staff. They also had a rose for this hot day but it was average and kind of paled a bit in comparison with the other wines.

Be sure to stop at the bakery next door for some sweets to go with that Blanco by the pool later.

Next, we go to the other side of Atascadero, to Templeton, where the rolling hills are dotted with quarter horse ranches. Here's where we'll find Wild Horse Winery. It's a name we're familiar with as we've had their readily available wines many times before.

It's a bit lonely here as we're the only customers. The friendly woman at the counter helps us out with our free tasting as I end up splurging on a really excellent chardonnay that I wasn't planning on spending that much for (but it was worth it). The other wines, such as their pinot noir and viognier, were on sale for such low price that I made up the price of the charonnay.

Later, at a concert in the park in downtown Paso Robles, we hit the wine bar where J. Lohr is selling bottles of their excellent wine for $20 a bottle, souvenir glasses included.

We enjoyed the concert with a chilled bottle of their Riesling to finish off our wine day in Paso Robles.

Cheers!

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved

A Trio of Quick Fall Trips: Bringing the Extended Family Along for Gold and Wine Touring-Part 3

We've come up here to Gold Country to show Letty's mom and brother where we plan on moving to. Today, we're expanding our reach for some quality Sierra Foothill wine tasting.

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First, we pick up two picnics...breakfast quiches and sandwiches...from the Motherlode Deli in Jackson, California. Next, it's off to our first stop...Drytown Cellars in the tiny speck of a town by the same name a few miles up highway 49.

We set up our breakfast food, well brunch by now, then head into the bar for some tasting. As the wine flows, I feel something hard bounce off my shin.  It's a rock...who threw this at me?

The rock was thrown by Jay, the black dog in the picture above. Jay must have rocks in his head because that's what he likes to fetch. Customers of the winery beware, this dog will find a rock, then find you, plunk you with a stone, and expect you to throw it so he can fetch it.

This is all fine and dandy except the Jay will...not...stop. At some point, Rolo...the red dog...will get tired of it and attack Jay to get him to knock it off for awhile.

That's the life of winery dogs.

We pick out a few bottles and go back outside to eat our quiche.

Next, it's off to see our friends at Amador 360 Wine Collective in the town of Plymouth where we find this sweet Mustang parked out front.

Julie is there, as always, ready to pour and chat about the latest gossip and happenings of the area. Today, we have an extra treat. Thomas Allan, the owner and winemaker of Fate Wines, is there to pour samples of his fine wines.

It's always a treat to catch up on the former underground winemaker of the Sierra Foothills. He tells us that, in addition to making his own wine, he is now the winemaker at Story Winery, where we'll have our second picnic later on.

Off to Bray Winery where Oliver Bray pours a few tastes for us as we buy a few bottles from him, then it's Shenandoah Vineyards to pick up a bottle there and take a bathroom break.

Next, it's off to Shenandoah's sister winery, Sobon, which just happens to be the oldest continuously operating winery in the state (from 1856). We take Letty's mom and Amaury into the museum there to see the old aging cave and ancient winemaking equipment.

Milan Matulich, the Croatian owner of Dobra Zemlja Winery, is there to pour tastes for Amaury and Letty while I just buy a couple bottles of his power wine.

Last, it's off to Story just before closing time where we settle in with a bottle of Rose to go with our sandwiches.

Gypsy, the German shorthair pointer winery dog, comes along to get some ear scratches and to see if she can grab some stray bites of roast beef.

The next day, we head back to Jackson so our guests can explore the old Gold Rush town. After a bit of shopping, it's off to our favorite dive bar there, the Fargo Club, to grab a small Amberbock. We find the bar will be closing soon and moving to the other end of Main Street by the end of the year.

One more stop to see a craft show and get some ice cream in Sutter Creek, and then we head back down.

Across from our hotel, a car show is going on. We drive in...someone forgot to set up cones to cordon off the lot...and find ourselves in an impromptu drive through car show.

I even got this guy...

...and this gal to pose for me.

One more night of rest and then it's time to go home. We have breakfast before the drive across the street at Brookfields where we see a vacationing Santa Claus enjoying the meal with his wife.

Santa's got a sweet 1928 Ford Roadster he drives in the off season.

And that's it for our trio of quick fall trips.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved