Home » forums » General wine discussion

Heading to California

I am heading to Mendocino on a short wine tour of the area. My soon to be wife is heading there for a business trip. I thought I'd check out their wines. While doing some research on the Inet, I found the following: There are 56 wineries and over 250 growers harvesting approximately 56,000 winegrape tons, representing about two percent of the state’s wine tonnage.

Can anyone make a recommendation of places to see? I am looking for smaller boutique type wineries or other attractions. From what I have read, most of the grapes grown there tend to be white, with some pinot noir grown here and there.

David

By dvolmut at Jul 3 2008 - 1:17pm | General wine discussion | previous forum topic | next forum topic | 606 reads

Mendocino

The Anderson Valley is crafting some wonderful wines. The first stop on your list should be Navarro Vineyards. It's about 90 minutes from Cloverdale.

Fife Vineyards has made many great wines in the past. I think they went through some re-org, so I can't vouch for their wines anymore.

Eric and I went out to Pacific Star on a rainy January afternoon. It's on a cliff overlooking the Pacific and has a magnificent view. Darned good wines, too.

Scharffenberger Cellars makes sparkling wines of note, and I enjoyed my visit there. Nice grounds, though a bit pretentious.

McDowell Valley Vineyards is the father of California Syrah (and the region is one of the best places in the state to grow it).

This should get you started.

By aperdue at Thu, 07/03/2008 - 3:01pm | login or register to post comments

Modesto CA

My bad. I got the area confused. The area is Livermore Valley.

David

By dvolmut at Thu, 07/03/2008 - 4:34pm | login or register to post comments

Bummer

I was excited that you would get to Mendocino. Oh well.

Here's a great new website for Central Valley wineries:

http://www.sacwineregion.com/

Andy

By aperdue at Fri, 07/04/2008 - 9:32am | login or register to post comments

Trip to Livermore Valley

Well the trip didn't pan out too good. I had some wedding business I needed to take care of and some family to see. I went to a few wineries on Friday, but other than that, I just ran out of time. The wineries I went to in the Livermore AVA were not bad, but I have had better up here in NW at comparable prices. The first winery, Cedar Mountain, was very entertaining. The winemaker was there sampling some of his labor. We began to talk and he and his wine actually used to be from Richland WA. So that was neat to compare stores. They were here during the hey day, late '70s early '80s. They remember Preston breaking group and trying different varietals. I mentioned I had worked for Barnard Griffin and dropped Rob Griffin's name since they had mentioned their familiarity with Preston winery. To my astonishment, they remember Rob when he worked at Preston and that they had sampled some of his wines. We continued to enjoy ourselves over a glass of dry Pinot Noir Rosé.

On a side note, I did get to have some great wine with a grape grower (Bob Broccini) who brought out some wines from his cellar. We mainly drank Pinot Noir from Williams Selyem winery. Many of which were vineyard specific Pinots. We had a good talk comparing California and Washington.

David

By dvolmut at Mon, 07/14/2008 - 4:30pm | login or register to post comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.