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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WINERY REVIEW

Southern California has become a great place to go wine tasting! Great wines, great wineries -- and great people! This website is dedicated to bringing you the best info on wineries in San Diego and Riverside counties -- and a few other places as well. Enjoy!

Chateau 55 Wine Storage Facility
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Link to Chateau 55 Website

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Ramona Ranch has upgraded their winery, and released their 2019 Tannat. We dropped in with a small crowd....

Frangipani Estate Winery

3/30/2019

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I really don’t like to do my wine tasting standing at a bar, and really, really wonder why so many people make it a point to do so when they can readily find a nice place to sit and enjoy the wine in their glass. So, I am happy to introduce you to Frangipani Estate Winery in Temecula. Located on the dePortola wine trail next door to Cougar, you do not stand at the bar for your wine tasting. You sit at a table inside or outside and in the Ramona boutique winery manner they bring the wine to you. As you can see in the pictures that follow, it is a great place to sit outside and sip a nice glass of wine.

The wine tasting room is rather large, but, as you can see the pictures that follow, does not have any real bar. In other words, even if you wanted to stand at the bar and taste their wines you couldn’t do it. Me like.

Below is the tasting menu. Tasting is $15 for six wines. We tried six of their reds, and, well, sometimes you just have to eat crow. The server talked me into tasting their Merlot. It’s not that I dislike Merlot – I mean, it isn’t Tempranillo – but it is always somewhat uninteresting. OK, very uninteresting. But this Merlot was not uninteresting. How much so? Well, we went home with a bottle…. Also left with bottles of their Petit Sirah and Syrah. In other words, this is a winery worth visiting but with an understanding that you may find it very difficult to leave empty-handed....

They have two levels of wine club. The lowest level requires you to purchase three bottles of wine per quarter, selected by the winemaker at a 15% discount. You get free tasting for four twice a month. The high level requires four bottles per quarter, but you can choose all red or mixed. All red gets you two bottles each of the wines selected by the winemaker. If you go with mixed, you get one bottle of each of the reds for that quarter plus two bottles of the white wine. Discount is 20%, and you get four tastings four times per month.

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Family Winemakers of California

3/20/2019

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Rather than visiting a crowded Irish pub and getting smashed on green beer, this St. Patrick’s Day we went to the Del Mar Fairgrounds to a crowded wine tasting event (see picture below), getting smashed on wine. The wine tasting event was put on by the Family Winemakers of California and entailed some 60 wineries from all over California. It is worth noting that this included only one winery from Temecula and one from San Diego county, the latter an urban winery at that.

Once inside, tasting was free and they had some free food as well – bread and cheese as well as some munchies at the booths. Let me add that our Priority Wine Pass got us 10% discount off of the normal $60 entrance fee. Anyway, we made sure that we got our money’s worth, but try as hard as we could we only managed to visit about half the booths in the three hours of the show. Needless to say, we depended on Uber to get us to and from the Fairgrounds.
So, you ask, how were the wines, or, more specifically, how did they compare to wines made in our part of the state? For starters only about a third of the wineries whose tables we visited offered wines that I would consider good enough to write a review about. In comparison, I’ve reviewed about two-thirds of the wineries I’ve visited in Southern California. In terms of specific wine varietals (keeping in mind that we focused almost exclusively on red wines), only one was significantly better than we’ve found in Southern California, namely Pinot Noir. This was not a surprise – for the most part, we don’t have the climate for that particular grape, though I have had a pretty good Pinot made from grapes grown in Fallbrook. I’ve made a little table comparing different wine varietals from the show versus my visits to wineries I’ve reviewed in Southern California. It shows that the Southern California wineries are competitive with the rest of the state, and superior for some wine varietals. Note, however, that we did not see any Nebbiolo, Montepulciano, Refosco, Lagrein, Nero D'Avola, Aglianico, Aleatico or Negroamaro at the show.

Wine Varietal	So Cal vs Family Winemakers
Pinot Noir	Family Winemakers -- by a lot
Cabernet Sauvignon	not enough samples
Cabernet Franc	About equal
Zinfandel	Southern California
Sangiovese	Southern California -- much better
Barbera	Family Winemakers
Syrah	Southern California

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Hawk Watch Winery

3/14/2019

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As I mentioned in my last blog, after leaving Shadow Mountain we drove north along 79 to a second winery, Hawk Watch Winery. It is located on a side street that we missed and had to drive some distance before we found a place to turn around. Located at the end of a dirt driveway (which they are not allowed to pave for some strange reason), we arrived at the winery. Worth the trip!
This Warner Springs winery has a small tasting area in their barrel room with just a couple of high chairs, but there is seating outside with a great view of the surrounding area (see pictures below). Like most of the county’s boutique wineries, this is a mom-and-pop operation.

The tasting room is only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They follow a typical wine tasting concept -- $12 per person – and the array of wines is quite nice (see menu below). We liked the 2014 Syrah better than the Reserve Syrah, something I’ve noticed before at other wineries. Overall good wine with one exception – their Tinderbox. It is not a good wine, it is a very good wine. Made from 100% Zinfandel grapes grown in Temecula, it is smooth and has a high pepper aroma and taste that I really, really like. We left with a couple of bottles. Did I mention I really like this wine?

An interesting aspect of this Zinfandel is that the same grapes are sold to a Temecula winery but their wine is not very peppery. This is a good example of what makes wines so interesting. Two different wine makers, same grapes, two different wines…
One of the great things about boutique wineries in San Diego County is that they are always willing to try new things. For example, few wineries outside the Piedmont area of Italy mess with Nebbiolo, but we’ve got Nebbiolo at Shadow Mountain and Principe di Tricasse. Hawk Watch falls into the makers of rare varietal wines camp as well – or at least will fall into the camp – as they have grafted Tanat to some of their vines. This is a grape with a very high tannin level and produces a dark red wine that really needs to be aged. Might be awhile then before they have it available – I believe they only just got their first fruit – but they may be the only place you can find this rare wine.
They have a very generous wine club arrangement. It is three bottles every quarter (selected by the winemaker) at a 25% discount (30% for a case) and three free tastings every visit to the winery. Live music and appetizers at free quarterly wine club parties (weather permitting, i.e., no party in February). Oh, and 15% off of items that they sell at the winery. So now I have two reasons to take the long trip to Warner Springs…

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Chateau 55 wine storage in San Diego

3/8/2019

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If you’ve read much of the material on this website, you are probably aware by now that I have two pet peeves – serving red wines at room temperature and storing wines improperly. Now there are a number of reasons that you should really worry about wine storage, such as:
·        The Shadow Mountain (distance) reason. We visited a couple of wineries in Warner Springs and found some very nice wine, coming home with four bottles of Nebbiolo from Shadow Mountain (see last review) and two bottles of a very-peppery Zinfandel from Hawk Watch (soon to be reviewed). The problem is that these two wineries are a good distance away, so when you do visit them you bring home more bottles of wine than you have room for them in your storage locker. Hence, this
·        The Espinosa (sell out) reason. As mentioned above, I like a very-peppery Zinfandel, and Espinosa has a great one. Unfortunately, I am not the only one who likes their Zinfandel -- their last release sold out in just two weeks. Two weeks! Needless to say, it makes sense to buy lots of it when it is available, requiring extra storage.
·        The Palomar Mountain (party) reason. Sometimes you want to buy a lot of wine in advance of a large gathering or party. In my case, we’re holding a family reunion in San Diego this summer. Now the family name is Trovato, and Palomar Mountain just happens to have a blend that they have named Trovato….
·        The Poppaea (aging) reason. Most red wines get better with age. Generally speaking, the higher the tannin level, the longer the wine needs to be aged. I call this the Poppaea effect because Poppaea makes a red wine from the Sangrantino grape. This grape has a very high tannin level, so it requires ten years or more of aging to get close to its prime. In some sense, this is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind issue, namely you are not likely to open a bottle of wine that you really want to age if it is not sitting in your house.
So, what to do, what to do? Well, you can spend a lot of money on a wine storage cabinet, some of which I show in the About section. But there is an alternative, namely taking your wine to a commercial wine storage facility. To this end, I have arranged a deal with Chateau 55 to give you a discount. Chateau 55 is a state-of-art wine storage facility on Sorrento Valley Road just south of the Carmel Mountain intersection.

Link to Chateau 55 Website

They offer both full lockers and community lockers to hold your wine. The upstairs lockers are the smallest full lockers with 13 cubic feet of storage space, enough to hold around 8 cases of wine. They run $19.50 per month. The lower level lockers are larger (18 cubic feet, enough to hold 12 cases of wine) and run $36 per month. If you rent a full locker you get a fob that allows you access to your wine on evenings and weekends.
For the community locker option, you pay between $4 and $5 per case per month, ideal if you are looking to store less than 4 to 5 cases of wine. However, the community locker option does not come with a fob, so you can only access your wine during working hours.
What about wine shipments, you say? I mean, wouldn’t it be nice if my wine clubs could just ship the wine directly to Chateau 55? The answer is yes, they can. In fact, if you leave them a key, they’ll just put your wine in your locker.

I have an arrangement with Chateau 55 to make it a bit more appealing to try them out. Chateau 55 will give visitors to this website a free month’s rental and a 5% discount for their first year of storage. I like numbers, so here they are:
Without discount, ground level storage locker for one year: $432.00
Savings from free month and 5% discount for first year: $ 55.80
Discounted first year cost for ground level storage locker: $376.20
That’s an ~13% discount. If you go with an upstairs storage locker, the first year total is $203.78, saving you over $30 dollars or ~13%. In comparison, you will probably pay $1,500 or more for a wine refrigerator to hold that much wine, you will need a dedicated electrical service for the unit, and you’ll need a place to put it. In addition to the high cost of large wine refrigerators, the electricity cost is not insignificant, especially if it puts you into a higher usage bracket.
As a final note on Chateau 55, they have some tables in their lobby and a conference room off to the side with a conference table. Over time they plan on turning this front into a nice place to drop by, visit your wine, and maybe spend time hanging out with other wine enthusiasts.

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Shadow Mountain Vineyards & Winery

3/4/2019

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If you are looking for wineries off the beaten path, so to speak, there are plenty in San Diego County. In the past we found a very nice winery heading southeast towards the Mexican border in the Jamul area. If you go north and then east of Mount Palomar to the Warner Springs area you’ll find another group of wineries. Among these, right off of Rt. 79, is Shadow Mountain Vineyards & Winery. We drove up there through Ramona, taking 67 to 78 to 79. Unless you have a sports car and like to drive along winding roads, I would suggest you take 15 north to 79 then east on 79 to the winery. We took that route back – a bit longer but a much easier drive.

If you get past the long trip out to the winery, and the mile or so dirt drive, you will find it is well worth the visit. Shadow Mountain is a large boutique winery (30 acres) offering only Estate wines, growing 16 different grape varieties, some from vines that were planted over 50 years ago. Their facility is relatively rustic, with nice views and a nice area outside to sit (see pictures).

The tasting room is nothing to write home about – small with little seating – so you shouldn’t go on a day like we did, when it was too cold to sit outside. Tasting fee is $10 per person for six tastes. They didn’t work off of a tasting menu per se, but I have attached a picture of their price list. You will see that they make a Nebbiolo varietal. More about that later. Their other wines were quite good, except for their Tempranillo but never take my word for Tempranillo since I really, really don’t like Tempranillo. My only complaint is that the temperature in the tasting room was a bit high, and they served the red wine at room temperature.

Now the Nebbiolo grape is used to make Barolo, generally regarded as the King of Italian wines (and the wine of Kings). They are very proud of their Nebbiolo, so we were able to talk them into tasting some. All I need to say is that we walked away with four bottles, two of their 2013 crop and two 2016 vintage that had just been bottled. Yes, the wine is that good! How good? See the medals in the picture below. By the way, they do their own artwork for their bottles.

The winery also has cottages to rent and a wine club. Wine club members purchase three bottles a quarter, but, unlike other wineries, the customer gets to pick the wines! Discount is 20% and extends to the cottage rental as well – a very nice deal indeed. They also hold an annual event for wine club members only. Now if they could just move a bit closer….

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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WINERY REVIEW

Frangipani Estate Winery

Family Winemakers of California

Hawk Watch Winery

Chateau 55 wine storage in San Diego

Shadow Mountain Vineyards & Winery

Jim Treglio

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