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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!

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

Italy

9/30/2018

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OK, so we went to Italy on a Perillo Tour that included Rome, Sorrento, Florence, Venice, and Milan – as well as a visit to a winery in Tuscany. Most of our dinners were provided as part of the tour, and, unfortunately, ranged from bad to so-so, with generally low quality wine. The few times we handled the meals ourselves the food was great and the wine outstanding. Lesson learned.
So, the question than arises as to how do the wines produced in Southern California compare to those produced in Italy? Well, surprising well. Now I say that with the understanding that we only visited one winery in Tuscany – Torciano, a very large operation (over 5,000 acres) specializing in wines made from Sangiovese grapes (pictures at the end). Tasting was limited to Chianti, Chianti Classico, Brunello, and three Super Tuscan blends. Outside of the winery, I had some Montepulciano, Aglianico, Merlot, Valpocella, and, surprisingly, Lagrein. The Merlot and Aglianico were served at the Perillo-provided dinners, and were pretty mediocre, but the rest were all very good, pretty similar to wines produced in Southern California. Again, the sample size was very small, so don’t go running around telling everyone that in our part of the world we make wine as good as any in Italy!
Anyway, after a short presentation by the owner of Torciano in front of the vines (see picture below), we were taken to the tasting area. The tasting itself was different, designed for a large group and included food for pairing (see picture below) followed by bread soup and lasagna (both absolutely incredible). We were taught how to taste the wine properly, or at least how to swirl the wine in the glass and in our mouths. In other words, the presentation was geared toward Americans tourists. But the wine was very good (except for the white and red we started with). We tasted a total of nine wines, all pretty generous pours.

I should point out that the tasting was held outside with ambient temperature around 85 F. The woman (owner’s niece) teaching us how to taste wine became quite defensive when I raised the wine temperature issue, insisting that their red wines should be served at room temperature. At the end of the tasting I noticed on one of their bottles they listed the optimum drinking temperature for the wine at 65 F….
You can see the price list for the wines below. Note that the prices are in Euros. Add ~20% to get the dollar amount and you can see that the prices are pretty high. Of course, there is the usual tour “discount”. In this case it is 30% with free shipping – not bad. One of our group looked them up on line, and sure enough you get the same prices with free shipping if you buy on line. So much for the great Perillo tour “discount”.

Strangely enough, the most expensive Brunello was not as good as the least expensive. I thought this phenomenon was limited to Southern California. I managed to limit my wife’s wine purchases to four bottles, so overall it was a successful visit.
A couple of tidbits: we learned that the difference in Chianti vs. Chianti Classico is the grape clone, and that true Chianti Classico wine has a rooster on the label. See below. I also learned that there is Vino Nobile di Montipulciano and Montipulciano D’Abruzzo. The former is a Sangiovese mix, the latter made from the Montipulciano grape. Of course, I did not make this discovery until after I had purchased a bottle of Torciano’s Vino Nobile di Montipulciano.

Please enjoy the pictures I took of the Torciano Winery. Oh, as noted above, you can buy their wines on line at the discount price with free shipping, but what fun is that?

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Palomar Mountain Winery

9/22/2018

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Mount Palomar Winery is one of the oldest wineries in Temecula, dating back to 1969. Which begs the question: Why didn’t I visit it a long time ago? It is located right on Ranch California. Must have passed it a hundred times or so. OK, so I blew it…

Their facility is breathtaking. It includes an olive grove that you can sit in and drink your wine – I’ll attach the pictures of the olive grove at the end of this review. The restaurant sits above the vines with a fantastic view of the valley beyond (see pictures below). Of course, they have plenty of room for special events – indoors and outdoors – and entertainment on weekends. I’m guessing they are not lacking in customers.

The wine tasting room is quite nice(see picture). The red wine is served at room temperature, so that is one ding for them. Fortunately, the tasting room is air conditioned. They offer six tastings at $20 weekend, $16 weekdays. As you can see from the menu below they specialize in red wines, with some of their own proprietary mixes. They did not have anything to munch on at the bar, but they did provide water on request. The wine server did not rinse the glasses before pouring in a new wine.
They have two wine clubs, Villa and Estate. Villa members buy 12 bottles of wine a year (two every other month) with a 20% discount. They get two complementary wine tastings when visiting the winery, limited to two visits a month. For Estate members the number of bottles is doubled, the discount increased to 25% and the complementary wine tastings doubled. They have wine pick-up parties with food – not sure if these are complementary. Discounts at the restaurant and on purchases of other items are included, though they don’t say what those are. Again referring to the winetasting menu, some of their wines are sold exclusively to wine club members.

Now pictures of the must-see olive garden:

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New York State

9/18/2018

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The oldest winery in the United States is located in upstate New York. It is also the very first winery I ever visited – back in the 70’s. My son lives not far from the winery, so he took us there as an anniversary present, and it gives me an opportunity to do a little national comparison.
Brotherhood Winery was founded in 1839. It produced wine for churches, so did not have to close down during Prohibition. The first thing I noticed on driving into their grounds is the lack of grape vines. Turns out they grow their grapes much farther north, in the Finger Lakes region of New York. You can see their facility in the pictures below.

New York state is substantially wetter and colder than Southern California, so they don’t grow the same grapes. The winery specializes in German whites, sweet, sparkling, and fruit wines (see rating page below). Well, at least that’s what they grow and bottle. They also import wines from Chile and even California to allow them to offer a very wide variety of wines

Their tasting is a bit unique, completely different from anywhere else. We tasted in a group from the menu shown below. As you can see, there are three lists. For each tasting you had your choice of one of the three wines nicely explained by the server. At the end, everyone tasted their Riesling. Six tastings per person. By the way, the Pinot Noir was their product, grapes grown in New York state. Dreadful. The Riesling was great, though. Oh, and please note that, as shown in the last picture, they keep all of their wines in a cooler for tasting….

We also stopped at a winery/distillery/hard cider mill not far from Brotherhood, the Warwick Valley Winery, Distillery & Café. The grapes again were grown in the Finger Lakes region, but the cider came from locally grown apples. Nice facility, as shown below.

For the tasting, you marked a menu, as shown below. Some interesting wines, including a red made from Baco Noir, some sort of French-American hybrid. I'm going to add that to my list of reds. Note the prices. Bottom line: you get what you pay for....

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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WINERY REVIEW

Italy

Palomar Mountain Winery

New York State

Jim Treglio

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