If you haven't yet been to the wineries in Ramona, here's your chance to see them at their best.  17 wineries have come together to offer a special wine tasting affair.  Purchase a passport for $10 per person and you can then get 3 tastes for $3 at all of the wineries.  Best part:  the pass is good weekends from November 28 through December 20!
Of course, I would love if you would take the time to check out my reviews on these participating wineries -- and visit them if you haven't already:
Correcaminos Winery
Hatfield Creek Vineyard & Winery
La Finquita Vineyard & Winery (reservations required)
Mahogany Mountain Vineyard & Winery
Principe di Tricase Vineyard & Winery
Three Hills Winery
Turtle Rock Ridge Winery
Vineyard Grant James
Just go to the Ramona Valley Vintners Association website to purchase your passports.
As a final note, you can be sure that the wineries are offering more than just three taste special, so before making your plans drop in on their website to see what they are planning.

​As COVID-19 spikes and political rancor rises to new heights, we are led to wonder if it is a good time to drop in on one (or two) of our local wineries.  To answer this question, I turned to the Bard: “To taste or not to taste, that is the question.  Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take wine against a sea of trouble and by getting looped end them.”  Of course, the Bard’s characters even fantasized about wine: “Is this a wine glass that I see before me, the stem toward my hand?  Come, let me clutch thee.  I have thee not, yet I see thee still.  Art thy not, favored vision, sensible to feeling as to sight?”  Then there is this: “Give me a bowl of wine.  In this I bury all unkindness.”  Or this: “Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.”  But this might be his best quote on the subject:  “The wine-cup is the silver well, where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell.”
So, then, it seems that the Bard agrees with Lord Tennyson that “tis better to have tasted and tasted than to never have tasted at all.”  Wineries are open – what are you waiting for?

​Last weekend we returned to Turtle Rock Ridge Vineyard Winery.  The winery is named after various rock formations in the area that resemble turtles, though since they are on very dry land they should be called tortoise rocks not turtle rocks.
Anyway, there may be a legend going back to the mid-1800’s regarding wine and these rocks.  As the supposed story goes, a small wagon with several casks of wine was sent out from the Spanish mission to the Julian area.  The wagon was not pulled by horses, but in fact by four men, suggesting that the wine was indeed stolen by the four men.  This is somewhat verified by the fact that the turtle rocks are a bit off of the trail.  There is also very strong evidence that there were only three men, the reported forth being the imaginary friend of one of the men, reportedly a tall white rabbit named Harvey.
In any event, the wine and the men never reached their destination.  A search found the three (or four, if you count Harvey) along with the cart on turtle rock ridge.  According to the three men, turtle rocks blocked the main trail and left the men with only one way to go, toward the ridge.  The turtle rocks then began closing in on the men and cart, so they opened a barrel and splashed them with wine.  This proved to be a very bad idea.  The turtles went into a drinking frenzy, attacking the wine with gusto, eventually consuming all of the wine in the barrels.  Needless to say, the men’s story must be taken with a grain of salt, given that 1) they were known winos; 2) they were quite drunk when found; 3) the turtle rocks were just rock formations, not living things; and 4) the men kept insisting that there were indeed four of them, not three.
Given such a harrowing tale, it would seem that Turtle Rock Ridge – which should have been named Tortoise Rock Ridge – would not be a great place for a winery.  Fortunately for all of us wine lovers, Laurie Wagner and Ian Vaux ignored the threat posed by the wine-loving turtles and established Turtle Rock Ridge Vineyard Winery.
Which brings us to the rest of this story.  Blending wines is quite an affair, entailing quite a bit more art than science.  Essentially, the winemaker and friends/associates start with a base wine variety, tasting it to see what are its week points, then mixing the wine with other wine made from other grape varieties to correct the perceived flaws.  For example, Cabernet Sauvignon, from which many of the great wines are made, is known to have a relatively poor finish.  Hence, it is often blended with wines known for their finish, such as Merlot.
Such a blending activity was in progress at Turtle Rock Ridge, led by Laurie, when Ian dropped by and uttered the phrase “Hello, gorgeous”.  Unbeknownst to the wine makers was that the turtle rocks had sensed the wine and were slowly converging on them.  Fortunately, each of the turtle rocks thought that Ian was talking to them.  Being turtles that look like rocks it was the first time for all of them to be called gorgeous, so, being all females – legend has it that only the females drink wine, the males preferring beer – either were so shy that they ran and tried to hide from Ian, or ran off to tell their friends.  Of course, being essentially rocks “ran” is a very relative term.  I mean, when your normal rate of movement is measured in millimeters per hour….
Anyway, we are probably quite fortunate that Laurie and Ian decided to name the wine that was blended that day “Hello Gorgeous”, as the name seems to have kept the wine-loving turtle rocks from the wine, which, by the way, is really good.  Love their Zinfandel as well, and you should not ignore their Hello Sexy.
So, that’s the legend of Turtle Rock Ridge and the turtle rocks, though they should be named tortoise rocks….