​Koi Zen Cellars is the first urban winery I’ve visited, and it is quite urban.  It is located in an industrial park near Home Depot in the Carmel Mountain region of San Diego.  Not a very nice outside, but the interior is well done, as shown below.  This particular urban winery does not have an affiliated vineyard – they buy all of their grapes from vineyards all over California, but not necessarily the same vineyards from year to year.

​The entire operation sits, as noted above, in an industrial park.  Their 800 or so sq. ft. facility was pretty packed when we visited as they had the barrel room filled with fermentation vats.  These were very large plastic boxes with just a plastic sheet over them to keep bugs out of the mix, as shown below.  Their wine maker pulled away one of the sheets so we could see the must (crushed grapes – seeds and skins included).  First time for me.

​The facility is broken down into essentially three lounges, two with bars.  Very nice interior setting.  The server we had is a Sommelier (level 2, I believe) and at least one other person in the operation is a level 3 Sommelier.

​Wine tasting is $10 for 5 tastes.  As shown below, most of their wines are made from French varietals, with grapes mostly from California.  One very unique wine is a Chardonnay with oak chips in the bottle.  The one outstanding wine in the listing is their Syrah.  We bought a bottle.  Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of the bottle before it was consumed, so I have posted a picture of their award-winning Pinot Noir which, unfortunately, was not available for tasting.

​They have a wine club, two bottles every other month with substitutions allowed.  Discount is only 10%, and members are limited to two free tastings per month.  Like many wineries, they hold wine pick up parties with food and music.

​If you are visiting the Willamette Valley, Hyland should be one of your destinations.  It is about 40 miles southwest of Portland, and situated among several fine vineyards. I first found it about two years ago, and it has become my first stop every time I return to the area. 
Hyland is one of the oldest and largest wineries in the area, with 180 acres that were planted in 1971.  Like other vineyards in this region, Pinot Noir is the main grape varietal that they serve.  For you white-wine lovers, they also produce Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Chardonnay, and Muller Thurgau.  Hyland wines regularly win awards, and commonly have a 90+ rated wine listed in leading publications.  Some of the fruit from their property was used in the 1985 Burgundy Challenge in Paris!

Unlike the practice at most of the other vineyards, Hyland distinctively serves several single-clone wines rather than blends composed of multiple clones.  Here you can taste pure Wadenswil clone, a cold weather grape registered in Switzerland that can have an interesting pepper finish.  Also available are pure clones of Pommard, Coury, Dijon 115 and others.  I like this approach, as it lets me taste the pure flavor of an individual clone, rather than mixed blends which tend to blur together in my mind and in my mouth.  See tasting menu below.

​Hyland has a friendly staff with much better credentials than I have found at other places.  The person I most commonly see serving the wine is a sommelier (level 3) which is rare in my travels in Oregon and California.  Rebecca is very knowledgeable and makes the tasting very educational.  Also at the winery is a sommelier (level 4) who teaches monthly classes at the tasting room, among his many other duties.
The wine club has several options ranging from 2-3 bottles every quarter, up to 4-6 bottles per quarter.  Both provide free tastings, and 15% to 20% discounts on the wine.   While Hyland suggests the composition of each wine club shipment, they freely permit substitutions to customize the wine shipment order.  Hyland (hylandestateswinery.com) is open for tastings from 10:00 to 5:00 daily.

​When we think of wine we almost always think of the great French varietals – Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot.  But maybe we should start thinking more about the Italian varietals.  After all, Italy is the world’s leading wine producing nation, outstripping France by around 10%.  Italy’s population is about 90% that of France, and its wine exports about 60% that of France.  Put all that together, and it seems that the Italians per capita wine consumption is about 20% higher than the French.  They drink a lot of wine!  So, it seems logical to think that maybe they know a little bit about wine…
Perhaps more important, the climate and terrain of Italy are pretty similar to our climate and terrain, so it follows that local wines made from Italian varietals grown in our area are going to be better than local wines made from French varietals grown in our area.  In other words, we don’t have a “French Connection”, we have an “Italian Connection”.  So, I thought it would be worth it to review some of the Italian varietals available at our Southern California wineries.
As I am not that much of a fan of white wines, I will stick to Italian red varietals, though we do have some great Pinot Grigio and you really need to try Arneis.  The most common of the red Italian wine grapes is Sangiovese.  Never heard of it (other than on this magnificent website)?  Well, I bet you have drunk it many, many times.  You see, Sangiovese is the grape varietal from which Chianti is made.  International agreements prevent American wine makers from calling wine made from the Sangiovese grape Chianti, but it is essentially the same wine.  So now I get to really confuse you.
You see, there are these grapes that are called clones, i.e., the DNA of the vines are identical.  Somewhere along the line, someone found that some plants did better than others, so they used cuttings from those plants to create more plants with the same characteristics.  As an example, Sangiovese has two clones that are considered superior to Chianti and Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montipulciano. 
OK, so what?  Well, turns out we have some very nice Sangiovese produced here in Southern California.  At least 13 wineries I’ve reviewed offer Sangiovese, including two (Robert Renzoni and Chuparosa) that offer the Brunello clone.
If you read my report on my visit to Torciano Winery in Tuscany, you will recall that I bought a bottle of Vino Nobile di Montipulciano thinking it was made from the Montipulciano grape.  As noted above, it is made from the Sangiovese grape, but now that the name Montipulciano has come up I will naturally move over to this varietal.
Montipulciano is the second most common red wine of Italy, though far less popular than Sangiovese.  It is grown extensively there – over 85,000 acres worth – but is almost non-existent elsewhere.  So while not a rare wine by any means, it is very surprising to find it in the United States.  Fortunately, Southern California wineries have discovered this varietal.
This is a very good wine.  How good?  Well, a local Italian restaurant we frequent recently added Montipulciano to their wine list.  Within weeks it had risen to the top of their red wine sales, with a very significant drop in their Chianti orders.  And, yes, we switched from Chianti to Montipulciano, and, no, we are not the reason for the shift – we don’t drink that much wine!
Barbera is a less common wine than Montipulciano, but is grown extensively in the US as well as Italy so you may be more familiar with it.  Barbera is more of an everyday wine, needs little aging, and can be quite good.  It can also be quite bad.  Seven wineries on my list offer Barbera, but frankly speaking I cannot really recommend all of them.
Now on to Southern Italy and Aglianico.  Aglianico probably came to Italy from Greece and is the primary wine you find in Rome.  It is a high tannin wine that requires more aging than Sangiovese, Montipulciano, and Barbera – some believe as long as ten years – so it is not that common outside Italy.  Well, it can be very good even when young:  as noted in an earlier blog, it was Principe di Tricasse’s Barrel Select Anglianico that won this year’s Lum Eisensen/San Diego Wine Competition Best of Show.  Five wineries on my list offer this wine.  Very worth looking into.
And now the star of the show, so to speak:  Nebbiolo.  Only around 15,000 acres of Nebbiolo have been planted around the world, most in the Piedmont region of Italy and, surprise! the Guadaloupe Valley in Mexico.  Nebbiolo is the grape of Barolo, often considered the King of Italian wines (with Brunello the Queen).  This is a high tannin wine that needs substantial aging, though that depends on the wine making process.  Three wineries on my list offer Nebbiolo (Shadow Mountain, Vineyard Grant James, and Principe di Tricasse).  This wine sells fast, so if you see it and like the taste, buy it!  Learned that lesson with other wines, so I now have about a case in storage…
One of my personal favorites is Lagrein.  It is a much like Cabernet Sauvignon, but less fruity and very smooth.  I don’t have many bottles of this in storage.  Seems they don’t last long at my house…
Dolcetto is about as common as Nebbiolo, but probably even less known.  Coming out of Northern Italy, it is a more moderate tannin wine needing far less aging than Nebbiolo.  Really best served with food.  We’ve got three wineries offering Dolcetto in Temecula.
There are more varietals available in our area – Negroamaro, Lambrusca di Alessandria, Refosco, Sagrantino, Nero D’Avola, and Zinfandel.  It is not clear that Zinfandel is truly an Italian varietal, as more of it grown in the US than elsewhere, but by far the second largest grower of Zinfandel is Italy, and since it is clearly not native to North America, I’ll claim it as part of the “Italian Connection”.
I was at a bar awhile back with friends and ordered a glass of Zinfandel.  The bartender was a young college student (we were near the SDSU campus).  After a bit he came back a bit confused.  He wanted to check with me to make sure I knew that I was going to get a red wine.  Seems he did not know that Zinfandel grapes can be used to make a red wine.
Well, Zinfandel grapes make a great red wine, especially if they are grown in our part of the world.  I like the versions with a high black pepper aroma.  Zinfandels can be quite fruity.  If that is not your bag, then go for the Italian Zinfandel clone, Primitivo.  All available at your local Southern California wineries.  Oh, jump on that high black pepper Zinfandel when you can – I’m not the only one that loves it….

We must have driven by Europa Village a hundred times as it is located in the heart of the wine country on Rancho California in Temecula.  For some reason, we never stopped in.  Eventually my wife did some work with a fellow who had just joined their wine club and raved about the wine, so we paid them a visit.  And once again I must admit that I missed the boat….
Or did I?  You see, Europa Village is a relatively new winery (started in 2011) that has begun a major expansion.  They’ve added an Inn and are building three separate wineries – one for Spanish wines, one for Italian wines, and one for French wines.  In addition to the wineries, they are adding villas and a cave.  The Spanish winery will be the first to open, followed by the Italian and then the French.  The entire project is expected to be completed in four years.  Some pictures of the existing facility follow.  As you can see, the winery has a Mediterranean design – very modest exterior and a central courtyard.

​The current tasting room is quite nice, though lacks any seating so it falls into the stand-at-the-bar category.  Of course, you can sit outside with your wine where they use misters to keep temperatures within reason.  I have to point out that the seats outside for the peasants, i.e., non-wine club members, are of the high table/chair design.  Tasting is done the right way – wines are reasonable temperature, water is readily available, they provide bread sticks to munch on, and they rinse your glass with the new wine to be tasted between pours.  Nice if they were to bring the wine to your table – maybe in the new wineries?

​For $20 you get to taste six of their standard wines.  For $30 you get to taste six of their standard wines and two premium wines.  Well, actually, a bit more than that – they begin your tasting experience with a dry sparkling wine not on the wine list and not counted as one of your tastes.  Made the right way, using methode champenoise, it was quite nice.  We bought a bottle.
My wife and I split the $30 tasting.  This allowed for some interesting “parallel” tasting, much like one does with a flight of wines.  Now, as I mentioned above, they are splitting the winery into three separate wineries – Spanish, Italian, and French.  Not surprisingly, they label their Spanish wines “Bolero”, Italian “Vienza”, and French “C’est La Vie”.  I’m not a big fan of Spanish wines, so won’t say more about their versions other than I am still not a fan of Spanish wines.  On the Italian side we tasted in parallel their 2016 vintage Montipulciano and Sangiovese.  It is really amazing how different these two varietals are!  Both are really good, though the Montipulciano still needs a bit of aging.
​We moved onto the French wines.  Not being fans of Merlot, we tried their Syrah and a Rhone blend.  Unfortunately for the Rhone blend, their Syrah is really, really good.  For our last pair we tasted two of their premium wines, a Pinot Noir (not estate grown) and their premier Sangiovese.  Both were quite nice, though I liked the less expensive Sangiovese better.  See their tasting menu below.

​If you join their wine club you get to sit in the nice area outside, as shown in the pictures below.  They have three levels of their wine club – Passport, Premiere, and Magellan.  Passport is a standard club – two bottles every other month, 20% discount, free wine tasting for two each visit, 10% merchandise discount, and a very nice 20% discount on rooms at the Inn.  The Premiere club ups the number of bottles to three every other month, with one from their Premiere listing.  Magellan ups this to four bottles every other month, with one from their Premiere listing and one from their Magellan listing.

​Now all of the wines are selected by their Sommelier, not their winemaker.  Look on the picture of the tasting room shown earlier.  Behind the bar at the far end you see an elderly gentleman – well, maybe not as elderly as me, but that’s another story.  Dr. Doug, as he is called, is a Level 3 Sommelier.   I did get to speak with him a bit, enough to know that he really knows wine, which, of course, goes with the territory.
As a final note, you can rent a pretty neat  cabana for your group.  See pictures below.

​I have discovered a great winery!  Well, I really didn’t discover them – ok, truth is I should have visited them a long time ago, but you see they didn’t get on my list because every time I tried to pull up their website my computer crashed, and then I had a phone call from a telemarketer, and then the dog ate my homework….
The winery is Vineyard Grant James, located on Old Julian Highway in Ramona.  As seen in the poster pictured below, Vineyard Grant James has been selected as the second-best winery in the country!!!  So, yeah, I really should have visited them a long time ago.  To think of all that great wine that I did not get to drink.  Woe is me!

Last February, Doc Ed, my wife and I visited Cordiano Winery on Highland Valley Road in Escondido.  We ordered some pizza, then stepped up to the bar to taste their wines.  The first wine we opted to taste was a Pinot Noir made from grapes grown in Paso Robles.  The wine had a very strange color, sort of orange.  The taste was worse than the appearance.  Doc Ed, a level 1 Sommelier, casually asked the server if they stored their wines on site.  He was proud to say that, yes, they stored them on site in a temperature-controlled facility – keeping the temperature at a steady 74 F.  When we returned to our table, Doc Ed theorized that the wine had oxidized too rapidly because of the high storage temperature, and was ruined.  As it turned out, all of their wines had the same orangey hue and none were drinkable.
This was a great tragedy.  You see, Cordiano makes some really great pizza, and I know pizza, so if I say it is really great, it is really great!  They have a very nice facility as well.  See for yourself in the pictures that follow.  So, last weekend I decided it was time to see if they had corrected the problem.  I am very, very happy to report that all is now well with Cordiano Winery.  The wines are all red and all pretty good.  And the pizza, well, it is even better!

​Their wine club is a 12 bottle/year affair at a 20% discount, three per quarter.  The winemaker selects the wines, but members have the option to choose replacements.  Members get two free tastings per visit, and they have special events for wine club members.  Now, here’s the clincher – the 20% discount extends to the restaurant!  Did I mention that they make some really good pizza?
Important note:  Cordiano Winery is open five days a week (closed Monday and Tuesday) from 11 am to 7 pm.  Please enjoy more pictures of their facility, including their bottle pyramid.