Poppaea Vineyard & Winery

One of the glaring differences between the Temecula wineries and the Ramona wineries is geographic:  the wineries in Temecula are very close together, within an area of around 15 square miles, whereas the wineries in Ramona are spread out over an area in excess of 150 square miles.  So naturally we had to visit one of the easternmost Ramona wineries, Poppaea Vineyard & Winery on Old Julian Highway.
Poppaea is an all-Italian red wine producer.  It’s hard to tell that it is a winery – more like visiting someone’s house (see Altipiano).  There is a nice outdoor facility, but it was extremely hot when we visited so we stayed inside the tasting room.  See pictures of the outside below.

The tasting room, as you can see below, is quite comfortable.  While it has a bar, it also has two tables with nice chairs to sit in, following along the same lines as Chuparosa and La Finquita.  Like other Ramona wineries, the wine comes to you, you don’t go to the wine.  They provide some munchies and cold water to hydrate and cleanse your pallet.
And – get this – they actually chill their red wines!  Yes, we now have discovered two wineries out of ~30 that we’ve visited that make an effort to present their wines in the best light!  The wine tasting is $10 per person, with the fee waived if you purchase a bottle of wine.

All of their wines are Estate, meaning they grow their own grapes.  As you can see in the picture below, they had five wines for tasting when we visited.  Unfortunately, their three best selling wines – Montipulciano, Sangiovese, and Barbera – were not available.  A lesson to be learned about Ramona wineries – summer is not a good time to visit.  Too hot, and the best wines might not be available.  The backside of the tasting menu is shown below as well.

One very interesting aspect of their wines is that they try very hard to make them exactly as they are made in Italy.  This includes in the case of the Primitivo using Italian yeast.  Now Primitivo grapes are genetically identical to Zinfandel, but the wine made from the Italian yeast was starkly different from what we taste elsewhere.  Much dryer without the pepper.
The winemaker also introduced us to a new varietal, Sagrantino.  This wine has some of the highest tannin levels of any wine, which, I have now learned, means it should be aged for many years.
Visiting wineries in the summer has one advantage, namely you get to spend time discussing wine with the wine maker.  And, as sometimes happens, he suggests we try some of his wine directly out of the barrel.  So, we went into his barrel room and tasted a Montepulciano.  A picture of the barrel room follows.