​Day two of our journey to the remote vineyards of Amador County.  We began with an almost edible breakfast in our hotel then a stop at Helwig Winery for wine tasting and then lunch.  Probably should have done the lunch first – not good to drink wine on an empty stomach.

​We tasted a nice variety of wines.  I particularly liked their Davancy Barbera, which is saying a lot as I am not a Barbera fan. 

​There aren’t a lot of restaurants in Amador County, so we decided to eat at Helwig.  Well, we had advance notice from Doc Ed that this was a good place to eat, and he got that right.  Loved the apple onion grilled cheese….

​But the story of day two in Amador County is the Story, i.e., Story Winery.  This very old winery was purchased a few years ago by a family from Georgia.  Not the state of Georgia, but the country of Georgia, located on the eastern shore of the Black Sea.  While they make wine in the state of Georgia, much of is made from the Muscadine grape, a unique North American grape species from which some of the worst wine in the world is made.  The people of Asian Georgia have been making wine for around 10,000 years!  The picture below shows some of their vines – the vines in their Amador vineyard, that is – which are more than 100 years old.  These particular vines are of the Mission grape, the grape brought to California by the Spanish and grown in their missions to make wine for the church.  The facility, also shown below, is quite rustic.

​The Georgian method of making wines is quite different from the French and Italian, though it is likely that the Romans made some of their wines their way.  Known as Qvevri, after the grapes are crushed the must, sometimes including the stems, is put into very large clay vessels.  How large?  See pictures below.

​The vessels are buried in the ground to keep temperature and humidity relatively constant.  Note that the wine is both fermented and aged in these vessels, sometimes for very long periods of time.  The resulting taste profile is quite different from wines made the more modern way.  Story is both importing wines from Georgia as well as making wines using the Qvevri method.  We tasted one wine that was subjected to both Qvevri and oak aging.  While wines made using the Qvevri method do not appeal to me, I suggest that it is well worth trying them out yourself.  They might even give you a discount if you can pronounce Qvevri….
They have a small tasting room, so most of the seating is outside.  Their wine list is shown below, as well as a bottle of their imported wine.

​Our intrepid group, having avoided falling into a Qvevri, went on to our third and final winery of the day, Iron Hub Winery.  By the way, all three of the wineries we visited on day two are located in Plymouth.  Iron Hub is a family run winery fitting the norm for Amador County in offering very nice old vine Zinfandel and much newer vine Barbera, while purchasing some grapes from other areas to add wines such as Petite Syrah to their wine list.  Beautiful facility as well.

​Amador is a small county lying east of Sacramento.  It is the home of Sutter’s Mill – yes, the Sutter’s Mill where gold was discovered in 1849!  Needless to say, at one time it was teeming with prospectors searching for gold, and many others offering services to help the successful ones to spend that gold.  More than one of this latter group started wineries to provide a higher level of alcoholic drink, bringing European vines in from the east coast.
Wait, you say, how was this possible?  Old World vines could not be grown east of the Rocky Mountains.  True, if they were planted outside.  But it turns out that there were grapes grown in hot houses for eating, the most prominent of these varieties is now known as Zinfandel.  Hence, Zinfandel was planted throughout the county until Prohibition hit in 1920 – and some of those plants are still producing wine….
Wait, you say, weren’t the vines pulled up during Prohibition, as it was illegal to make wine?  Yes, it was illegal to make and sell wine, but you could make it for your own consumption (or for churches).  So, rather than pull up the Zinfandel vines they shipped the grapes by train over the Rockies to those cities with large Italian populations, such as Chicago.  It is said that one individual in Chicago, a fellow by the name of Al Capone, had tons of grapes shipped in for his personal use….
Today, Amador County, with a population that is slightly greater than 1% of that of San Diego County, has a well-established wine industry, specializing in Old Vine Zinfandel.  Naturally, our group of intrepid explorers had to go there.
We were there for three days, visiting three wineries per day.  Our first stop was at a tasting room for the Turley Wine Cellars.  I won’t post pictures of this facility as it was permanently shut down shortly after our visit.  I hope that we weren’t the cause.  Anyway, we found their Zinfandel wines to be quite nice.  I liked one from their Rinaldi Vineyard (picture below), fruity with a high black pepper taste.

​Our second stop was at Vino Noceto.  With such an Italian name it is not hard to figure out that they specialize in Italian varietals.  Nothing special, but a nice facility as shown below.

​Our last stop on the first day was the best, Scott Harvey Wines.  Scott Harvey started in Napa, then spread his wings and set up this winery in Amador County.  By the way, all three of the wineries on this first day are right next to each other, with Scott Harvey in the middle.

​Their wines are quite nice across the board.  Not all the grapes are grown in Amador County, however, something we found to be quite common in the nine wineries we visited.  At the same time, we were told that at least one vineyard had not even bothered to pick their grapes.

​In January just before Trump was sworn in for his second term, we decided to travel again to the Guadalupe Valley for wine tasting.  Our group took a tour set up by Ray Ochoa (www.BajaWineandDineTours.com), providing the transportation in Mexico and arranging for the winery visits and lunch.  We drove down to the San Ysidro crossing, parked there, and walked into Mexico, meeting Ray’s driver in Tiajuana.
Warning:  If you plan on travelling to Mexico, we strongly recommend that you get Global Entry.  If we did not have Global Entry, we would have waited in line to get back into the US for around three hours.  With Global Entry it took about ten minutes!
Our intrepid team were a bit much for our first stop on the way, a boutique winery with relatively modest wines, so I will skip them and talk about our second stop, Don Tomas Vinedo.  They have an outstanding facility, though the road there is not particularly good.  Paving might help….  You can see the facility in the pictures that follow.  Not much for a view though, but they did have a cave.  As for the wines, well, they were just so-so.

​After Don Tomas we stopped for lunch at Finca Altozano.  OMG!  Fantastic food!  My wife and I erred and ordered sangrias, but fortunately others on our table ordered wine which we got to taste.  Best we had to that point!  Note that the grapes come from the San Vicente Valley, located in Baja California just south of Guadalupe.  Perfect wine for their great food!

​The real highlight of the trip was what followed Finca:  Casa Magoni Winery.  The winery is very close to Finca – on a paved road, no less!  Not a small winery.  We had a wonderful time sitting outside under an ancient oak tree drinking very good wine!  The wine was so good that the tree kept trying to steal it….  Well, it was late in the day, and this was our third winery….

​The best of the wines was their Nebbiolo.  They offered us two versions to taste.  Their reserve version is Clone 34 Nebbiolo, and is quite nice.  With some aging will fall into the very nice category.  Unfortunately for Clone 34, they have a Nebbiolo de Baja at less than half the price that is just outstanding!  Needless to say, we brought some of it home….

​You are probably wondering why I have written so many blogs reviewing wineries in Italy.  Well, it was a fun trip, but I did have an ulterior motive.  Namely, the climate and terrain of Italy are not much different from the climate and terrain of Southern California.  Many of the newer wineries have embraced this simple fact, and the results have been excellent.  Our wineries have had success making wines from such red grapes as Nebbiolo, Nero d’Avola, Sangiovese, Sagrantino, Barbera, Dolcetto, Negroamaro, and Aglianico, and white grapes such as Pinot Grigio, Fiano, Falanghina and Arneis.  Included in the growers of Arneis is one of San Diego County’s newest wineries, Adobe Hill Winery in Fallbrook.

​This is not the Adobe Hill owners first rodeo, so to speak, as they have been growing grapes on another property closer to the ocean, so close that they could actually grow decent Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes.  With this experience behind them, a lot of study, and a son really into wine-making, they purchased a second lot farther from the ocean – hence a much warmer climate, though still 10 degrees or so cooler than Temecula – and planted Italian grapes, both red and white.  The new facility includes the largest building allowed by San Diego County Boutique Winery regulations.  Really a nice facility, as seen in the pictures below.  On the down side the site is relatively hard to reach.  Fallbrook is not exactly flat land….

​Adobe Hill is an organic winery, meaning no pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides are used to grow their grapes.  Well, so how do they do the weeding?  I mean, after the grapes are picked and the vines go dormant, weeds still grow between the vines and need to be removed.  Well, they send in the sheep.  Sheep eat the weeds – roots and all – and, of course, leave a little fertilizer along the way.  But what about the snails, you ask?  I mean, we have snails up the wazoo here in Southern California.  Escargot snails, by way, brought here from France….  Well, they send in the ducks!  Yes, flightless ducks from Australia are used to eat the snails!  If you get out to Adobe Hill Winery, make sure they show you the video of a dog herding the ducks.  Worth the trip out there….
The tasting room is large and quite modern.  Very nice exterior as well, with plenty of quality seating.  They bring in food trucks on weekends, very important as they are far away from any restaurants or other sources of food.  Wines are served as a set on one of those winding glass holders with the bottom glass filled with water.  A small detail, but I feel it is very important to drink water while wine tasting to prevent dehydration.

​As to their wines, their Italian reds are still too young to release so you are left with the wines made from grapes grown at their site closer to the ocean.  As noted above, the temperature there is low enough to produce decent Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes, which they use to make some very nice wines.  On the white side they offer Pinot Grigio and Arneis.  Now Arneis is from the Piedmont region of Italy, and its name in the local dialect means “little rascal” as it is one of the most difficult grapes to grow.  The Adobe Hill version is quite good.  I apologize for not having a picture of the Arneis bottle.  It sort of disappeared from our wine cabinet before I had a chance to take the picture….

​Their wine club has two levels, 12 and 24 bottles per year respectively, delivered quarterly.  The 12-bottle club comes with a 15% discount on wine and merchandise, and four free tastings (or glasses of wine) per month.  At the 24-bottle level, discount rises to 20% and tastings/glasses to 6 per month.  An extra 5% discount if you buy more than a case of wine.

​The last winery we visited in Italy turned out to be one of the nicest:  Romanelli Winery.  Located in the Umbrian countryside just outside the town of Montefalco, it is a peaceful, rustic facility with a great view, good wines, and excellent olive oil.  Unfortunately, we visited them after our visit to Montioni and a heavy lunch in Montefalco, at the end of a very long journey, so we did not really enjoy the visit as much as we should have.

​While the facility is quite nice, there is an animal there that is a bit on the strange side.  Not uncommon to have farm animals at wineries – they are, after all, farms – but this one appears to be some sort of pig.  I managed to get it to stand still for a picture:

​We tasted four wines, all quite nice.  The first was a white wine made from the Grechetto grape, their Fonte Perna (Coli Martani Grechetto DOC).  People need to pay more attention to wines made from Grechetto grapes.  This was our second version and just a good wine.
Umbria borders Tuscany, so it should not be surprising that they grow Sangiovese grapes in the Montefalco region.  The second wine we tasted was, indeed, a Sangiovese varietal with a small blending of unidentified grapes.  This wine, Capo de Casa (Montefalco DOC Rosso), was quite nice.
Of course, we came to Montefalco for the Sagrantino, and Romanelli did not disappoint.  Their Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG wine, Terra Cupa, was excellent.  It was made more in the Barolo style in that the wine was left in contact with the skins and seeds for around four weeks, i.e., long after fermentation was complete, to extract every bit of tannin and color from the grapes.  It was then aged in oak barrels of different sizes to homogenize the wine and remove nasty volatiles.

​Remembering that up until the 1950’s Sagrantino grapes were used only to make sweet wines, it should not come as a surprise that they also produce a quality passito sweet wine.  Their version of Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG Passito is called Cocre.  Grapes are picked ripe then dried on racks for around two months.  The fermentation is carried out like the dry version for around four weeks before the wine is aged in stainless steel and bottles for three years.  The result is a very nice dessert wine.
Romanelli, like Montioni, is also a producer of olive oil, served on thin toasted Italian bread.  Quite delightful!  I should add that Romanelli is also a bargain, as tasting ran us 10 euro per.  Now if we had just not been so worn out when we reached them….

​About eleven years or so ago Doc Ed began taking my wife and I to the wineries in Temecula and San Diego County.  Some were good, some were not, but one thing that was constant was that if you read about them on any of the “review” websites they were all “terrific.”  Basically, we were flying blind.  So, after battling this for nearly four years I started this website, writing reviews of the better wineries and ignoring the less-than-good places, i.e., providing a reference site where you, my readers, can find information to help you select wineries to visit.
Since then, I have visited wineries in other parts of California, Arizona, France, and Italy, and Doc Ed has covered wineries in Oregon.  In all cases, I’ve found that one could not trust reviews of wineries, and often the recommendations of friends were just as unreliable.  So it was with a bit of trepidation when I decided that our group include a visit to wineries in and around the small mountain town of Montefalco in the Italian province of Umbria.
Why Montefalco?  Well, Montefalco wineries make wines from the relatively rare grape Sagrantino.  Sagrantino has been found to have some of the highest levels of antioxidants, i.e., tannins, of any grape, up there with Tannat.  Having had a few samples of wines made from this grape, I thought it worth the trip, especially since Montefalco is only a two-hour drive from Montalcino.  No one could guide me as to which wineries to visit, so I just picked two.  The first of these was Azienda Agricola Montioni, located in the town of Montefalco.

​We were greeted on entering the winery by the owner, Paolo Montioni.  Turns out Montioni also makes olive oil.  They had just picked the olives and were processing them when we arrived, so Paolo took us on a tour of their olive oil production facility.  (More on olive oil later in the blog, after the review of their wines).
Next stop was the tasting room, and Paolo led the tasting as well, which, at 10 euro per person, was an extraordinary bargain.  First wine up was a white, Umbria Grechetto, made from the Grechetto grape.  This grape is also pretty rare, though not as rare as Sagrantino.  In addition to the wine, we were given toasted Italian bread with their “delicate” olive oil.  Great wine, great oil!  My wife and I are not big white wine fans, but we fell in love with Montioni’s Grechetto and had two bottles shipped home.  We should have also bought a case of the olive oil, but only purchased one bottle….

​Next came the red wines, starting with Montefalco Rosso, followed by Montefalco Sagrantino, and then Montefalco Sagrantino Ma Gia.  To go with the stronger red wines, we were given toast with their stronger olive oil, again a perfect pairing.  So how were the wines, you ask?  Montefalco Rosso is a blend consisting mostly of Sangiovese (65%) and Merlot (20%).  It is a good wine, but greatly overshadowed by their Sagrantino wines.  These are made entirely from Sagrantino grapes per the Sagrantino DOCG.  Montefalco Sagrantino is made from grapes grown in several Montioni vineyards surrounding the town of Montefalco (see map), while Ma Gia comes from what they feel is their best vineyard.  They got that right – the Ma Gia is superb!  Best Sagrantino I’ve ever tasted!  I should add, however, that their other Sagrantino is the second best Sagrantino I’ve ever tasted….  We bought seven bottles of Ma Gia.
But Paolo was not finished.  You see, up until the 1950’s Sagrantino grapes were used to make a sweet wine, not a dry wine.  The grapes were picked ripe then dried to increase the ratio of sugar to water, resulting in the alcohol level going high enough to kill the yeast before all the sugar was converted to alcohol.  This process, called ‘passito,’ produces a very nice dessert wine.  So, we tasted Montioni’s Montefalco Sagrantino Passito.  Shipped three bottles back to the States.

​All told, our group purchased six cases of wine and olive oil – more than we purchased in all the other wineries we visited on our trip combined!  I had hit the jackpot!  Best of all, some of their wines can be purchased from Total Wines…

Montioni, as mentioned above, also produces olive oil.  We had the opportunity to tour their facility while the olive oil was being made, and below are some pictures.  The olive oil produced is extra virgin, i.e., minimal processing.  They grow two olive varieties – Moraiolo and Frantoio.  The Moraiolo produces a spicy oil, which they sell as their “Intense” product.  Adding Frantoio yields a milder version, their “Delicate” oil.  Both are just outstanding!  Unfortunately, we only purchased one bottle....

​Tuscany is one of the better-known wine-growing regions of Italy, but what is often not known (by Americans, in particular) is that Sangiovese is the red grape variety used to make the best and worst Tuscan wines.  I would guess that just about every American wine-drinker has at some time had a glass of wine made from Sangiovese grapes grown in Italy, but if you asked them if they had ever had a wine made from Sangiovese they would say no.  Huh?
Well, Chianti is made from the Sangiovese grape and for a long time inexpensive Chianti was sold throughout the country in Italian restaurants, often in iconic bottles.  Other wines made from Sangiovese grapes in Tuscany include Chianti Classico, Brunello, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.  Brunello is considered the best of these, and often put on a par with Barolo.  And where do they make Brunello?  In and around the town of Montalcino, so of course that was where we stopped next.
After an unfortunate problem in another winery (we were served spoiled wine), we drove to the Frescobaldi winery, Tanuta CastelGiocondo.  In was late in the day, we were tired and a bit down, and it is a long drive from the entrance of the Frescobaldi estate to the wine tasting room.  It only took a few minutes for the wonderful staff to lift our spirits and, with a bit of excellent wine, turn a so-so day to a great day!
Some pictures of CastelGiocondo:

​The wine tasting room is quite nice, and we occupied a very large table (there were eleven of us).

Great views from the grounds:

​The wines were quite nice except for the 2019 Brunello di Montalcino – it was wonderful!  We shipped more than a few bottles home…

​It was early evening when we finished the wine tasting, but our server was not done with us.  Did I mention how fantastic their staff is?  Well, she was!  She gave us a tour of the castle, then we followed her car to the wine-making facility maybe a mile or two from the castle and gave us a tour.  It was after working hours, so we were the only ones in the very, very large building.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of touring the French winery Leoville-Poyferre, a second-growth winery on the left bank of Bordeaux.  They had a machine that used vibration to remove the grapes from the stems, then separate out the bad grapes from the good grapes.  Frescobaldi uses the same system.  In Leoville-Poyferre, the grapes are fermented in temperature controlled stainless tanks, then aged in standard French barrels.  Here are Frescobaldi’s:

​Now, the French and most wineries go directly from the small barrels to bottles.  As noted in my last blog, the Italians start with the small barrels but then go to larger barrels for another year or so.  Frescobaldi does this as well, with the largest barrels being around twelve feet high, as shown below.  But that is not the final step.  After a year in the small barrels, a year in the mid-size barrels, and a year in the gigantic barrels the wine is aged a year in concrete.  In fact, not just their Brunello but all their wines are aged a year in concrete!  In the last image below, the concrete vessels are on the left.  Look more like rooms to me....

​One problem with the gigantic oak barrels is that they must clean the interior every ten years by sending someone into the barrels.  Someone very small, small enough to fit through the very tiny door shown in the picture below.  Now the barrels have a seventy-year lifetime, so this gets done six times then they have to replace the barrels.  Bit of a good news/bad news thing:  the bad news is that the building was built around the barrels.  No way to get them out without dismantling part of the building.  The good news is that the barrels still have several decades of life.

​All told, our server spent the better part of three hours with us!  By the way, Frescobaldi has four other facilities, including one in the town of Montepulciano where their specialty is Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.  Now Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is made from the grape variety Sangiovese, same grape as Chianti, Chianti Classico, and Brunello.  But there is a Montepulciano red grape variety.  Montepulciano grapes are not grown in Montepulciano, but wines made from Montepulciano grapes are named for the grape, the most famous being Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.  Pretty confusing, isn’t it?

​Marquesi di Barolo Winery is located in the Piedmont city of Alba, also famous for its truffles.  Indeed, while we had a truffle-filled lunch (at 5 euro per gram, 6 gram minimum), they let us park in their small lot.  After lunch, we walked back to the winery and the Marquesi were there to greet us:

​They even had a nice place for us to wait, as we arrived early for our tasting:

​Once inside, they didn’t mind our writing on the walls:

There is strong historical evidence that this is the first winery to produce Barolo wine.  Up until the early 1800’s, Nebbiolo grapes were used to make sweet wines due to the fact that Nebbiolo grapes take forever to ripen.  In fact, they ripen so late that it is quite cold in Piedmont when they are finally picked and fermented.  So cold indeed that it proved largely impossible to complete fermentation, so the wine always wound up with some residual sugar.  That is, until the Marchesi came along.
There is quite a love story here, how an orphaned aristocrat from the Loire region of France married a Marquese from the Kingdom of Piedmont in the early 1800’s.  The new Marquesa, Guilia, had a passion for wine and decided that Nebbiolo grapes could produce an outstanding dry wine.  To this end, she and her husband Tancredo moved the fermentation inside, into conditions warm enough to complete the fermentation, basically moving the entire wine-making operation underground.  The wine took on the name of Barolo, as their castle was in the small town of Barolo near the city of Alba.  Pictures of the wine cellars are shown below.  Wines are fermented, aged in small barrels, larger barrels, and finally in very large barrels before being bottled.

​Of course, the winery has added a bit to the story with their “Cabinets of Curiousity.”  It seems that the Piedmont king had a deal with the Marquesa to provide him with a barrel of wine a day for a full year – normal barrel, not the gigantic ones she used to age the wine, holding about 50 gallons.  To make it easier to transport the wine, a special barrel was created (see picture below).  As the story goes, she only delivered 325 barrels.  When the king called her on this shortfall she replied, and I misquote, “Why your highness, surely you are not planning on drinking wine during lent?”

​As for the quality of the wines, well, they are just plain splendid!  We tasted three Barolo’s (all DOCG, by the way).  The one in the picture below on the left is produced from a single field.  The middle is a blend of grapes from multiple fields, as is the last one.  Note, however, that the third is labeled “Reserva” and is a 2015 vintage.  Their wines have won a few gold medals over the years, dating pretty far back....

​Perhaps I am overstating how good the Reserva was. Perhaps not.  After all, the wine did lead one of our group to fall so in love with it he tried to take a barrel home….

​We continued our wine exploration on the mainland, visiting six more wineries – two known for their Barolo, two known for their Brunello, and two known for their Sagrantino.  Our first stop was in the Piedmont region of Italy, at the mountain town of Alba.  Alba is famous for two things – Barolo wine, and white truffles.
For those of you unfamiliar with Barolo, it is made from Nebbiolo grapes grown on the south-facing slopes near the town of Barolo.  The Nebbiolo grape is also used to make Barbaresco (near the town of Barbaresco) and – surprise! – Nebbiolo.
Now to produce Barolo you must 1) have the grapes grown in the Barolo DOCG region and 2) follow the Barolo DOCG rules.  So how does Barolo differ from Nebbiolo?  Is it just better grapes?  The answer lies in the fermentation process.
Italian Nebbiolo wines are fermented in more or less the standard method.  The grapes are crushed and the combination of grape juice, grape pulp, skins, seeds, and sometimes stems are fermented together.  This combination is called the ‘must,’ as in you ‘must’ ferment this mix to get red wine.  Anyway, the normal process is to press the must after all the sugar has been converted to alcohol by the yeast.  This takes one to two weeks, depending on such variables as fermentation temperature, yeast, and sugar content of the grapes.  To make Barolo, however, the must remains unpressed for a minimum of four weeks to extract every bit of tannin from the grapes as well as a wide variety of other chemicals either from the grapes themselves or produced by the yeast.

​Our first winery in Alba was Renato Ratti.  The view from the winery is shown in the picture above.  A relatively new, modern facility, we had a large room all to ourselves with an absolutely wonderful server.  He set us up to taste three wines.  The first was a Nebbiolo, i.e., a wine made using the common process of pressing the must when the fermentation was complete.  The second was a similarly-aged Barolo, again made by pressing the must at least four weeks after starting fermentation.  The third wine was the same as the second but a much older vintage – 2005 versus 2020.  It was a truly remarkable wine, smooth but quite complex – and a bit outside my price range.

​As for the truffles, we did not participate in a truffle hunt but we did ingest some.  For lunch we had fresh truffle on a dish of pasta.  5 euros per ounce with a minimum of 6 ounces.  Expensive lunch….

The wine shown below is made from the very rare Perricone grape.  Around 2,500 acres of this vine exist, pretty much only in Sicily.  We did not have a chance to visit the Funaro Winery from whence this particular bottle was born, but based on what we tasted it is worth noting.  We had this at lunch after a visit to the temples and museum at Agrigento….

​The Greeks built a series of temples on the hills near the city of Agrigento around 2,500 years ago.  Only one is relatively intact, as shown below.  The others are in various states of ruin.

​In addition to these ruins, there is a museum that holds many artifacts from the site as well as others from around Sicily.  You should be warned that both the ruins and the museum are quite extensive.  We tried to do both in one morning.  Big mistake!