​We now return to reviews of the great wineries dotting the landscape of our beloved San Diego County.  Our latest local winery that we had the pleasure of visiting is Sunrise Vineyards, located on Highland Valley Road in the “between” land, not quite in Ramona but not quite in the Highland Hills region.  Very nice facility with great views, as seen below, and one really interesting wine.  But we’ll get to it towards the end of this blog.

​The downside is that Sunrise Vineyards, like almost all of the boutique wineries, grows Cabernet Sauvignon grapes even though Southern California is generally too hot for Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.  Ah, but there is a difference….
One of the unique features of the wine country here in San Diego County is the terrain.  It is really rough, with valleys, canyons, mesas facing in all directions.  In addition, we have a very dry climate, resulting in significant differences in temperature between areas in the shade and areas in the sun.  Even on a small parcel one can have multiple terroirs with essentially different climates.  Enter Sunrise Vineyards.  Their grapes are planted on the eastern side of a hill (a bit northern as well), so they do not face the hot afternoon sun.  Ergo, they’ve been able to beat the heat, so to speak, allowing them to grow decent Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.  Adding Sangiovese, a warm climate vine, to the mix does not hurt at all.
In addition to Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese grapes, they purchase grapes from their neighbors so offer other wines such as the white wine Grenache Blanc and Syrah.  In addition, they blend the Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese grapes to make a wine much like the Italian Super Tuscans, but, of course, cannot call their wine a Super Tuscan.  This makes perfect sense since they are certainly not located in Tuscany.  What we tasted was worth the visit, even the Cabernet Sauvignon.  They grow some of these vines at the bottom of their east-facing hill, a cooler area than where they grow the rest.  The grapes from these vines have turned out better, and they’ve used them to make a reserve wine.  Not sure when it will be released, but one that should be quite good.

Of course, boutique winery owners like to try new things – comes with the territory.  So, they decided to use some of their Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to make a rosé, the really interesting wine I mentioned earlier.  Wow!  Maybe the best rosé in all of Southern California!!!  If you are a rosé lover, you’ll not want to miss this wine!
By the way, they have gotten the message, or at least I think so.  As shown in the photo below, they keep their red wines for tasting in a cooler.  Hopefully they stay with this so you can taste their reds the way they should be tasted, between 55-60 F.

​They have a wine club.  Members purchase twelve bottles per year (four every four months, winemaker’s choice, no substitutions).  20% discount on all wines and one free glass of wine per month.  Of course, wine club members get first choice on new releases.  Hopefully they won’t buy up all of the Cabernet Sauvignon rosé!

​Doc Ed has been to Sonoma a number of times, and after one of his trips he wrote the following :  “Benovia had a large selection of well-made wines, and they presented them in a beautiful tasting room with a great view of their property.  My favorite was the La Pommeraie ($65), a blend of clones 777 and 828, which was aged for a long 16 months in new French oak.  Wow, the flavors were wonderful!”  With this review on our minds, we made reservations to visit them on the third, and last, day of our expedition to Sonoma.  Benovia Winery is located in the Russian River region of Sonoma where Pinot Noir reigns supreme,  and, well, we spent quite a bit of time there.  It is, as Doc Ed noted, quite a beautiful place, as shown in the pictures below, and the wines are just superb.

​The wine list is shown below.  On the left are the wines for tasting that day.  Of course, after we ran through all of them we had to try La Pommeraie, and then the Russian River Pinot Noir, and some white wines, and….  All told we had a very pleasant afternoon.

​Of the Pinot Noir wines we tasted I found myself in full agreement with Doc Ed on La Pommeraie.  Just a wonderful wine, though it now runs $75 a bottle.

​And so, we came to the end of our Sonoma Expedition, with a case of Benovia wine added to our shipments from Orsi and Moshin, and enough time to stop for food on our way to the Sacramento Airport and our flight back to San Diego.  Alas, “The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley” (Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”).  You see, we were halfway or so on the drive from Sonoma to the Sacramento Airport when we all got texts saying our flights had been cancelled due to the government shutdown.  Fortunately, our heroes, shown below, drove us home to San Diego, arriving in the wee hours of the night.

​Our intrepid band of wine explorers were excited about our second day of our second Sonoma trip a as it took us back to Moshin Vineyards, a winery in the Russian River region that we visited during our barrel tasting expedition.  This time around we arranged for Rick Moshin to give us a tour of the facility.  As noted in my first post about this winery, it is on a hillside to allow Rick to gravity feed the wine rather than pump it.  Ergo, we had to start the tour at the top of the hill.  Unfortunately, our rental vehicle (shown below) could not make the trip so we had to walk up this very steep hill and, well, I’m not young.  Fortunately, we got around to the wine….

​I won’t go into much about how he makes his wine as I covered it in detail in my last post about Moshin Vineyards.  I did learn that he is doing some of his wine growing using biodynamic processes.  One in particular is worth mentioning.  If you bury nettles in the ground nothing happens – dig them up a year or so later and they are still nettles.  However, if you wrap them in sheep intestines then bury them when you dig them up you get a black goo that you can spray on your vines as an insect repellent!  Some pictures of his system follow below, with a picture of Rick as well, but, not sorry to say, no pictures of the goo:

​We sat out front this time, and, unfortunately, wound up partially in the sun.  Nonetheless, we stayed around to taste a wide variety of products and, much to my surprise, I purchased bottles of their Cabernet Sauvignon made from grapes grown in the Dry Creek area of Sonoma.  I did not purchase any Pinot Noir.  Why?  Well, he had this great deal last summer on Pinot Noir….  We wound up buying three cases of wine for shipment back to San Diego, though I should add that our intrepid group just ordered two more cases....

​And the wine!  Oh, the wine!  One after another great wines --- Aglianico, Montepulciano, Nebbiolo, Sagrantino, Sangiovese, and Negro Amaro!  For lovers of Italian red wines Orsi is wine utopia!  I was happy, very happy – until I had to decide which wines to buy….

​I had to take home some Negro Amaro.  Why, you ask?  Well, last January my wife, Doc Ed, and I attended a wine industry convention, Unified, in Sacramento.  One afternoon they had wines from all over the place, with most coming from California wineries.  We lined up early to hit the Sonoma wines, and there on the table we spotted a Negro Amaro from Orsi.  We were the first ones to taste it – like I said, we lined up early – and it was fantastic!  While bottles of Pinot Noir and Zinfandel remained only partially drained, the Orsi Negro Amaro was gone so fast Doc Ed never got a chance to taste it.  So, I contacted Mark Orsi about how well his wine did.  It turned out that he did not know that his wine was there!  Now my wife did not make the trip to Sonoma but based on our Sacramento experience she ordered me to bring home at least four bottles of the Orsi Negro Amaro.
After much soul searching and wine tasting, I chose to confer with the little Italian wine maker, Pinocchio’s cousin Giacomo.   He selected Sagrantino and strongly suggested I should purchase two bottles, so I did.  You can see him in the photo below with the Orsi wines.  Not a guy to argue with!  He can crush nuts with those teeth....

​ In total we purchased two cases of wine which included all of the wines listed above except the Nebbiolo.  Nice haul, but I can’t figure out why we left out the Nebbiolo.  We’ll have to correct that error in our next purchase.
On the rare side of things, we tasted the two unique wines I mentioned from our barrel tasting adventure – Biancolella and Schioppettino.  Both proved to be very interesting but, well, they had these other six wines….

​On my first visit to Sonoma, I picked out Orsi Family Vineyards as a ‘must’ for wine tasting aficionados.  After this trip I have to say that Orsi Family Vineyards is a ‘must’ for wine tasting aficionados.  But give yourself a lot of time and be ready to make some very difficult decisions – or to buy a lot of wine….  Some pictures on the inside of the tasting room:

​There’s an old adage, ‘be careful what you wish for, your wishes might come true,’ that sticks in my mind when I think about the first winery we visited on our latest adventure in Sonoma.  Why?  Well, it was cold and rainy on our first visit for the annual barrel tasting – something they order up every year.  So, naturally, I wished for warm, sunny weather on this trip, and my wish was granted – in spades.  You see it was very sunny and very warm – well, very hot is the proper term.  Unfortunately, our first stop was at Dry Creek Vineyards, located in the Dry Creek region of Sonoma (duh!).  Unfortunately because there is not a lot of shade in the Dry Creek facility, and other groups had it.  Hence, the only place they could put us was on their patio with small umbrellas providing the only shade.  Pretty uncomfortable.  Beautiful facility though….

​Fortunately, the wine was very good.  Dry Creek is one of the better producers of wines made from the Zinfandel grape, and they have a very nice gang of Zins that they offer, as you can see on the lists below:

​The visit was also very informative.  Our server filled us in on the story of Meritage, a term used to describe wine blends similar to those produced in Bordeaux.  These blends are usually Cabernet Sauvignon-based (left bank of Bordeaux – think Chateau Margaux) or Merlot-based (right bank of Bordeaux – from areas such as Pomerol and St. Emillion).  As the story goes, unable to call their wines “Bordeaux Blends,” some California winemakers decided that they needed their own name.  After years of reviewing potential names – or maybe it was minutes, not really sure because by the time we got to this part of the story I was fully baked – they came up with the name Meritage.  The name, by the way, is protected.
I did not purchase any wine from Dry Creek.  Given the wines we encountered on the rest of the trip this was a great decision on my part.

​We finally were able to get back north to Sonoma for wine tasting, choosing to go when it wasn’t raining (Veterans’ Day weekend).  After a lastminute change of travel plans six of our intrepid group made the flight up to Sacramento and the drive to Sonoma.  Our plan was to visit four specific wineries, two that we visited in March 2023 and two that Doc Ed highly recommended.  As it turned out, the four were so good that we only had time to visit one additional winery (of which I will say no more about because it was a complete dud – awful wine!).
All turned out well until we headed home on that Sunday.  About halfway on our drive from Sonoma to the Sacramento Airport, we all got text messages from Southwest Airlines that our flight had been cancelled.  In fact, all flights out of Sacramento had been cancelled.  The earliest we could get back to San Diego by plane was Monday afternoon.  You see, because of the ongoing government shutdown flight controllers there were not enough flight controllers….  Fortunately, we contacted the rental car company and they were ok with us dropping off the car in San Diego – for a small fee, of course.  As some of us had to work the next day we drove to San Diego that night, a long and rather tiring drive to say the least.  (For my New Jersey relatives, this is equivalent to driving from New Jersey to North Carolina, except that our trip included driving the Grapevine – a winding mountain highway just north of Los Angeles – in the middle of the night).
On the plus side, Sonoma was quite beautiful, so I’ll end this post with pictures taken of a bridge and the nearby woods as well as the city Santa Rosa, with the reviews of the four good Sonoma wineries to follow.

​During our visit to the dreaded Finger Lakes of New York we stayed in the not-so-dreaded and quite wonderful town of Seneca Falls.  How wonderful is Seneca Falls?  Well, it was the model for the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  It is also the home of the Women’s Suffrage Museum.  On the third day of our trip, we tried to visit the museum.  However, because of the government shutdown the various building were closed.  We did get some pictures from the outside:

​With the museum closed to us, we did the most obvious thing – went to another winery.  Our choice was Wagner Vineyards Estate Winery, located on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake.  Before heading off to the tasting room we had lunch in their very nice restaurant.

​Now Wagner also has a brewery, and both the brewery tasting room and winery tasting room are in a building separate from the restaurant.  Between the buildings one can get a great view of the lake.  After lunch we headed over to the tasting room building, entering their front room which sells their products – wine, beer, and a lot of other things. 

​We made our way to the tasting room in the back.  A really nice facility, and we had our own server for the tasting.  Of course, it being a weekday in October….

​The tasting menu is shown below and includes Gewurztraminer.  We couldn’t pronounce it so didn’t buy any.  Actually, it was pretty good, but the star of their wines is Riesling, and we bought a couple of bottles of the dry version for our eastern relatives to enjoy.  One is pictured below, a dry Riesling at a very nice price (~$15).  And we had a great lunch as well….

​We limited our first day of winery visits in the dreaded Finger Lakes of New York to the northern region between the two largest lakes, Senaca Lake and Cayuga Lake.  On day two we took the long drive to Keuga Lake, located to the southwest of Seneca Lake.  Our target was Weis Vineyards.  Why Weis Vineyards?  Well, they were known to have a pretty good reputation for producing quality wines, as shown below:

​The terrain in the Finger Lakes area is quite flat and largely agricultural (fields of corn, et al.), but the fall colors helped break up the monotony.  The best was near Keuka Lake.  Bright reds, yellows, and oranges.  We eventually found the Weis winery, a rather nice, modern facility.

​I was hoping that the Gruner Veltliner would be very good so I could – it is the leading Austrian white grape and known to make very good wines.  However, of the wines we tasted, it was not one of the two that proved good enough to ship to California.  The first was their “K” Reisling, a wine made in the style of the German Kabinett Rieslings.  In Germany, the Rieslings are graded according to the level of sugar in the grape at harvest.  Wines labeled Kabinett have the least sugar, followed by Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, and Trockenbeerenauslese.  The first can be anywhere from dry to sweet; the last two are very sweet, dessert type wines.  The Weis “K” version is off-dry (has a bit of residual sugar) and quite nice.
If that confuses you, then the second wine we really liked will drive you over the edge.  It is made from a grape called the Heart of the Lake, a hybrid developed at Cornell by crossing Riesling with Cayuga, itself a hybrid developed at Cornell from two – you guessed it – two hybrids.  So Heart of the Lake is a hybrid of Riesling with a hybrid of two hybrids….  The result is a very nice, light, medium sweetness, extremely drinkable wine.  It was sweet enough to meet the approval of Livia, who is definitely not the first Empress of Rome.  Please ignore the fellow standing behind the wines.  He followed us home from a holiday party....

​The heavy rain continued until we were nicely ensconced in the car.  Of course it did.  Anyway, our small team left Three Brothers to head out for lunch – the Three Brothers Café was not open – and then on to other wineries in the same region as Three Brothers, the area between the two largest Finger Lakes, Lake Cayuga to the east and Lake Seneca to the west.  This brought us to Swedish Hill.
Unfortunately, Swedish Hill had just been sold.  Fortunately, it was sold to Martin Family Wineries, which owns and operates several other wineries in the area with the intent of continuing the wineries label and products.

​Two wines stood out.  One, Marechal Foch (accent over the e), is a hybrid of a hybrid.  Created in the early twentieth century, it is perfect for cooler climate zones, ripening early, cold hardy, and resistant to fungus.  For most grapes, the pulp has no color.  Marechal Foch is one of the few whose pulp is reddish, something the wine maker really needs to know.  Long story there….   Very nice wine, though it was served at room temperature, somewhere around 72 F.  Hopefully, the Martin Family Wineries will realize that red wines should not be served at room temperature, but chilled to around 60 F.

​The second wine we liked is, well, really different.  I mean, really, really different.  You see, in making this sweet red wine they add a few seasonings – cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and ginger.  Warm it up a bit, add orange slices, almonds and raisins and you have a perfect mulled wine!  Actually tastes good at room temperature without the orange slices, et al.  So bring on the Glogg!

​The University of Minnesota has produced a hybrid grape named Marquette that can be used to make a very nice wine.  As with Marechal Foch, it was developed for cool, damp climates.  Unfortunately, Swedish Hill has a version aged in bourbon barrels that really sucks!  So, as a last note to the Martin Family Wineries, free the Marquette!

​We completed our wine tasting at Three Brothers Stoney Lonesome Estates and headed off to their second winery, Bagg Dare.  We passed through an archway, and then something strange began to happen as we walked down this path to the entrance of the winery.  Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I felt like time was running backwards.  Then we came to the front counter and the feeling grew:

​and grew:

​Then we looked at the tasting menu.  Very different, you might say.  As it turns out, Bagg Dare produces mainly sweet wines, many made from grapes native to North America, i.e., grapes belonging to a species different from the European grapes that we all know and love (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, et al.).  As it turns out, North America is home to four grape species, none of which have been found to make particularly good wine.  However, the roots of these vines are protected from a very nasty root louse, which, when let loose in Europe, destroyed 90% of the vines (circa 1880).  Fortunately, an American viticulturist, Thomas Munson, successfully grafted roots from American wine species to vines from the European wine species and saved the wine industry.  To this day, the root louse remains such a problem that few vines are planted that do not have North American grape species roots.

​Now Bagg Dare wines were not our bag, so to say, so we moved on to Three Brothers third winery, Passion Feet. Nice place, so-so wines.

​We did not try their café, as it was closed, nor their brewery.  Instead, we headed out to other wineries – despite a heavy downpour that drenched us in our short walk to the car.  And you wonder why the Finger Lakes of New York are dreaded….