​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….

​As you can see, there are a lot of wineries in the Dreaded Finger Lakes of New York because the climate in the Finger Lakes is relatively mild compared to the surrounding area, such as Buffalo to the west which gets a gazillion feet of snow every winter and they are all very, very thirsty all of the time... 
​The lakes look like they’ve been gouged into the land by long fingers, hence the name.  These lakes keep the temperature mild and, with a nice Indian summer, the fall as well.  Perfect climate for northern Europe grapes – Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Gruner Veltliner, Zweigelt and Blaufrankisch, noting that I have left off the umlauts which is to be expected since I also leave off accent marks.

The most important grape of this region is Riesling.  Riesling is a German grape which is used to make wines that range from dry to very, very sweet.  Indeed, the Germans have names for the wines made from Riesling with different sugar content at time of harvest.  I list them from lowest to highest:

• Kabinett
• Spatlese
• Auslese
• Beerenauslese
• Trockenbeerenauslese

The first three wines in the list above can be anywhere from perfectly dry to very sweet, whereas Beerenauslese  and Trockenbeerenauslese wines are always very sweet, and most often made from grapes that have been attacked by noble rot (bortrytis).  Noble rot dries out the grapes, increasing sugar levels, and adds unique flavors to the wine.  Not having ever tasted either of these wines, the first winery we visited in The Dreaded Finger Lakes of New York offered their version of a Trockenbeerenauslese.  But before telling of our experience there, I shall go off on a tangent about Riesling for no reason whatsoever.
Riesling is a German grape that has the important properties of growing well in cooler climates, i.e., it buds late and ripens early.  It makes for a very aromatic wine with wonderful fruit flavors.  Now for most grapes the acidity of the grape falls off as the grape ripens.  Not so with Riesling.  Hence Riesling wines can be both very fruity and highly acidic.  This is a very desired characteristic, and hence great care should be made in making wines from the Riesling grape to prevent oxidation of the wine and remove any chemicals that can add other flavors.  Post-fermentation processes such as oak aging, malolactic fermentation, and exposure to dead yeast (lees) are usually avoided.
​Now on to our first winery in the Dreaded Finger Lakes of New York, the makers of a Trockenbeerenauslese wine, Three Brothers Winery.  Their history is shown in the picture below.

​They have broken down their winery into three separate wineries, and also have a brewery, with all four tasting rooms at the same site.  We started out at the traditional winery, Stoney Lonesome Estate, where we could find the Trockenbeerenauslese.  As you can see in the tasting menu below, they make a range of Riesling wines with different sweetness levels, from dry to sweet to, of course, the very sweet Trockenbeerenauslese.  In addition, they make one wine in the German Kabinett style.  We tasted the zero degree, third degree, Kabinett-style, and, of course, the Trockenbeerenauslese, which cost an extra $10 per taste.  Our sweet wine expert hated the zero degree, liked the third degree, and fell in love with the Trockenbeerenauslese.

​I should add that their Trockenbeerenauslese is not quite the same as the German Trockenbeerenauslese.  You see, the Three Brothers Trockenbeerenauslese is made by picking the grapes that have turned into raisins on the vine.  In Germany they depend on Noble Rot to dry the grapes, which adds other flavors to the wine.  Hence Three Brothers Trockenbeerenauslese is not exactly the same as German Trockenbeerenauslese.  It is, however, a very good wine, by far the best of the Three Brothers offerings.  As noted above, Livia, who I repeat is not the first Empress of Rome, really loved the Trockenbeerenauslese though she did comment that it was not quite as good as the Falernian White from her favorite wine shop in Pompeii….

​I will end this blog here and leave my musings on the other parts of the Three Brothers Winery for my next blog.  Be sure not to miss it!

​Water, water everywhere….  That was going to be the title of my next to last SommCom review session on wine, water, and food pairing, but alas I could not think of anything worthwhile to write.  So, I happily decided to go straight to a very, very interesting presentation on wines from a unique region of Chile, Itata.

Itata has a lot in common with Southern California.  Itata was where the first Spanish mission in Chile was established, just as San Diego was where the first Spanish mission in California was established.  If you have a mission, you have a church.  If you have a Catholic church, you need wine for the Mass.  Hence, winemaking in Chile began in Itata, much as winemaking in California began in San Diego.  As in California, winemaking moved north, and Itata, like San Diego, was left far behind in wine production.  Both areas seem to be seeing a resurgence of sorts in their wine industry.
Itata is located in the south of Chile.  It is a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains, about 20 km wide and 100 km from north to south.  Not unlike San Diego, the weather is dominated by the nearby mountains and cold ocean.  Unlike San Diego, however, Itata has enough rainfall for the vineyards to dry farm.  This is a relatively poor area, unlike San Diego, so vineyards have little in the way of modern equipment, and oak barrels are not commonly used.  Most vineyards consist of old, untrellised vines. It is doubtful that the vines ever see anything in the way of modern pesticides, fungicides, or the like.  The wealthier growers might be able to afford a tractor.  There is no effort to make complex, high-quality wines, even if such expertise were available.  Hence the product is quite simple, inexpensive, and, as it turns out, quite drinkable.

​We tasted four wines made from different grapes, three of which were quite nice.  The best white wine was made from a grape labeled Torrontes.  At some point in the history of Argentine wines Muscat of Alexandria was crossed with other grapes to produce three new varieties, all falling under the general name Torrontes:  Torrontes Riojano, Torrontes Sanjuanino, and Torrontes Mendocino.  I’m not sure if the Itata wine growers know which one they are growing.  See more on this wine below.

​The Pais grape was brought to Chile by the Spanish and used to make wine for the church.  It is related to California’s Mission grapes.  Makes for a very easy-to-drink wine.

The light red wine we tasted is made from the Cinsault grape.  ​Cinsault is a minor blending grape from Bordeaux.  It is rare to find Cinsault used to make a varietal, but they do and it goes down well.

​Thus ends my review of SommCom.  Stay tuned for more adventures….