​If you look on my tables of wineries, you find a table labeled “Escondido.”  For those of you not familiar with our area, Escondido is one of San Diego’s larger suburbs, located due north of the city along the Interstate 5 freeway.  There is a cluster of wineries in a hilly area off Highland Valley Road that have Escondido mailing addresses but are in unincorporated areas, i.e., outside the city limits.  There are also wineries in the city itself, and this review covers one of these:  Cheval Winery.  This is not a winery you would just by chance come upon, as it is located in a largely urban part of the city, at the intersection of two interstate highways – just south of I78 and west of I15.  And Cheval grows its grapes right there, in this urban setting!
They have done a remarkable job with the facility.  A heavy line of trees hides their urban nature, so it has a pleasant, though not spectacular, view.

​The wine tasting room is as good as it gets – well laid out with plenty of comfortable indoor seating.  See pictures below.

​We tasted five wines.  They started us out with a nice rosé, then followed up with a flite of four red wines, shown below along with the tasting menu.  Three of the four were good – I liked the Syrah blend best, but the Barbera was also very good.  My wife preferred the Barbera….

​Many wineries today are introducing new technology to enhance their wines or reduce production costs.  For example, laser/optical systems that sort the grapes, making sure only the “perfect” grapes are used.  We’ve seen these systems at Lioville-Poyferre in Bordeaux and Frescobaldi in Tuscany.  Well, Somerset Vineyard & Winery has taken the opposite approach.  In lieu of the new they’ve gone for the old – the very, very old.  Ancient, in fact – techniques that date back thousands of years.  Specifically, the qvevri method developed in the Asian country of Georgia some 10,000 years ago – and still used today!  Indeed, we ran across this process at Story Winery in Amador County, as reported in the review of day two of our visit.
You can find Somerset on the de Portola Wine Trail in Temecula – it’s the first winery on your left if you enter from Anza.  Originally Keystone Winery, the current team of owners got hit with the COVID downturn before they had a chance to really get going.  Despite this bad start, they seem to be holding their own.  It was pretty hot when we visited their winery, so we hung out in the tasting room (with a brief excursion to see the wine-making facilities – and their terracotta pots).

​The Georgian method of making red wine in the qvevri is to foot stomp the grapes and then put the entire must – juice, skins, seeds, and sometimes stems – in a larger version of the one shown below, buried in the ground.  Ambient yeast ferments the sugar in the juice and pulp.  When the fermentation is complete the qvevri is sealed.  The shape of the vessel causes the liquid to circulate, spreading the dead yeast (known as lees) and adding the bready taste to the wine.  The qvevri remains sealed for a long time -- up to 100 years!  One of their qvevri pots is shown below, as well as their amphorae.

​The process is similar for white wines except that the skins and seeds kept in the qvevri for about six months.  The result is what is now referred to as an “orange” wine.  Normally on weekdays they do not open qvevri wines for tasting, but they had a few open bottles from the weekend.  We were fortunate to be able to compare a qvevri Albarino with a traditional version.  Definitely different taste profiles.  We both preferred the qvevri version – it was smoother and a bit fruitier.  It also was not an orange wine, i.e., only the pressed juice went into the qvevri. 

​After tasting some red wines – more on these later – we tried their non-qvevri Viognier.  Easily the best wine we tasted, a very nice, smooth, fruity offering!  Our last white was toward the end of our visit, a Muscat Canelli.  We are red wine drinkers, so seldom buy white wines.  We went home with a bottle of the Viognier -- and their last bottle of the Muscat Canelli…

​It always amazes me how poorly wineries treat dry red wines.  They make sure that the white, rose, sparkling and even dessert wines are properly served, always near the right temperature.  But when it comes to the red wines – their bread and butter, I should add – it is so often at “room temperature” -- even when the “room” is a patio during the summer!  So it was that we tasted five Somerset red wines at 75 F, including two made in a qvevri.  Only one of the wines held up to this high tasting temperature, a very nice Sangiovese with 15% Malbec (Mr. T).  The other four might actually have tasted good if served at 60 F, but at 75 F they were pretty bad.  At some point I hope to get a proper taste of their qvevri wines, though I should add that I really did not find the Story qvevri wines to be very good, including the ones imported from Georgia.

​Somerset offers six different wine clubs, with varying discounts and one club specifically for qvevri wine fans.  Check out the versions below: