​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….

​On the Tuesday morning of SommCom I came prepared for the cold – thermal underwear, corduroy pants, heavy wool sweater, parka….   I didn’t wear a ski mask, of course – afraid I might be mistaken for ICE. 
The first session was one I was most interested in – the wines and wineries of San Diego County.  Very, very informative session, particularly if you have an interest in the more technical side of the wine industry.   And spend many afternoons at said wineries….
The most significant part of the presentation was given by Alysha Stehly.  She brought representative samples of San Diego County soils and the picture below.  It is a map of San Diego County where each color represents a different soil type.  As you can see, there are an awful lot of them.  In French wine terms, soil type is a part of what they call terroir, the set of conditions that affect the taste of the wines regardless of grape variety.  Climate, rainfall, and terrain are part of terroir as well, and we have plenty of diversity in those as well.  As a result, there is probably an ideal terroir in San Diego County for just about every grape variety except those that prefer cool climates. 

​I have listed on this website over sixty grape varieties that are grown and made into varietal wines in Southern California.  Turns out, there are about forty more grape varieties not on my list.  Now you know why.  Few if any wine growing regions come close to this variety.  A great example of the range of grapes is shown below, a white wine from Granite Lion Winery.  It is made from three grapes that you probably never heard of….

​Mia Marie’s winemaker, Kiara Boccia-Fenlason is making red wines using a process developed in the Beaujolais region of France, carbonic maceration.  For those of you who are bored by technical details, suffice it to say that the process produces a nice wine with very low tannin levels, one that is ready to drink.  We tasted her Merlot made this way, and it was nice, and she is also producing wines made from Tempranillo and Syrah grapes this way.  See the picture below for more details, and if this might bore you, skip the paragraph that follows.

​Carbonic maceration, as noted above, comes from the Beaujolais region of France where the red grape is Gamay.  The process entails putting the uncrushed grapes in a sealable container and replacing the air with carbon dioxide.  When you do this, something rather strange happens:  the sugar in the grapes turns to alcohol without the benefit of any yeast!  During this process, the tannins in the skins and seeds, and the dye molecules in the skins, are extracted, just as in normal fermentation processes.  Wine tannins have low solubility in water and high in alcohol, whereas the opposite is true for the dye molecules.  As the non-yeast fermentation results in a very low alcohol level, 1-2%, tannin levels are minimal without loss of dye molecules, i.e. the wine is red.  Eventually, the skins give way and the yeast on the outside of the skins converts the rest of the sugar to alcohol.  The tannins do not dissolve into the wine, so one has a light-bodied wine with nice color that is ready to drink immediately after fermentation is complete.  While most of the Beaujolais are aged in oak after fermentation, the first wines available in France from a given vintage year are made without oak aging, the Beaujolais Nouveau.  It should be noted that there is a trend in Beaujolais to make Gamay wines the traditional way, with hopes of producing a product that rivals their neighbor’s.  Their neighbor is Burgundy, and the grape they make wine from is Pinot Noir.  Good luck competing with them….
We tasted four wines:  the two mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, a rosé from San Pasqual Winery (an urban winery with a couple of tasting rooms in the city), and the red wine at the back of the picture shown below.  It is a very unique wine.  You see, a long, long time ago San Diego was a backwater port.  The sailors who visited the port had little money to spend so had no interest in fine wines.  Fortunately, there was a winery that catered to them in San Diego County:  Bernardo Winery.  To meet this demand they produced a pseudo-port wine.  They distilled some wine to a high alcohol level then mixed it with grape juice, giving them a concoction that was very drinkable but also could survive a sea voyage.  It is this ‘port’ that Ross Rizzo, Bernardo Winery President and Master Vintner, provided for this session.  It was surprisingly good.  Simple, but with very little of the brandy taste I really do not like.  By the way, this oldest winery in the county began operation in 1889 and has been in the Rizzo family for almost a century. 

​After Nizza came lunch, then an afternoon session.  I chose to attend the one on Armagnac.  I am not a particular fan of brandy in any form; brandy being defined as distilled wine.  I was hoping that Armagnac might be a more palatable form of brandy.  I was wrong.
Not knowing (or caring) much about brandy, I have had to do a bit of research to write this blog.  As pointed out in the presentation, Armagnac is produced in the Armagnac region of France (hence the name), an area south of Bordeaux.  The more well-known French brandy, Cognac, comes from the Cognac region which lies north of Bordeaux.  There are some significant differences other than geography.
First, Cognac is double distilled, whereas Armagnac undergoes only one distillation step.  Hence Armagnac has more of the complexity of the grape.  While Cognac is made almost exclusively from the Ugni Blanc grape, four grapes are commonly used to make Armagnac:  Columbard, Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche, and a hybrid grape, Baco 22A.  Whereas Cognac is produced in great quantities by a few very large companies, Armagnac is made in small amounts by a large number of small producers.
Our presenter was Toshio Oeno.  He had us taste seven versions of Armagnac, as shown below.  Labeling is somewhat complicated.  VS means the brandy has been aged for at least one year in wood.  Age it for ten years and you get to label the brandy XO.  Now, if you age the wine at least ten years and it is all from the same year you can label by that year – as seen in the wine labeled 2005.  If you have multiple vintages in one bottle you label it with the number of years the youngest vintage was in the barrel.

​The fifth Armagnac on the table is labeled both 20 ans (i.e., 20 years minimum aging in oak) and Baco, meaning it was made from Baco 22A grapes.  Now things get very interesting.  You see, Baco 22A is a hybrid produced in 1898 by Francois Baco, combining the French grape Folle Blanche and the American grape Noah.  To make things even more interesting, Noah itself is a hybrid of two American grape species.  Thus, Baco 22A has DNA from three of the five grape species used to make wine!
Now for a technical/historical interlude.  If you do not wish to be bored to death, please skip what follows.
When Leaf Ericsson came to North America, he found some many grapes growing that he named it ‘Vinland’.  It should have raised great interest in Europe were it not for his father naming one of the most inhospitable places on earth ‘Greenland’.  Anyway, turns out that North America east of the Rocky Mountains was populated by four grape species.  That is four times more than Europe.  Unfortunately, it was also populated by a voracious root louse, phylloxera.  This nasty varmint eats the roots of grape vines.  The American grapes species have natural protection from this nasty insect; the European vines do not.  Hence, when some idiots brought potted North American grape vines to Bordeaux in the 1860’s the phylloxera that hitched a ride almost destroyed the European wine industry.  It was saved by an American, Thomas Munson (remember that name).  Munson was able to graft European vines to American roots, saving the world wine industry.  The French were so grateful to him that he was named a Chevallier, their highest civilian award.  The vines for the grape Folle Blanche were not as successfully grafted to the American vine roots as vines from other grape varieties, so Baco created the hybrid as a potential replacement for Folle Blanche in the making of Armagnac.
End of technical/historical interlude.  On to the tasting.
I’m guessing Armagnac is an acquired taste, sort of like scotch, which, in my much younger days, was my preferred alcoholic beverage.  Well, I have not acquired a taste for any brandy.  While I tasted all seven samples, I cannot say which I preferred since all of them tasted absolutely terrible, though different.  Towards the end of the session the presenter pointed out that you taste Armagnac straight but drink it diluted with water.  My question then if it is so bad tasting that you need to dilute it to drink it, why taste it straight?  Shouldn’t you taste it in the same condition that you drink it?  Perhaps, but wineries often serve their tasting pours of red wine at temperatures well above the proper serving temperature….