Lorimar

I received a lot of great winery recommendations from a posting on Nextdoor Scripps Ranch Fairbrook Estates.  Lorimar was one – thanks, Ken.
Located on Anza north of Rancho California in Temecula, Lorimar is just a great winery to visit.  If you haven’t guessed by reading my first three blogs, I consider Orfila, Ponte, and Robert Renzoni representatives of the best of the Southern California wineries to join.  Lorimar is right up there with those three.  To start with, they have a great facility, as shown in the photos below.  They have two unique features as well.  The first is a small art gallery (not shown).  They also have two stages, one in the back by their “restaurant”, just outside the tasting room, and the other in a field below where they most likely hold special events.  Needless to say, they have live entertainment on weekends.

You may note that I have placed quotation marks about their restaurant.  If you look closely in the photo below, you can see a food truck behind the “restaurant” counter.  I’m not sure why they use a truck, but we had lunch there and the food was great.

The wine tasting rooms are pretty nice (see below), and sell a lot of other things, very similar to Orfila in that they sell food items to snack on while tasting their wine in case you don’t want to get something from their “restaurant”.

As you can see from the menus below, they offer a wide variety of wines, with a standard six tastings for $17 weekdays and $29 weekends.  On the down side, they serve their red wines at tasting room temperature, which, like Avensole, was not really cool enough to get a really good feel for their wines.  We visited this winery with our wine expert, and one of the first things he did was ask to see one of their corks.  Apparently, he has learned that good wineries use high quality corks.  Didn’t see that coming.  Yes, they use high quality corks – and they have water available in their tasting room.  One other thing – they have a second tasting room in Old Town Temecula.
Like Avensole, they have three wine club options – red and white, all red, and premium wines.  Unlike Avensole, no matter what club you belong to the 25% discount extends to all of their wines (very nice), you get two free tastings per day at either site (not both in the same day), 10% off of everything else, special wine club events, and 25% off tastings for guests.  Definitely worth a visit!