Sierra Vintners annouces Wineries Pouring at Sept 24 event in Grass Valley

The following 15 wineries will participate in the Sierra Vintners event in Grass Valley on September 24.

• Avanguardia Wines (www.AvanguardiaWines.com)
• Bent Metal Winery (www.BentMetalWinery.com)
• Coufos Cellars (www.CoufosCellars.com)
• Double Oak Vineyards & Winery (www.DoubleOakWinery.com)
• Indian Springs Vineyards (www.IndianSpringsWines.com)
• Lucchesi Vineyards & Winery (www.LucchesiVineyards.com)
• Montoliva Vineyard & Winery (www.Montoliva.com)
• Naggiar Vineyards (www.NaggiarVineyards.com)
• Nevada City Winery (www.NCWinery.com)
• Pilot Peak Vineyard & Winery (www.PilotPeak.com)
• Sierra Knolls Vineyards & Winery (www.SierraKnollsWinery.com)
• Sierra Starr Vineyard (www.SierraStarrWine.com)
• Smith Vineyard (www.SmithVineyard.com)
• Solune Winegrowers (www.SoluneWinery.com)
• Szabo Vineyards (www.SzaboVineyards.com)

For more information on the event, go to the earlier blogpost by clicking here

 

About Sierra Vintners

Sierra Vintners is a partnership of wineries located in Nevada County, California, collaborating to promote the emerging wine region located midway between Sacramento and Reno in the Sierra Foothills.

Sierra Vintners features fifteen wineries and additional tasting rooms, offering a diverse wine experience with handcrafted and award winning wines, rural vineyards and wineries, and downtown tasting rooms in the historic towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City, CA. For more information, visit http://www.sierravintners.com./

Perry Creek Winery of Sierra Foothills featured at Wild Goose Restaurant on Lake Tahoe

The Wild Goose, an open-to-the-public venue of the Tahoe Mountain Club, has an award-winning wine list and unbelievably wonderful food. Lou Phillips, an experienced sommelier with a great palate, recently joined wine expert Patrick Hedderman’s team at the Wild Goose.

“I’ve rarely had the opportunity to work with a wine list that is as deep and mature as this one at the Wild Goose,” Lou said . “At the same time, we’re not afraid to serve our guests wines from up-and-coming regions like the Sierra Foothills.”


In August, The Wine Spectator magazine recognized Wild Goose with its Award of Excellence, bestowed on restaurants that offer interesting wine selections that are appropriate to its cuisine and appeal to all wine lovers. Over 340 wines to select from at the Wild Goose and 4800 bottles on site, the list is divided between a regular and a reserve wine list. We tasted from the regular list, and primarily those in the wine-by-the-glass section.

The Perry Creek “Altitude 2401” is a Sierra Foothills Zinfandel from El Dorado County. It is a plummy fruit-forward zinfandel with ripe, earthy, jammy flavor. Winemaker Stefan Tscheppe produced this reserve wine in an old-world style. Named after Perry Creek’s Fair Play Farms Vineyard's that have an average elevation of 2401 feet, only 1000 cases were made. Tasting notes from the www.perrycreek.com website echo my experience: “Exotic papaya and guava play with lively acidity and rich berry, spice and chocolate flavors. Exotic spices and cherries in the long and smooth finish. “ 14.9% alcohol. $35 the bottle at Wild Goose.

Wild Goose restaurant and bar is located at 7320 North Lake Blvd, Tahoe Vista, CA 96148. Open six evenings a week through mid-October, closed Tuesdays. Make reservations for dining via OpenTable or call (530) 546-3640. http://www.wildgoosetahoe.com/

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© 2011 Barbara Keck

For more information on dining and the wide range of activities around Lake Tahoe, see the online version of The Tahoe Weekly. This article appeared in my column "Wine Adventures" in August 2011.

Book in Process: "Mountain High Wine: The Sierra and Its Foothills".

Sierra Vintners Rides Again...this time to Grass Valley

A Taste of the Gold –Premier Tasting Event in Grass Valley

Presented by Sierra Vintners & Grass Valley Downtown Association

Sierra Vintners and the Grass Valley Downtown Association will be presenting A taste of the Gold, a premier wine tasting event on Saturday, September 24, 2011 from 1:00 pm until 4:00 pm at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley, CA.     

This fabulously fun and tasty event, featuring some of the Northern Sierra Foothill’s finest restaurants and wineries, takes place on the Saturday afternoon of the Draft Horse Classic. Find your favorite wine, and with glass in hand, nibble your way through more restaurants than you could possibly visit in a long weekend.  With your first taste and your first sip, you’ll soon recognize why “A Taste of the Gold” has become such a popular event.

Early Bird tickets are $30 in advance, by going online to www.sierravintners.com.  Tickets can also be purchased for $40 on the day of the event at the Gazebo, just as you enter Gate 5 at the Fairgrounds.  Wine club members can contact their winery directly for special pricing.  For more event information or tickets by phone, call 530-272-8315. (You must be 21 years of age or older to attend this event.) 

Entertainment will be provided by Bob Mora & The Third Degree Band.  The event is sponsored by Interstate Benefits and Casualty Insurance Services (www.ibcinsuranceservices.com).   A Taste of the Gold takes place at the Nevada County Fairgrounds, adjacent to the Pavilion, near Gate 5, and is held in conjunction with the Draft Horse Classic! For Draft Horse Classic performance tickets, visit the Nevada County Fairgrounds website at www.NevadaCountyFair.com.

For more information about Sierra Vintners and their wineries, visit www.sierravintners.com, email Sierra Vintners at info@sierravintners.com or call 530-205-3016.

About Sierra Vintners

Sierra Vintners is a partnership of wineries located in Nevada County, California, collaborating to promote the emerging wine region located midway between Sacramento and Reno in the Sierra Foothills.

Sierra Vintners features fifteen wineries and additional tasting rooms, offering a diverse wine experience with handcrafted and award winning wines, rural vineyards and wineries, and downtown tasting rooms in the historic towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City, CA. For more information, visit www.sierravintners.com.



Sierra Vintners Pull it All Together at Nevada City Tasting Event

As a big booster of wines from the Sierra and its Foothills. I was delighted to go to the recent Sierra Vintners event held in Nevada City. Almost twenty wineries from Nevada and Placer County participated. Tasting tables were set up in a number of retail shops, hotels and restaurants – all within a short walk of one another. Brilliant. I suggest you get on the mailing list for an alert for future events: go to www.sierravintners.com




Marilyn Szabo pours Primitivo


First stop was the tasting of Szabo wines. The 2008 Syrah is produced from estate grown grapes from their 40-acre vineyard at 2100 feet elevation that sits almost exactly halfway between Grass Valley and Nevada City, with views that include the Pacific Coastal Range and the Sutter and Sierra Buttes. The wine has taste and aroma of raspberry, vanilla and black tea. The tannins to my taste were relatively high, which is not unusual for Syrah. There’s a bit of smokiness or teriyaki on the back palate too. $23/bottle, 14.6 percent alcohol.

Frankly, I thought that the Szabo Primitivo was one of the best Foothill wines I’ve tasted in a long time. Primitivo and Zinfandel are closely related; in fact the two varieties have identical isozyme fingerprints. This 2008 Primitivo is redolent of plum, chili and allspice. $19/ bottle, 14.3 percent alcohol. Winery owners Marilyn and Sandor Szabo have done a great job; their first vintage was just in 2006. http://www.szabovineyards.com/

There’s some thought that Primitivo is a Croatian grape relative, but there’s not enough room in this column to go into that. However, this leads me to talk a bit about the intriguing wines of Rob and Marilyn Chrisman, owners of Avanguardia, on Jones Bar Road in Nevada City. Avanguardia specializes in hand-crafted artisan blends. Over 20 Italian, Russian, and French grapes and University of California varietal crosses are estate grown, many of which rootstocks were imported especially for them. They poured their Cristallo, a white wine blend where the dominant grape is the Georgian Rkatsiteli, a grape of high quality that is widely planted in eastern Europe but wines made from Rkatsiteli are seldom exported. At Avanguardia, it’s combined ( at about 70-90%) with Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio and Melon de Bourgogne. Melon is the sole variety in the Loire wine known as Muscadet, sometimes referred to as the quintessential “oyster wine”. This is a delicious wine, dry, crisp, taut, and relatively full-bodied; and the fruit flavors are of apples and pears. $14/bottle. 12.5 percent alcohol. http://www.avanguardiawines.com/

If you want an interesting discussion about the history of wine along with some lovely wines to taste, then you will want to go visit Sierra Knolls Vineyards just south of Grass Valley near Lake of the Pines. and chat with John Chase, one of the owners. John is an interesting guy, also keen on alternative energy topics, and Sierra Knolls was one of the first 100% solar powered wineries in the Foothills. They are guided in their winemaking by Mike Foster from Nevada City Winery, and feature handcrafted small lot wines. Their 2006 Sangiovese is a terrific Italian varietal, with a nice spiciness. At $16 a bottle, 13.5 percent alcohol, you might want to stock up. http://www.sierraknollswinery.com/



Bent Metal's Scott Brown
pours his great Viognier



David Winn of Coufos Cellars
pours Buffo Blanc, Rhone blend

Other notable wines I tasted:

• Naggiar Vineyards 2009 Mistero, a blend of 60% zinfandel, 30% sangiovese, 10% syrah, nicely fruit-forward. $22/bottle, 14.5 percent alcohol. http://www.naggiarvineyards.com/

• Coufos Cellars Buffo Blanc 2008, a white Rhone varietal blend of 40% Marsanne, 40% Roussanne and 20% Viognier. Tropical fruits, spice at the end. $17/bottle, 14.5 percent alcohol. http://www.coufoscellars.com/

• Bent Metal Winery’s 2009 Viognier, fruit forward with a great mouthfeel and smooth finish. $21/bottle, 15.2 percent alcohol. http://www.bentmetalwinery.com/

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© 2011 Barbara Keck

For more information on dining and the wide range of activities around Lake Tahoe, see the online version of The Tahoe Weekly. This article appeared in my column "Wine Adventures" in August 2011.

Book in Process: "Mountain High Wine: The Sierra and Its Foothills".

El Dorado Wines featured at Big Band Event Aug 26 on Tahoe's West Shore

Are you “In the Mood” for a summer night under Sierra stars on Lake Tahoe’s magical West Shore? Hear Big Band jazz played at beautiful Sugar Pine Point State Park on

Friday evening August 26th, 2011. The Ehrman Mansion “Pine Lodge” is a stunning backdrop on Lake Tahoe’s shoreline to relax while serenaded by professional musicians.

The show begins at 6 o’clock with music planned through 8:30 PM.

Gates open for picnics at 5 o’clock on the lakeside of Sugar Pine Point State Park; access from Highway 89 South/West Lake Boulevard. No parking fee after 5 PM. Bring a low backed chair to enjoy the music in comfort. Add a blanket or cool-weather gear for crisp Tahoe evenings. Flashlights may be helpful after the show to access your car.

Featuring wines of El Dorado County; available for purchase by the glass.  This festive first time event is a fundraiser to benefit the West Shore Association so donations are gladly accepted! California State Parks, the North Lake Tahoe Resort  Association, and the Tahoe City Public Utilities District are contributing to make the evening a success.

 We hope to see you on the West Shore for this free event: Friday, 08/26, 5 PM!

Skinner Vineyards in Fair Play-El Dorado County is Worth a Visit

The Fair Play AVA is unbelievably beautiful right now, and an afternoon at Skinner Vineyards is a perfect way to experience these delights. The new Tasting Room at this new winery in the Fair Play AVA of El Dorado County features a state-of-the-art GreenTech winery, as well. The Skinner heritage in the wine business goes back to 1861 in El Dorado County.



Winemaker Chris Pittinger (l) and
Tasting Room Manager Ryan Skinner



The Skinner family has both a passion for winemaking in the Foothills and a dedication to continuing the Skinner winemaking tradition there. The new winery was designed with care to encompass many forward-thinking eco features. Winemaker Chris Pittenger often escorts visitors through the winery and vineyard manager Bryan Rahn has created a first-class vineyard, the Stoney Creek Vineyard, and you may have an opportunity to walk through there, too.

Skinner Vineyard’s winery is primarily solar powered; they installed a 55 kW PV system. They also situated the building so the sun side (south) maximizes the solar-power generating potential, and the solar panels line up to give the largest potential area for sun exposure.

In the winery, they strategically situated the barrel rooms on the north, more-shady side, of the building for better energy efficiency. Each of the four barrel rooms and the main cellar were built with temperature-controlled sensors, which allows for cooling to be supplied by the cool outside air.

All of the fermentation tanks are located within the winery, rather than being isolated outside. This simple design reduces energy costs significantly. The result is the use of much less electricity in order to keep the must and wines at a stable temperature in the tanks. The trellising systems optimize fruit temperatures, and the rows are run up and down the hills to minimize soil disturbance during development, preserving the topsoil and improving erosion control.

Skinner’s flagship wine is its Eighteen Sixty-One. This is a Rhône-style blend, a red wine made in the style of a Châteauneuf-du-Pap.

The vineyard’s warm days and cool nights, coupled with its well-draining granitic soils, provide the ideal growing conditions for Rhône varietals. Skinner Vineyards' current collection includes 10 Rhône grape varieties, in addition to several legacy grapes grown by James Skinner himself. The first releases included a 2007 Viognier and 2007 Syrah, both made with fruit sourced from the Skinner family’s Stoney Creek Vineyard, and also a 2008 Grenache and 2008 Grenache-based Rosé from El Dorado. Skinner Vineyards offers another Rhône-style blend – the Seven Generations white wine, a blend of Roussanne, Marsanne and Viognier.

Mike Skinner, co-owner with wife Carey Skinner, has inherited his ancestor’s passion for growing high-quality grapes and producing premium wines that reflect the unique spirit and heritage of the Sierra Foothills. The Skinner family set out to reestablish the family legacy by planting vines just a short drive from the original vineyard location. In keeping with the spirit of the original ranch and distillery, Mike and Carey designed the new winery in Fair Play by using a drawing dating back to 1885 and the old sepia photographs as their inspiration. The adjoining tasting room, situated at 2,700’, has a breathtaking 360-degree view of the majestic foothill landscape; perfect for enjoying a glass of wine while viewing the snow-peaked Sierra during winter or the rolling acres of green vines during spring and summer. For more information and tasting room hours, call (530) 620-2220 or visit http://www.skinnervineyards.com/


Disclosure:  I assisted Skinner Vineyards with marketing communications for their grand opening in May 2011.

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© 2011 Barbara Keck

For more information on dining and the wide range of activities around Lake Tahoe, see the online version of The Tahoe Weekly. This article appeared in my column "Wine Adventures" in August 2011.

Book in Process: "Mountain High Wine: The Sierra and Its Foothills".