3 glorious weeks of wine tasting in some of the prettiest wine country...

I have been reading Wine Spectator for awhile now, and last year they had a great spread on the top 30 Pinot Noir wineries, in of all places, California.  Yeah, they have been doing Pinot there for quite a while, I have had a few, and of course, they need Pinot to make really great sparkling as far as I am concerned (Blanc de Noir).  I had never had great Pinot in CA (I don't think I was working very hard at it either), so I decided to give it a try and check out some of the wineries listed in the article.  Jim likes Pinot, but he prefers Bordeaux blends or Syrah (if he had his druthers).  Good thing Wine Spectator had another article earlier this year about California Rhone varietals and the wineries that were doing them well.

I put two and two together, created a list of wineries that I wanted to taste at and went from there.  The wineries are located just north of Santa Barbara in the Santa Ynez Valley, up around Paso Robles (just north of San Luis Obispo) and then all the way up to the Sonoma Valley. To culminate this great trip, we are going to enjoy the Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival in Mendocino County.

Tasting in the Santa Ynez Valley (Buellton, Los Olivos, Solvang)

April 29th (Sunday):

•  Firestone Vineyard
•  Curtis Winery *
•  Fess Parker Winery
•  Zaca Mesa Winery
•  Foxen *
•  Cambria * 1600 acres, chatted with a guy that was working on a screen play for Billy Crystal
•  lunch at Los Olivos Cafe
•  Epiphany Cellars (Michael)

•  Kalyra Winery (pronounced cal-eye-ra)
•  Carina Cellars
•  Tensley * Jennifer Lea Tensley
•  Andrew Murray Vineyards
•  dinner at The Hitching Post II

•  Loring Wine Company * (LWC)
•  dinner was Round Table Pizza

•  Pinot tasting (LWC, Pali, P2, Summerland, Hitching Post, Tensley, Carlson, Presidio)
•  Melville Vineyard and Winery
•  Sanford Winery and Vineyards

•  lunch at Pea Soup Andersen's
•  Foxen (again)
•  Byron (by appt)
•  IO (by appt)

Now in the Paso Robles area of Central California

•  lunch at The Crooked Kilt
•  library/barrel tasting at Hospice du Rhone

•  current release tasting at Hospice du Rhone

Between the Friday tasting and the Saturday tasting, I figure we tasted at least one wine from 40 different wineries!  Whoa!!! Good thing we learned to spit (not pretty but worth it), otherwise, we would never have made it this far :)  We were looking for some different wines, but since Jim is into Rose's now, we tried to find as many of those as we could.  We found mostly good ones, some really good ones and a few really bad ones.  We tasted wine from Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Australia, France, but most of them were from all over California.

We were not disappointed by by Callaghan Vineyards, where we had tasted before in AZ, but we also got to taste at Dos Cabezas WineWorks who is also from AZ.  We could not get to them when we were in AZ a winter ago, but we found them here and tried the wines.  They were pretty darn good!  I would recommend both if you are looking for some really nice Rhone's (Syrah, Mourvedre, Viognier, etc) from AZ.

•  Robert Hall Winery *
•  Eberle Winery
•  EOS/Arciero Winery
•  Chumeia Vineyards
•  Tobin James Cellars *
•  J. Lohr Vineyards

•  Anglim Winery *
•  Mid-life Crisis Winery
•  Silver Stone Wines *

we took a day off from wine tasting, we were going square dancing in the evening and we try not to drink before we dance (kind of the same as don't drink and drive :)

•  lunch at Downtown Brewing Co. 
• Wild Horse Winery
•  Hunt Cellars
•  Turley Winery
•  Four Vines
•  Eagle Castle
•  Peachy Canyon
•  dinner at Artisans

•  Windward *
•  L'Adventure *
•  Adelaida
•  Tablas Creek Vineyards
•  Justin

Now we are in Sonoma County, but we remain in the Healdsburg, Windsor, Santa Rosa area (never ventured into the town of Sonoma or over to Napa).

•  Merry Edwards Winery *

•  Rodney Strong
•  Papapietro-Perry *
•  lunch at Healdsburg Bar & Grill
•  Seghesio *
•  Toad Hollow
•  Kendall Jackson
•  Rosenblum

•  breakfast - Starbucks and McDonalds :)
•  Iron Horse
•  Dutton Estate
•  Dutton-Goldfield
•  Balletto Vineyards
•  Hartford Family Winery *
•  late lunch/early dinner at Mangiamo

•  Siduri Winery

Our 49th specific winery we tasted at, not including the "other" 40 that we enjoyed during Hospice Du Rhone in Paso Robles!  There were some duplicates I am sure between the 80, but oh well, some one had to do it and we were up for the task!

We are taking a break from all the wine tasting :)  We have collected over 6 cases of great wine to enjoy with family & friends (or just by ourselves ;). 

•  Lunch at Johnny Garlic's, owned by Guy Fieri, the new Food Network Star from 2006

Square dancing lessons with the Singles & Pairs dance club

Square dancing lessons with Circle'n Squares dance club

Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival

•  Technical Conference
•  BBQ dinner at the Navarro Winery

Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival

Grand Tasting at Goldeneye Winery

•  Harmonique Pinot Noir *
•  MacPhail Family Wines **
•  Londer Vineyards
•  Husch Vineyards
•  Claudia Springs Winery *
•  Malm
•  Handley Cellars *
•  Elke Vineyards **
•  Williams-Selyem Winery **
•  Toulouse Vineyards
•  Roederer Estate
•  Woodenhead Vintners
•  Ziva Hyde Cunningham Winery
•  Baxter Winery *
•  Black Kite Cellars *
•  Breggo Cellars *
•  Brogan Cellars
•  Brutocao Cellars
•  Copain Cellars
•  Drew Family *
•  Esterlina Winery
•  Goldeneye Winery

again, only tasted one or two wines at each of the 22 wineries, we practiced our spitting technique, and truly enjoyed the day.  They included a nice lunch of cold salmon, salad, and other dishes.  This was our last day of tasting, what a way to end a glorious 3 weeks of tasting wine in Central California!