Sierra Oro Farm Trail- Passport Weekend

Chico & Oroville, CA

We spent last weekend in Butte County.  For those of you who know us, we have a long association with Chico, CA and there has never been a year in the last 35+ years that we have not visited Chico. Even better, we now have family living in Chico, which gives us even more reason to visit.  We hardly go anywhere without searching out the wine tasting possibilities and when the opportunity to taste in the Chico area presented itself, we jumped at it.  2012 marked our third year at this event and I think it was the best so far. 

A non wine stop (But Sierra Nevada Beer)
 

 This is a Farm Trail event, so in addition to wineries, there is an array of other venues along the trail.  These include rice and rice products, a mandarin orange farms, olive and olive oil producers, nut producers and one of my favorites, The Worm Farm.  For the most part we stick to the wineries but we always make it a point to stop at Maisie Jane’s, which sells various locally produced food products but also samples a specialty made Passport Weekend beer produced jointly by Sierra Nevada Brewing.  The event runs both Saturday and Sunday and since there is a bit of distance between some of these stops two days is required to make a pretty good dent.  There are four wineries in the Oroville area and eight wineries in the Chico area including New Clairvaux which is actually a pretty good ride north of Chico.  Along with these twelve wineries there is about another fifteen of the non-wine businesses open.

The farmhouse at Emerald C

In general the wines are not going to be as good as the wines you are going to find in Napa and Sonoma.  I think there are probably a lot of factors and certainly weather is key.  Chico tends to run in the 90’s and low 100’s through much of the summer and does not get much of the cooling influences from the fog that you get in other areas.  The hillside vineyards of Oroville are really the northern extension of the gold country of Amador and El Dorado counties so I would think they probably have a lot of potential for creating good wine. I think partly because this area if off the main path of the wine industry, it may mean that the wineries do not get some of the same winemaking talent you are going to find in areas south.  Still we tasted some pretty decent wine.

This year we visited just two wineries in Oroville and most of us went to five wineries in the Chico/Valley area.  Grey Fox was our favorite Oroville stop.  We had last visited this winery two years ago and since then they have built a large tasting room and outdoor patio.  The Oroville wineries are in the hills at about 900-1,000 feet and have nice views of the central valley.  We liked the Sauv Blanc, Sangiovese and Cabernet ($16.00). 

 

In the Chico area we visited-

 

Roney- Really the best wines to be found. Roney has a bit of an advantage as they tend to have great sources of outside grapes.  They were pouring a Cabernet made from Howell Mountain (Napa) fruit as well as a Stags Leap District Cabernet ($38.00) from the same vineyard Nickle and Nickle (a well-known Napa winery) sources from (and sells for about $100). They also had two Zins, one from Amador County and one from Butte Country.  We really liked the Butte County Foothills Zin and plan to open it side by side a Napa/Sonoma Zin because we think it will do just fine ($17.00). 

Bertagna- Specializes in Italian varietals.  We like the light bodied Sangiovese. Pretty consistent wines here.

Emerald C- We have become fans of Emerald C over the past year.  Steve and Ned are great guys and striving for quality wines and I think they are starting to get there.  The winery is located in the basement of a beautiful 30’s-40’s farm house and surrounded by 65 acres of Kiwi fruit and five acres of grapes.

In the heart of the valley at Gale Vineyards
 

New Clairvaux- Located on the grounds of a “Trappist” Monastery about a half hour north of Chico in Vina, CA.  In the late 1800’s this was the home of the world’s largest wine operation (seriously).  This winery has hired a professional winemaker and I think will be better and better wines.

 

Gale Vineyards- Gale is located in Durham just seven miles south of Chico and is located in an oasis of oaks, sycamore and bamboo (yes, smack in the middle of the Sacramento valley).  The owners are Steve and Creasia Gale.  When we visited, Steve was handing out food samples and Creasia was pouring the wine.  The wines include Tempranillo, Sangiovese, Primitivo, Cabernet and a blend and all were pretty good.  Even if you are not a wine drinker this is a good stop just to see the grounds.  This day there was a local artist displaying her paintings in one of the small rental buildings on the property.

 

Check out the website for information on all the wineries (and other spots)

www.sierraoro.org