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Northern California
Our Story and Mission- Ever since we were old enough to drink wine, we have been frequenting winery tasting rooms throughout California. Our trips in the late 70’s involved stops at 6-8 wineries (or maybe more) in a day. My first date with my wife was a day of wine tasting in Sonoma 31 years ago. So we are experienced with this stuff. I think there are several ingredients to a satisfying Tasting Room experience. The wine has to be good for starters and generally the known wineries all put out pretty decent wine. But there are other key factors in making the experience memorable. Sometimes a classy tasting room works for us, but sometimes standing around a barrel outside does the trick. At other times it is just good service that pleases us. Certainly one of the keys is the person serving the wine. So there are a whole bunch of things that make visiting a Tasting Room a positive experience. The point of this blog is to talk about and recommend Winery Tasting Rooms where we have had good experiences.The blog was conceived after spending a weekend with my sisters who normally do not frequent wineries and running into a couple of disappointing stops.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Rhone Rangers


Rhone Rangers- Grand Tasting
San Francisco- March 23, 2013



 The Rhone Rangers is a non-profit, 501(c), educational organization, dedicated to promoting the enjoyment of Rhone varietal wines produced in the United States.  The organization was established with 13 wineries in 1997 and today consists of nearly 200 wineries from California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Michigan and Virginia.  In France’s Rhone Valley there are twenty-two permitted grape varietals.  The predominant varietal that most of us drink on a regular basis is Syrah but Grenache, Mourvedre and Petite Sirah certainly are fairly common these days also.  The predominant white varietal is Viognier with lesser amounts of Roussane and Marsannne.

The Grand Tasting this year was the 16th Annual and was held in San Francisco at Fort Mason.  In addition to the Grand Tasting held on Saturday afternoon they also hold a Friday Evening Winemaker Dinner/Live Auction event with a select group of winery members.  On Saturday prior to the Grand Tasting they have a couple of Seminars.  These are probably great events if you are able to shell out the extra dollars.  As is normal for us, we volunteered for the event and are admitted entrance to the event earlier than the public with the Trade and Media.  This year we volunteered on Friday so as not to interfere with the Saturday event at all.


This year’s event listed 92 winery participants with another 20 or so food purveyors tasting as well as selling their products.  The food highlights, before we get to the wine, were The Girl and the Fig from Sonoma, serving a Duck Confit, Three Twins Ice Cream, serving several flavors of ice cream and my favorite Clairsquares serving Buttery Shortbread cookies.  There are also vendors with gourmet sauces and mustards and we came home with a couple of these. 

But the wine- Since there are several varietals on the table it is hard to decide the approach you will take.  Most wineries really are interested in having you try all their products but we all know it is tough work to go from white to red to white again so this really is not advised.  If you want to try both white and red you are better off starting with white and moving to red halfway through the event.   Our approach was going to be to stick with Red Blends.  Since the program listed about 50 or so Red Blends this should have not been a problem but again some of the pourers insist that you try this or that and it can be hard to say ‘no’.
 My guess is more than half of the wineries represented were from San Luis Obispo County (Paso Robles) and further south.  This definitely convinced us that we really do need to make a trip south this year.  There were stand out wines.  I’m not sure there were blockbusters but there were plenty of good wines.  My notes consist of checkmarks in the program and that is it but here goes:

The Adelaida- Red Blend, Alta Colina- Baja and GSM Blends, Andrew Murray (not the tennis player) Grenache,  Arrowood- Red Blend, Big Basin- Grizzly Red Blend,  both the Bonny Doon- ‘Cigare’ Blends, Fess Parker- Big Easy Red Blend,  Hahn Family- Red Blend (at $14, the deal of the day), Halter Ranch- Cotes de Paso, Hearst Ranch- Three Sisters Cuvee (and an up and coming winery), Jada- Hell’s Kitchen Red,  Kukkula- Several excellent Red Blends, L’Aventure- Cote a Cote (which seemed to be the crowd favorite), Martian Ranch- Red Shift (definitely on our visit list in Los Alamos this year), Morgan- Cotes du Crow’s,  Ridge- Lytton Syrah (had to stop here), Treana & Hope- Troublemaker, and Wrath- Doctor’s Vineyard Syrah. 
Martian- One of our favorites
 Despite all the choices we were very controlled at this event and drank lots of water and took time to enjoy the people watching and food purveyors.  I think this was a good approach.  While we were there for four hours we came out of there with clear heads.  After the event we went to the nearby Presidio Social Club for dinner and what a great spot.  We will definitely return to both the Rhone Ranger’s Grand Tasting and the Presidio Social Club again.
 
 
Vitals-
Rhone Rangers Grand Tasting
Annually in Late March
www.rhonerangers.org
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