HELP!!!!!!

The snowcapped Sierra Nevadas as seen from the Chateau Routon Vineyard

Every rural intersection has signs to yet more wineries


This is getting to be far too much fun!!! We thought that the Santa Barbara wine region was unique and funky. The Shenandoah Valley wine region, east of Sacramento, makes the Santa Barbara area look like a corporate realm. This area is even smaller and includes the Amador, El Dorado and Fair Play wine regions. You could easily do a wine tasting on foot. The wineries are so small and so numerous that you could walk from one to another until you could no longer stand up. The winemakers are strongly individualistic, very accomplished, and specialize in Zinfandel, Syrah, and Rhone blends, with a bit of Tempranillo, late harvest and surprisingly, Port, thrown in for good measure. The oldest winery in California is here, having commenced production in 1856. This area was, after all, the centre of the 1848 California gold rush. Towns with names like El Dorado, Placerville and Carson City link back to the “old days”.

We spent the better part of the afternoon with a bio-chemist who, after retiring from hospital administration, opened a winery, Amador Cellars, which produces a grand total of 1800 cases a year. Do the math………this guy is not getting rich!! BUT…his wines are amazing. We tasted his bottled zins and syrahs from 2002, ’03 and ’04 and, were so blown away that he offered us barrel samples of ’05 and ’06. I have never tasted a barrel sample that I did not want to spit out………until today. It is sad that the only way to purchase these wines is to knock on the winery door. They sell themselves!!

Then to cap off the day, we were offered tickets to a winery “poker run” on Saturday. These tickets cost the princely sum of $49 each and include 5 wine tastings at 5 different wineries, our choice of a bottle of any of the tasted wines at each winery (total 10 bottles, each worth at least $20), a Riedel tasting glass each, a card at each winery to be played at the end as a poker hand for numerous prizes and………. DINNER. Winemakers must have serious problems with math!!!!

If we never return to Canada……… we have found a nice little winery for sale in a quaint valley in northern California!!