Fratelli Perata

In Napa, California, the wineries are all slick and polished. Even the bad ones have beautiful tasting area. My favourite Napa Winery, Pride Mountain, is like visiting the symphony at its best. Refined. Complex. Beautiful. You leave feeling refreshed.

Visiting Paso Robles is more like an Abbie Lincoln concert. Smooth. Smoky. "They call it jazz."

We recently visited Paso, and found our way to Fratelli Perata. As you pull up the driveway, it may not immediately be obvious that you are at a winery. Granted, there are grapes growing all over, but the farmhouse and garage on the premises don't say vineyard.

Inside the garage is a bar, a series of barrels, and a sign explaining why they can't serve food on the premises. The woman who greeted us was the proprietor of the establishment. Her long gray hair and tie-dye shirt identified her as a member of the counter-culture. She explained that she and her family had bought this property in the 1970s and that all the wine their was made by them. Their daughter, educated in viticulture at UC Davis has helped keep them modern. This is a family operation in every sense of the word.

She proceeded to pour us a dozen or so fabulous wines. Many of them blends, all of them delicious. While the finish on many of these wines was not as long as one might like, there's no sticker shock, either. We have only once before signed up for a wine club (Kenneth Volk - a club we continue to receive wine from).  But we felt compelled to sign up for another.  There will be Fratelli Perata served at our barbecues.



Fratelli Perata Winery
1595 Arbor Rd
Paso Robles, CA 93446-9669
(805) 238-2809


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Pride Mountain Winery

After making the mistake of visiting a winery without any vetting, we poked around Chowhound to find a winery that we would be delighted by. We focused on small to medium sized wineries, so we could get something different. Something new.

Pride Mountain Vineyards was near the top of the list.  It's a remote winery, 20 minutes west of St. Helena in Napa.  The drive is good fun, on narrow roads, through curvy, tree-covered terrain.

At the top of the mountain is a beautiful scene. If this is where my review ended, I would still recommend Pride Mountain Vineyards. Simply sitting on the patio, looking out over this:



- really made me happy. It's a stunning view, in a quiet remote location. Really magical.

But (as I'm sure you're surprised to hear) they also serve wine. The first wine that was poured was a delightful viognier. Very, very nice. But the real surprise was their merlot. I haven't had many merlots that I was fond of. The merlot we tasted was perfectly structured. Well-balanced, with a long, extremely pleasant finish. Complex without being muddled. This is one of the best wines that has ever passed over my lips.  We savoured the tasting serving over 20 minutes.



Perfect.


Pride Mountain Vineyards
4026 Spring Mountain Rd
St Helena, CA 94574-9773
(707) 963-4949


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Santa Ynez Wine Tastings

Wine with bbq? Hell, yes. And living in California, wine is abundant and inexpensive. We took a quick trip to the Santa Barbara wine region a few weeks ago, and had a fantastic time sampling the local wines.

The Santa Barbara wine region was made famous in the movie Sideways a few years ago, and most online resources focus on doing the same tour as done in the movie. We weren't really interested in visiting famous wineries as we were in visiting excellent wineries. We stayed in Santa Maria, an hour north of Santa Barbara, and explored the Santa Ynez wineries from there. I'll point out a few of our favourites. Most places charge $10-20 per person to taste 4-6 wines, and most of them give you a wine glass. Some of the glasses are even nice (though not all, See Parker, Fess).

Firestone. This was our favourite inexpensive winery. Several solid, good tasting wines, for a decent price. We visited Firestone on the same day we went to Fess Parker, which was much more disappointing. Fess Parker is a famous large production winery. Their cute little glasses that come with the tasting have a little etching on them that looks rather like a turd (but apparently is supposed to be a beaverskin cap). Anyway, Fess Parker sells solid wines at exotic prices. Hit Firestone instead, for good, inexpensive wine.

Foxen was one of our favourites. They had many wines we liked, including a fortified dessert wine (called Mission Accomplished). Simple grounds, with two different buildings for tastings, their staff was super-friendly, and gave our two-year old a temporary tattoo which he talked about for the next 2 days.

Bridlewood certainly had the nicest grounds. When you drive into the vineyard, you drive under a canopy of trees that makes you feel like you're in New England, not in the deserts of southern California. Nice touch. The wines here were very good, particularly their syrahs. I could have happily taken several of their syrahs home with us.

Zaca Mesa was good fun as well. They had an enormous chessboard out front (with pieces the size of my son), which provided 20 minutes of good fun for us. The wines here were really innovative and fun, using several types of grapes we'd never heard of before. Roussanne? What's a Roussanne?

And finally, our absolute favourite, Kenneth Volk. The photo at the top was taken in the back of his tasting room. Every wine we tried here was interesting and tasty on several levels. They were complex and delicious, with long and interesting finishes. And we tried a *lot* of different wines here. We were so enthralled, that for the first time, we joined a wine club and look forward to receiving many more of their wines. Tasty, complex and delicious. These were world-class wines.

We'll be visiting this area again.