I’ve lived in Placer County for close to 15 years, and lived nearby for even longer. But for some reason I’ve never visited the wineries close to home! I’ve been missing out! When I got wind of the Placer county wineries putting on a special Valentine’s Day event, I thought it was a great opportunity and a great way to spend Valentine’s day with my wife. The weather was gorgeous for a day in February, sun was shining and it was supposed to reach the mid 60’s.
We started out at Rock Hill Winery – the first thing we learned about the wineries in Placer county is that the signs are small! We were on Sierra College Blvd. A road I’ve traveled many times and never noticed the sign before, and we blew past the turnoff and had to turn around to get back on track. The tasting room is HUGE – room capacity is 300 people. They can accommodate weddings and other events. There was a roped off area that was set up for Valentine’s Day dinner with tables and place settings for about 150 people. The wine maker shared, that later that evening he was putting 50 pounds of prime rib, 40 pounds of pork roast, and salmon on his four BBQ’s for the dinner. The wines were very tasty, we pretty much stuck to the reds. Unfortunately they weren’t pouring their Zinfandel (one of my personal favorites) but there were plenty of other tasty varietals to choose from. Cabernet Sauvignon, Super Tuscan (50% Cabernet Sauvignon/ 50% Sangiovese) a ‘Cabfandel’ – which is a registered trademark of theirs,( 50% Cabernet & 50% Zinfandel), Four Way Blend (28% Cabernet/ 28% Barbera/ 28% Zinfandel/ 16% Petite Sirah) for you white wine drinkers they had Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, and a creative twist of white Sangiovese and white Barbera. Several of their wines have won awards. I chose their traditional Barbera to go home with. I also made a mental note to research their Friday dinners and wine pairing events.
At the time of this writing: Rock Hill does put out Groupon Deals for their Friday Dinners and Sunday Brunch to save some money on a wine country experience. Go to the Groupon site and search for ‘Rock Hill Winery’
Our next stop was Pescatore Vineyard & Winery off of Rt 193 heading to Newcastle. Pescatore is another intimately small winery. I believe the Wine maker, his wife and a friend were manning the tasting room. The selections were mostly red wines: Zinfandel, Syrah, Petite Sirah, Barbera, Cabernet Franc, Malbec. For white wine there was a Sauvignon Blanc, and Zinato (dry rose of Zinfandel). They did have a very unique Dessert Syrah – it had very deep dark concentrated flavors of Syrah. They’ve won several medals All of the wine was a flat $15 per bottle or $150 per case. I didn’t get a chance to speak with the wine maker but he appears to be a foodie. There are recipes on the Winery’s web site and he was making pizzas to order. Since places to eat aren’t
often easy to find, we typically pack a picnic lunch for our wine tasting adventures. One thing that’s nice about visiting Wineries is that many of them have picnic areas and some of them are down right picturesque. As we walked up to the winery, there was a pizza oven prominently positioned out front and a few people eating pizza. After tasting the wines, we decided to order a pizza. As luck would have it we ordered the last pizza. They had run out of dough, I believe the Valentine’s Day event was more successful than expected. We bought some Barbera and Zinfandel. We popped the cork on one of the Barbera’s to enjoy our hot out-of-the-oven pizza. They have a beautiful back porch that’s the width of the building and deep, with several patio tables and chairs. We chose a table off to the side. We savored the moment of the sunny day, with a flavorful glass of wine, enjoying the freshest of pizza overlooking the vineyard.
We had time for one more winery, we chose one close to home. Secret Ravine Vineyards is nice winery just a few miles from home, in Loomis, located off Barton Road across from Indian Creek Golf Course. This one was pretty easy to find! The choices ranged from single variatals: Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Syrah, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, some blends; Miner’s Red, Rattlesnake Red, House Red, a Rose and Sauvignon Blanc, as well as an Italian varietal that I’ve never had before – Montepulciano, a dark dry red with some nice fruit characteristics. Several of their wines have won awards. We choose to go home with some of their Merlot.
We had a wonderful experience. Many of the wineries had won awards, we did enjoy the variety of wines available. So if you’re looking to go wine tasting close to the greater Sacramento area, I can highly recommend Placer County Wine trail. Visit the wineries websites to get an idea of what each has to offer, check their hours, many are only open on the weekend, plan your route and ENJOY!
