More wine tasting in Ukiah
Ukiah, California - Saturday, 15 Feb 2014, 8pm
After visiting two wineries in Ukiah on Saturday I would've been content to visit some more bead shops with Merhawk but she was too angry to see straight. Not angry at me, fortunately. She was angry at coworkers because a weekend work project she's a stakeholder in was going completely haywire and she's had to troubleshoot it as best as she could via phone and tablet. It turns out something similar happened on our previous wine touring trip, in December. I hope it's not going to be a trend that whenever we get away to wine country she winds up having to spend the day working remotely. Hey, twice is just a coincidence, it takes three times to make a trend, right?
Rivino Winery was only about a mile away and had good reviews online, so we headed there next. Unlike the Simaine Cellars we just departed (see previous blog) it had more of a traditional winery look: a small building atop a slight hill overlooking acres of grape vines planted along the flood plain of the Russian River. It was an equally quiet place, though, with just one staffer working there and no customers other than myself.
The offering at Rivino was fairly generous, 7 pours for $5, fee waived with purchase of a bottle. The one I found most interesting was their Viognier. Its flavor features a strong mix of fruit, especially pear, which is uncommon in this already-uncommon varietal. I liked their Sangiovese, too. It would stand up reasonably well alongside most Sangiovese I've had, but right after that fabulously rich one I had at Simiaine I couldn't imagine buying any other.
It was a slow day at the winery and Hawk was in the car fuming (over job stuff!) so that gal pouring wines and I chatted for a bit. She told me they don't do sissy white wines. They have a sign 2 miles south on 101 that proclaims "No Cougar Juice!" Cougar juice being, apparently, the bland style of Chardonnay popular amongst women of a certain age. She also recommended I visit one other winery in town, explaining, "If I didn't work here I would tell you it's the best one in the area."
Hawk agreed to take me to one more winery while wrangling with her company's errant vendor, so we found ourselves at Nelson Family Vineyards next. Tucked away in the rough hills south of town it's the sort of place we probably never would have noticed without a strong recommendation. It turns out they only produce 1400 cases a year in the entire winery (compare that to some brands which make 1400 cases of a single, "limited" label) so outside of their wine club and a few local businesses you won't see their wines. That's a shame, because their wines are all really good. I could easily have bought at least 6 of the varieties I sampled but in the interest of not growing my collection too big (recall my drinking problem: buying more than I drink!) I limited myself to just the two best, a very limited Cab Sauv and an Orange Muscat.
We had one more stop on our list for the day. Well, actually two, but one was a jewelry pawn shop that was closed. Our last stop was at the Mendocino Brewing Company just 2 blocks from our hotel. It was nominally a shopping trip to look at merchandise with pictures of hawks on it (we did pick up a few more hawk bags) but, hey, they've got beer on tap, too. And a rugby team celebrating an after-game party, with some of its members dressed up in kilts and war paint like Mel Gibson from Braveheart. I ignored the team-- about as much as one can ignore a gang of 20 very loud and boisterous young men on a conspicuous drinking binge, anyway-- and settled in for a sampler platter. Of 12 beers!
Okay, 12 beers sounds like a lot. It even looks like a lot. Especially on that tray in the picture. But those are all small glasses, about 2.5 ounces each. A dozen make a pretty impressive variety, though.
I have a special fondness for beers from the Mendocino Brewing Company. In addition to the awesome hawk logos they put on all their stuff, their famous Red Tail Ale was the first commercial microbrew I enjoyed, back in the 1990s. Alas, they're not as good as they used to be. They went public and attracted foreign investment and something got lost in translation, it seems. But I still picked up two six-packs of some of their rarer brews, a pumpkin ale and a white spice ale.
By they time I finished my dozen glasses (tiny glasses!) of beer the rugby party was winding down to a close. We could tell because a) they sang America, the Beautiful but with every word replaced by "beer", and b) the bartenders told us that they'd exhausted their tab. We decided to hurry home before all the drunks hit the road.
After visiting two wineries in Ukiah on Saturday I would've been content to visit some more bead shops with Merhawk but she was too angry to see straight. Not angry at me, fortunately. She was angry at coworkers because a weekend work project she's a stakeholder in was going completely haywire and she's had to troubleshoot it as best as she could via phone and tablet. It turns out something similar happened on our previous wine touring trip, in December. I hope it's not going to be a trend that whenever we get away to wine country she winds up having to spend the day working remotely. Hey, twice is just a coincidence, it takes three times to make a trend, right?
Rivino Winery was only about a mile away and had good reviews online, so we headed there next. Unlike the Simaine Cellars we just departed (see previous blog) it had more of a traditional winery look: a small building atop a slight hill overlooking acres of grape vines planted along the flood plain of the Russian River. It was an equally quiet place, though, with just one staffer working there and no customers other than myself.
The offering at Rivino was fairly generous, 7 pours for $5, fee waived with purchase of a bottle. The one I found most interesting was their Viognier. Its flavor features a strong mix of fruit, especially pear, which is uncommon in this already-uncommon varietal. I liked their Sangiovese, too. It would stand up reasonably well alongside most Sangiovese I've had, but right after that fabulously rich one I had at Simiaine I couldn't imagine buying any other.
It was a slow day at the winery and Hawk was in the car fuming (over job stuff!) so that gal pouring wines and I chatted for a bit. She told me they don't do sissy white wines. They have a sign 2 miles south on 101 that proclaims "No Cougar Juice!" Cougar juice being, apparently, the bland style of Chardonnay popular amongst women of a certain age. She also recommended I visit one other winery in town, explaining, "If I didn't work here I would tell you it's the best one in the area."
Hawk agreed to take me to one more winery while wrangling with her company's errant vendor, so we found ourselves at Nelson Family Vineyards next. Tucked away in the rough hills south of town it's the sort of place we probably never would have noticed without a strong recommendation. It turns out they only produce 1400 cases a year in the entire winery (compare that to some brands which make 1400 cases of a single, "limited" label) so outside of their wine club and a few local businesses you won't see their wines. That's a shame, because their wines are all really good. I could easily have bought at least 6 of the varieties I sampled but in the interest of not growing my collection too big (recall my drinking problem: buying more than I drink!) I limited myself to just the two best, a very limited Cab Sauv and an Orange Muscat.
We had one more stop on our list for the day. Well, actually two, but one was a jewelry pawn shop that was closed. Our last stop was at the Mendocino Brewing Company just 2 blocks from our hotel. It was nominally a shopping trip to look at merchandise with pictures of hawks on it (we did pick up a few more hawk bags) but, hey, they've got beer on tap, too. And a rugby team celebrating an after-game party, with some of its members dressed up in kilts and war paint like Mel Gibson from Braveheart. I ignored the team-- about as much as one can ignore a gang of 20 very loud and boisterous young men on a conspicuous drinking binge, anyway-- and settled in for a sampler platter. Of 12 beers!
Okay, 12 beers sounds like a lot. It even looks like a lot. Especially on that tray in the picture. But those are all small glasses, about 2.5 ounces each. A dozen make a pretty impressive variety, though.
I have a special fondness for beers from the Mendocino Brewing Company. In addition to the awesome hawk logos they put on all their stuff, their famous Red Tail Ale was the first commercial microbrew I enjoyed, back in the 1990s. Alas, they're not as good as they used to be. They went public and attracted foreign investment and something got lost in translation, it seems. But I still picked up two six-packs of some of their rarer brews, a pumpkin ale and a white spice ale.
By they time I finished my dozen glasses (tiny glasses!) of beer the rugby party was winding down to a close. We could tell because a) they sang America, the Beautiful but with every word replaced by "beer", and b) the bartenders told us that they'd exhausted their tab. We decided to hurry home before all the drunks hit the road.