We spent a few days last week exploring the wineries around the Placerville area. These wineries are located in El Dorado County near Highway 50 on the way to South Lake Tahoe. We have long enjoyed visiting the wineries in the Fair Play region of El Dorado County but have had little chance to explore the wineries closer to Placerville. On our trip, we visited ten wineries and found three that we think are not to be missed. We highly recommend a visit to Holly’s Hill Vineyards, Sierra Vista Vineyards, and Miraflores Winery.
One thing we love about visiting small wineries is that you often find the owner and/or winemaker working the tasting room. This was exactly the case at Holly’s Hill and Sierra Vista. The entrance ways to these two wineries are next door to each other, so it’s very easy to visit both on the same excursion.
A view of Holly's Hill
This is fig season so why not try making a fig pizza in your oven or on the BBQ grill. I got this recipe for fig pizza thanks to Chef Matt Paille, who created this pizza during his stint at the Manzinata Restaurant in Healdsburg. It really is a fabulous and delicious pizza even though I am still trying to perfect the exact taste of that pizza I had in September of 2009 at the restaurant. Chef Matt sent me the recipe but unfortunately it did not include his recipe for the pistachio pesto that is the base of this pizza. Maybe some of you out there can suggest your favorite recipe for pistachio pesto. I did a search on the Web and found several recipes for the pesto, and from them I concocted my own version included below. Read the rest of this entry »
When we were in college we used to drink Red Mountain wine, a very bad tasting but cheap gallon of wine you could buy at Walgreen’s for $1. It was bulk wine from the Central Valley in California made by Gallo and now a long discontinued label. Last week in the Yakima Valley we tasted several wines that had on the label the designation “Red Mountain.” We could not help but chuckle a bit as we thought about those long-ago Red Mountain college days in contrast to the wines we now tasted from the Red Mountain AVA vineyards of the Yakima Valley. These wines are lush and complex and some of the best wines we have ever tasted. The man most responsible for the development of the prized-Red Mountain AVA is Jim Holmes, who began growing grapes here in 1975. We were lucky enough to do a vineyard walk and listen to how he manages and grows the grapes of his Ciel du Cheval Vineyards.
Jim Holmes at his Ciel du Cheval Vineyards
Read the rest of this entry »
