The Irving family immigrated to the United States from Nova Scotia. Grandfather John Irving worked in the Comstock Lode silver mines near Virginia City, Nevada before moving to Jackson, California to mine gold. In 1890, they acquired an 84 acre ranch east of Placerville. It was known as the four mile ranch because it straddled the main road east, formerly the route of the Pony Express. An existing house on the property was present at the time of their acquisition and is listed on the county tax rolls from 1885.After years of clean up and restoration, the ranch has become one of the show places in the Apple Hill area. The property has approximately 16 acres of wine grapes, as well as, peaches and eight varieties of apples farmed by a local retail fruit operation.

Bart and Barb Obrian's property is a 33 acres of vineyards, a bonded winery, and their home. When you visit, you will be treated to an intimate experience in their backyard sitting at picnic tables under oak trees.

Tour and Tasting – a 60 minute tour and tasting experience. Your tour starts outside at a picnic table overlooking hundreds of acres of vineyards. Then you will visit the main fermentation and barrel storage room of the winery and learn about how wine is fermented in our 500 to 3,000 gallon stainless steel tanks and then aged in French oak barrels. Your tour will conclude in our bottling line room, where you can see thecrusher/de-stemmer, must pump, and bottling line.

$20 per person; fee waved with the purchase of 1 bottle of wine per person or wine club signup per couple.

Clos Du Bois seemed to make a very little effort to hide the corporate image with big buildings and parking lots marked 'Corporate visitors only'. Still they make a very decent selection of table wines, especially at their pricing. Have you been to Costco lately? While I have yet to purchase a bottle of Clos Du Bois it has been served to me a number of times visiting friends. My goal is to make a trip to try their higher end wines and their flagship "Marlestone" and their old vine carignane.

Dube Vineyards and winery is located in the small unincorporated community of Deerhorn Valley. Dube Vineyards offers the varietals they grow in their own vineyard (Cab Sauvignon, Cab Franc, and beginning with this year's harvest, Zinfandel and Sangiovese), but in addition we go around to other local vineyards to select other varietals to supplement our production. In 2006 and again in 2007 we harvested Zinfandel and Syrah grapes from a vineyard in Campo, and made very nice blends from that.