Donkey & Goat is a family owned and operated winery located in Berkeley California. Tracey & Jared Brandt craft their natural wines from Rhône varietals, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grown in the Anderson Valley, Mendocino Ridge and the undiscovered El Dorado appellation in the Sierra Foothills.
Mead (all varieties) was excellent and you will love hearing about the great care that goes into this amazing little operation. The owners are excellent, personable hosts and love pouring mead and sharing their stories about the business and their lives.
Never expected this in Hunters (street parking only) - it's definitely worth it!
SF Mead uses local honey, fruit and spices to craft high quality mead. Oron and Sara’s meads range from dry to sweet. Honey has a unique character that expresses the character of the region in a new an exciting way.
The tour was very comprehensive and informative. You are able to taste the raw honey that Oron uses to make the mead as well as tasting the mead in various stages. A favorite was the blackberry that was not ready for bottling.
We wish Oron and Sarah continued success so that they can keep pumping out delicious meads.
Victor Erostavi is definitely an expert on what he's doing and you should try what he's done with an idea on fusion of old world Georgian wine making tradition in modern California. The results are stunning - loved a fruity aroma and a wonderfully dry white "Symphony", amazing Syrah and good Zinfandel.
OPEN FOR WINE TASTING
Thursday and Friday 5 - 9pm
Saturday and Sunday 1 - 5pm
Takara Sake USA was established in 1982 in Berkeley, California. The main products produced in Berkeley are the "Sho Chiku Bai" brand of Sake, "Takara Mirin" and Plum wine. Takara Sake USA has taken pure snow melt from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and superior rice from the fertile Sacramento Valley. To this, they apply traditional sake-making craftsmanship and modern technology to produce a Sake worthy of the Takara mark. Various products like premium sake and shochu are imported from our parent company in Japan.
With the release of their 2004 Bohemian Vineyard Pinot Noir , Tom & Sue Cleary launched an exciting new chapter in a multigenerational story about a family and their very special plot of land. Tom & Sue Cleary are both part of that rare breed: the native San Franciscan. In addition to that common trait, they also share the fact that both of their families have lengthy ties to the Russian River Valley area of Sonoma County .
Blue Rock will produce only small quantities of luxurious red wines that express their sense of place. Blue Rock, therefore, will always make wine from grapes grown exclusively on the 100 acre Estate in Sonoma, Alexander Valley.
Big Fish Wines became reality in 2005 when Hunter and Suzanne Landers realized a dream of one day making and sharing wine with friends and family. Hunter a New England transplant, and Suzanne a Bay Area native, both loved California wine country and shared a similar taste in wines.
West Wind Wines has the only wine cave in Marin County. It took two years to get the permits and two months to build the cave. It is kept at 55 degrees year around to keep the wine in the barrels cool and humid. Inside the cave at an “aroma table”, owner and winemaker Cynthia Klock encourages guests to sniff a hand full of cloves, sniff the wine and then take a sip. The scent will bring out the distinctive essences of cloves in the wine. She also has separate glasses with bits of chocolate, oak, herbs, leather, vanilla and pepper to illustrate the different characteristics in other wines. For example, a sniff of vanilla brings out that unique nature in the Muscat Canelli.
At the tasting event, we got to try different whites and red wine varieties. Oddly, all the red wines tasted too young. The best wine was the white vine star blend wine. The flavors just juiced out. I was disappointed with this years vine star red release, having tasted the year prior. The best red wine that was poured was the carignin wine. Though to me, still a little immature, the flavor would be dead on.
Tom and Mary Stubbs fell in love with West Marin long before they planted their first vines. The fog-shrouded vales just inland from Tomales Bay on their 600 acres are quite similar in climate to that of some major grape-growing areas nearby: Napa's Carneros region, the Sonoma Coast, and the Anderson Valley of Mendocino County.
