Deerfield is a winery where you're encouraged to sit and enjoy your wine. You're not crowded around a tasting bar, fighting for space and attention in order to sip your wine. Instead, the tasting takes place in a cave, with tables and chairs everywhere - encouraging everyone to have a seat, enjoy their wine and the sommeliers will be around to pour the wine.
We stumbled in here after hitting up a winery or five, and I'm so glad we did. While we waited for our table, we went next door to the tasting room where the staff was casual and personable. Fun fact - if you are dining at Farmstead, they give you discounted wine tastings! Inside the restaurant, it has a classic yet modern farmhouse feel, decorated with aged wood planks on the walls and mason jars filled with fresh flowers. Our waiter was helpful and knowledgeable
The Perrucci family is dedicated to crafting wines of exceptional quality that offer both value and enjoyment. They employ advanced agricultural techniques in their vineyards and exclusively use grapes of the highest caliber. Involved at every stage, from vineyard management to bottling, the family's hands-on approach ensures meticulous care throughout the winemaking process. Their commitment to producing outstanding wines has garnered numerous awards and accolades for their recent vintages.
Perrucci Family Vineyard operates as a genuine boutique winery, deliberately limiting annual production to uphold the utmost quality and customer experience.
In the summer of 1979, Bill and Susan Hawley, both 27 years old with a one-year-old son named Emile, acquired this rugged and untamed property. The site was heavily forested and located at the end of a challenging dirt fire road that marked the boundary between Napa and Sonoma Counties.
Bill Hawley named the property Random Ridge on a poetic impulse, believing the name perfectly suited the land’s character. The terrain is steep and rugged, positioned on a 2,200-foot ridge at the edge of Mount Veeder. This area, an ancient uplifted seabed, features rock-strewn decomposed volcanic soils. The northern and eastern views offer vistas of pine-covered mountains with no visible homes, while the southern view provides a breathtaking panorama of the San Francisco Bay, Mount Tamalpais in Marin, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Occasionally, the sunset reveals a glimpse of the ocean, 30 miles to the west, through a gap in the coastal foothills.
This winery is pleasant and makes you feel like you are at home. Decor was very casual and warm. Staff was generous with their pouring. We had some reds and sweet wines. The sweet wine with plum and chocolate notes was one of the best. Their sherry was also very good. We even had some homemade lemon marmalade with crackers.
As you take a walk through the vineyard with Charlie Barra, you’ll find yourself surrounded by 60 year old, craggily, grapevines that resemble the sunbaked hands of Charlie that has nurtured them. These hearty, twisted vines, located on the bench lands at the headwaters of the Russian River in Redwood Valley, CA, are the source of the superior organic fruit that goes into each bottle of wine.
Bodega del Sur is the culmination of a dream of Evelyn and Victor Reyes-Umana. Victor began his love affair with wine in his native El Salvador. Moving to California and later in life, traveling around the world, solidified his appreciation for wines and increased his curiosity for the various wine styles of the different regions of the world. While visiting some friends in Chile in 1993, Victor and Evelyn had the great opportunity to visit many of the small, family-owned wineries, and it was then that Victor uttered the fateful words, "This is what I would like to do when I retire".
Image - Randy Caparoso
This is a reallly pretty winery and lovely italian castle/mansion looking architecture, and really friendly staff and of course lots of cool racing pics all around and other art also.
Tony and Kimberly Kirk established Birdstone Winery with the goal of producing world-class wines from Madera-appellation grapes. A friends and family effort from the start, Birdstone’s winemaking team includes Tony, Kimberly and their sons Travis & Conner. It’s not uncommon to find Tony & Kim’s siblings, parents or friends behind the bar in the Tasting Room or helping to crush grapes during harvest.
The History of our founders and by extension our winery starts in Italy. Both of our founders, Ernest (Ernie) and Marie Fortino goes back to Italy where they were born. Marie emigrated from Sicily to the United States with her family at the age of eleven, while Ernie came to the United States at the age of 23 from Cosenza, in the region of Calabria.
Ernie met Marie in Santa Cruz, where their respective families were living. Ernie was immediately taken by Marie and gave her a promise ring while she was still in school, thus ensuring that she would not date anyone other than him. They married in Santa Cruz in 1964 and started their lives together. Ernie and Marie had two children (Gino and Teri) when they found and purchased a very run-down winery in Gilroy in 1970. As young newlyweds and immigrants, they had very modest means, however, they were able to purchase the building and the land surrounding it, thus beginning their legacy in the Santa Clara Valley.
