Amador/El Dorado Wines
When we left Tahoe, we decided to swing through Amador and El Dorado counties to try some of the wines of the Sierra foothills. This is a wine region that is off the beaten path, to say the least. Route 16, a winding back-country road, seems to be the main road you take to get around the area. Clusters of rustic houses pop up without warning and the towns in the area seem like throwbacks to the mid twentieth century.
To Americans used to Napa's ostentatious glitter, this might seem like an unusual setting for vineyards and wineries. But the region boasts some of California's oldest vines; wine has been produced here since the gold rush of 1849. The Zinfandels of the area are supposed to be particularly noteworthy. Melissa and I only got to visit two wineries, and we weren't exactly blown away. I've heard people say that the wines of the Sierra foothills have a distinctive terroir, born from the granite-rich soil and ancient vines, but we didn't get enough coverage to really come to a conclusion one way or the other about it.
Our first stop was Single Leaf, which sits at the end of a dusty driveway off of a back road. The winery looks like an upscale barn, and features a beautiful view of the winery's vineyards. When trying to decide which wineries to visit, I looked for wineries which described their wines as "estate-grown" and, ideally, "organic". The former implies a greater commitment to letting the terroir of the vine come through, as the grapes are from a small geographic area rather than being sourced from disperse vineyards. An estate-grown wine also suggests a very personal wine, or at the very least a control-freak wine maker who doesn't want grapes s/he hasn't personally shepherded to harvest. As for organic, do you want some unknown chemicals in your wine?
Single Leaf produces a number of different wines. A Cabernet Franc, Merlot, some table wines, and the ubiquitous Zinfandel. They even make a Zinfandel port which Melissa described correctly as saying that it's an accessible, easy to drink port. There wasn't anything that made us want to buy several cases, but we did leave with a bottle of the port and a bottle of their Signature Red table wine, a nicely balanced, fruity wine.
Given that it was a hot Sunday on a three-day weekend, we were surprised when two other couples came in for tastings. To Melissa and me, it seemed like a remote location. Both were more or less from the area, and had numerous recommendations for us, none of which we actually followed because of time constraints. But everyone nodded knowingly when we said we were going to Sobon in nearby Amador county; it's a well-known name from the region.
Both Sobon and nearby Shenandoah Vineyards are run by the same family, but the two labels have different markets. In the words of the woman pouring for us, Sobon is the one you might find in a wine shop, Shenandoah the one you might find in the supermarket.
I was fond of a number of their wines, including their 2001 Rocky Top Zinfandel and their 2001 Fiddletown Zinfandel. Fiddletown is a smaller appelation within the larger Amador County region. The Rocky Top had plum and smoke flavors, and sharp tannins that still let the fruit come through. It seems like a wine which will age well. The Fiddletown was more fruity with a vanilla character on the finish. The tannins were milder in this wine. We had to limit ourselves somewhat, so we bought a bottle of the Rocky Top. I found their reserve wines to have very gritty tannins, almost as if someone had mixed some sand into the wine. Not a style to my liking. We also left with a bottle of their Orange Muscat, which was a nice representative of the breed, and certainly well-priced.
Sobon is proud of the region's history; they have a small museum on the grounds which collects a number of regional antiques that help shed light on life in the mid 19th century. They also have specific sections devoted to winemaking artifacts.
A number of people swear by the wines of the Sierra foothills, but I was underwhelmed by my admittedly cursory exploration. Still, it's a region I'd be willing to explore in greater depth. The ancient vines and granite soil offer a lot of possibilities to my mind.
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