San Diego County Wineries ?

Any places in SD County worth visiting for their wine? Will be staying in Rancho Bernardo area this weekend. Thank you.

Nothing worthwhile. Check out abnormal beer co. It’s a restaurant with a great tap list. They brew pretty good beer and make decent wine. It’s in rancho

Pali has a tasting room in Little Italy. Orfilia has a decent sized tasting room in Escondido towards the Safari Park. We have some friends that are members there. They’re getting better, but I’m not a buyer yet.

Check out Vesper and J. Brix, both in Escondido - I’ve had very nice wines from both. They’re both on the natural wine side of the spectrum with very clean and interesting bottlings. You’ll probably need appointments for both of them, though. I’ve heard some good things about Los Pilares but never tasted their wines. Read a little about Charlie & Echo Winery and they look kind of interesting but I know nothing about them other than that. Looks like both Los Pilares and Charlie & Echo are in San Diego.

Thanks guys. Looks like the Mira Mesa wine ghetto is on the list for later today. Several alcohol producers there including Los Pilates and Charlie & Echo. Most of their wines are from grapes regionally grown.

Looking forward to hearing your impressions of these places, Gary. I’ve never been tasting down that way but may be heading there sometime this year.

Lived in SD for a few years and tried a number of the wineries there and in Ramona and Temecula. They make a lot of money selling to bachelorette parties so there’s not great wine made. There are a few people who truck it in from SB or Sonoma and even WA, but that never made a lot of sense to me. There is however, a huge craft beer movement and most of those places have food trucks outside if they’re not serving inside and you can have a really interesting time exploring some of the beers.

I can’t say that I know a lot about the San Diego wine scene, but I’ve gotten the feeling that this is changing there (though maybe not so much in Temecula?). That’s just based on the few SD-area wines I’ve tasted at events in the Bay Area and talking with the winemakers there. Definitely making me curious about checking out the wines from the area.

We made a visit to Charlie and Echo yesterday afternoon. They are nestled on the backside of a small industrial park in Mira Mesa with other alcohol producers(breweries and sake producer). A couple of years back the owners of C & E produced conventional wines under the Vinavanti label. The transition to C & E marks a change to producing natural wines. In their facility they act as winemakers for Los Pilares wines as well. The owners, Clare and Eric, are super nice and hardworking towards their wine vision. All wines are made from SD county grapes on contract to them. They have the grapes picked on the early side to retain a solid acid backbone and reduced final alcohol %. Their fermentation and handling techniques also leads to nice aromatics for most wines. The wines are almost split equally between still and sparkling(pet-nat) with a couple of sweet wines. I personally like the wine style direction they are moving into and having commitment to SD grown grapes. Having not tasted wines from other vintages it’s hard to say what changes there are from vintage to vintage. Since they are asking for early harvests to meet the laser focus and purity their wines have I like the aromatics and acid retention in the 10 wines tasted. What is missing with some wines is sufficient fruit to balance with acidity. In upcoming vintages I hope they can retain what they have and increase the fruit flavors. This is no small feat with warm climate grapes but I think better years are ahead for the Charlie & Echo and Los Pilares wines. The owners seem committed to quality wine production. Do stop by and taste their wines. Terrific owners.

I understand they have the best beer scene in the country, and that’s from someone living in Beervanna with a brew pub on every block.

+1 on J. Brix, really love their wines.

And check out Cougar winery. The problem is that the inland regions are really hot and the coast areas are too expensive for agriculture. So they need to find grapes that will work. There are a lot of places with Merlot, Cab, Syrah and Chardonnay. It’s too hot for the latter two and the first two just don’t belong everyplace. Better would be to look at some Portuguese grapes or some Italian or Spanish. Cougar does only Italian grapes and they’re doing a decent job with some of them. Price-wise, they’re not competitive with Italy but they’re on the right track IMO.

How about Baja? Wife brought back a Nebbiollo from a trip. I’m not familiar where the vineyards are located in Baja.

Guessing the Nebbiolo was from Bichi Wines? They’re located in Tecate, which I believe is just south of the border from some of the San Diego County vineyards. They’ve worked together with noted Chilean vintner Louis-Antoine Luyt on at least some of their wines. I’ve had some good wines from Bichi but found them to be rather hit-and-miss overall.

Thanks for the detailed review, Gary! I will definitely check out Charlie & Echo as well as Los Pilares if I do make it to the San Diego area this year.

2014 L.A. Cetto Nebbiolo Reserva Privada Valle de Guadalupe; going to wait a few years to drink it, like maybe 6.

Thanks for the info, Dennis - didn’t realize anyone else in Baja was making Nebbiolo. Valle de Guadalupe is a little farther south of the border but not too far -it’s just north of Ensenada.

I visited a few San Diego County wineries last weekend, and thought that there is some really interesting work being done there. In particular, the wines from j. brix and Vesper (the two producers share an urban wine facility in Escondido) and from Los Pilares and Charlie & Echo (they share another urban winery space in Mira Mar) were really good, and quite affordable too. All on the natural wine side of the spectrum but overall very clean winemaking. Some cool wines from these four producers, largely from San Diego County fruit - gotta love a place (Charlie & Echo) trying something as off the wall as a pét-nat rosé from old vine Flame Tokay, and pulling it off. Los Pilares is planting a new vineyard at pretty high elevation for California (about 3,500 ft.) about a 90 minute drive to the east - unfortunately I didn’t have time to visit it but I’d love to check it out in the future.

Alysha Stehly and Chris Broomell of Vesper

Grape Radio’s Jay Selman (left) with Michael Christian of Los Pilares and Eric Van Drunen of Charlie & Echo