Esther Mobley: The 52 California Wineries to Visit in 2019

Good list!

Interesting list, no Foothill mentions though.

Yep. A huge hole in the list. It is easy to pick six wineries from Amador and El Dorado alone not to mention Lodi and Calaveras among others.

And no wineries south of SLO - I guess we don’t count down here . . .

Cheers

More of a north California focus in this SF paper?

The opening part of the article mentioned “Here at The Press, our team of wine experts has been busy visiting tasting rooms from Mendocino County to Paso Robles…”

I suspect that because this is from a San Francisco-based publication, they intentionally limited the geographic scope of places they visited, maybe looking only at regions you could easily visit from the Bay Area on a day-trip or on a weekend. In that context, it makes the omission of anything south of Paso Robles more understandable, but Sierra Foothills wineries in El Dorado and Amador counties are a shorter drive from much of the Bay Area than Paso is. Perhaps they’ve just never bothered visiting and writing about them.

Ken, my understanding is that their geographic coverage is the result of a North CA focus and that they just expanded that focus to include Paso this year.

Amador/Foothills would have been nice. Next year?

Thanks for the clarification, Mike. I read some features on The Press from time to time, but not on a regular basis so I wasn’t really aware of the limits of the area they cover but it makes sense.

Reading the intro to the article clarifies the limited geographic area that’s covered, but the title is still somewhat misleading since a number of excellent California wine regions are omitted.

And…gasp…none from Temecula!! Absolutely shocking!!
It does seem a rather shallow list to me.
Tom

They didn’t include San Francisco wineries. What an outrage!

-Al

LOL! It should have been “152 California Wineries to Visit in 2019” and included Oregon border to the Mexican border.

Looks like an interesting list to me.

Here’s my point:

The title should have read 52 Wineries To Visit Within an Easy Drive of SF

The Chronicle is a paper that is read on a much wider basis than those just in the Bay Area as is evidenced by Esther’s popularity on this board and others.

Just my $.02 . . .

If the LA Times were to right something, I would expect their choices to be ‘regional’ in nature as well but title it as such

Cheers

It’s nice to be included. It was also nice to have our wines referred to as ‘among the most exciting wines in California right now’. It’s been a good month for us in the Chronicle. There are several locally I would have liked to have noticed as well, but with only 52 chosen, several are going to be left out. Overall, I thought it was a very balanced and high quality list of places providing the best experiences and wines in tasting rooms right now with the exclusion of places like Santa Barbara and Amador. Maybe you can give us your top five in Santa Barbara, Larry?

Nice article. Some good leads for a trip we’re planning in March.

or just omit the word “The” in the title

Ian,

Congrats on being included - and it’s nice to see someone cover Santa Cruz Mountain vyds and the surrounding areas!

To me, there is often a big ‘distinction’ between tasting room experiences and ‘best wines’ in a region. Most smaller producers making top notch juice do not have ‘beautiful’ tasting rooms but instead have smaller places just to have somewhere to get their wines out there!

Too many in our area to name the ‘top 5’, but in terms of tasting room ‘visits’, I would put Presquile, Pence, perhaps Brick Barn though I have not been yet, Grassini (private appt necessary), Brave and Maiden (again Private appt necessary), Sunstone, Fess Parker, Demetria. All of these are ‘beautiful estates’ with nice settings. Some of them produce exemplary wines - others, not so much so . . .

Hope that helps.

Cheers.

Nice list.

From her article today:

Many of you have asked: Why doesn’t this list of 52 include Santa Barbara? Or Lodi? Or Amador, El Dorado and Calaveras counties — the Sierra foothills? Be assured that coverage of those regions (and others) is coming. When we launch coverage of a new region on The Press, it represents many months of research, reporting and writing, and we’re currently hard at work expanding our editorial arm into new corners of California. This year’s list pulls only from the regions where we’ve already done our homework. (Speaking of which, check back on Jan. 20 for our full launch of our Paso Robles reviews!)

-Al