McGill

There are 'must-sees' and there are 'must-tastes'
Wine country is definitely a 'must-taste' for us!

Being in California, we had to add another wine tour to our list.

Booked with 'Edge of the World' Tours. We didn't go to there but it was definitely an experience. Made even more special by our guide Anthony aka Nino Firetto - a very colourful character.

Anthony/Nino not known to the non-English/British world but famous for ITV children programs, music shows (e.g. ITV Music box), some movies, DJ-ing in lots of countries/cities. He still has his own radio show that he records.
He definitely had lots of stories to tell not least the one where he and his wife were gate crashing the closing down party of the studio where Fleetwood Mac recorded 'Rumours'.

But back to the wine tasting ...
We visited three boutique wineries (less than 5000 cases a year) in Sonoma. All three with different approaches to winemaking and style.

Homewood Wines - we thought the wines were ok but nothing special. But Steve, the guy who took us through the tasting, comes from Portsmouth (UK) of all places. You might just be able to imagine the banter going on between him and Fergus, especially around Pompey.

The wines at Peter Cellars (not the Pink Panther) - a winery managed by another English guy - were our absolute favourites. Peter received several double Gold (awarded when all of the 100 judges vote for the wine), Gold (about 80%+ of the judges agree) and multiple Silver medals for his wines.
The wines were truly fantastic and we would have taken home any of them. Sadly the prices did put us off.
Very relaxing time at the winery and totally enjoyed being able to talk with the winemaker himself.
Rather hilarious that his dogs are called Harry, Meghan and Archie.

Lastly we visited Séamus, a winery/tasting room under the leadership of an Irish guy. Wines were good but nothing special to our taste. Unless you are prepared to pay 70 dollars for a bottle which I have to say, some of our party did!!

So just a couple of titbits at the end
👆Do you know the 5 S's to wine tasting - Sight, Swirl, Sniff, Sip and Savour?
Well, I only learned the 5 S's of Lean - Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardise and Sustain.
Seems I still need to calibrate my mind 😂 🤣🤣
👆Sonoma is the oldest of the two wine growing areas. It ultimately started with monks needing wine for Holy Communion. The monks imported vines from Europe, e.g. Zinfandel originating from a small village in Croatia (proven by DNA testing).
And curiously enough, Zinfandel and Primitivo are virtually the same grape as they are both cloned from the same original from Croatia. Can you believe this?
👆The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, also known as the Judgement of Paris, was a wine competition in which French judges carried out two blind tastings comparing French and Californian wine.
To the disgust of the French winemakers, out of the top 10 wines 6 came from California.
A re-tasting competition in 2006 the win of Californian wines was confirmed again.

Think that explains, why we are not so impressed by French wines 😉Read more