Wine Tasting Amador

This weekend was spent entertaining Vera's best friend, Jason, from Half Moon Bay. If we lived in Half Moon Bay, I doubt we'd leave to spend a weekend with Amador County hill people...but Jason did and we all enjoyed his visit. For one thing, it provided an opportunity to wine taste in the Shenandoah Valley outside Plymouth. However, before we started our wine tasting, we enjoyed lunch at the Sutter Hill Transit Center. We've admired the Amador Transit building for several years and had no idea it offered a beautiful spot for picnics amongst the oak trees and overlooking the Allen Ranch until Vera suggested we eat there. The spot held special significance for her as it was originally part of her family's ranch and she spent time there as a child. Lunch was simple, but tasty, and a good start to the next several hours spent tasting wines at five of Amador's best (that's probably debatable, but their walls were covered with several first-place ribbons).

We started our tour at the C. G. Di Arie Vineyard & Winery where we bought six bottles of their 200 Primitivo. They gave us our purchase in a case box so the next few hours was spent buying wine at each of our subsequent stops with the goal to fill it. You'll be happy to know we were successful! The winemaker and owner of Di Arie has an impressive background in food science and is spending his golden years developing world class wines here in Amador. Lucky us! We'll be going back to enjoy more of his creations. From there we went to Cooper Vineyards, a family owned winery established about ten years ago. Our third stop and one Verne and I were anxious to make was Sobon Estate. At the recommendation of a stranger we met at the Safeway wine aisle last year, we started drinking Sobon 2010 Fiddletown Zin. We loved it! The newest selection on the tasting menu was their 2011 Fiddletown Zin and it was equal to the prior year. We left with a bottle along with a Zinfandel Port. We next went to Vera's favorite, Charles Spinetta Winery and Wildlife Art Gallery. Vera and I tried every sweet wine on their tasting list and then walked the art gallery upstairs. It's a beautiful winery and worth a trip just to see the wildlife art used for their labels. 

Our final stop was a sister winery to Sobon, Shenandoah Vineyards. We lucked out as they were having a textile show... right up my alley. We walked the two rooms of art quilts and clothing, tasted a couple of their reserve wines, and walked out with a bottle of ReZerve Tannat, thus reaching our goal to fill our 12-bottle case.

Verne and I left Vera and Jason in Sutter Creek to explore and we went home to prepare for dinner (and nap). What did we have planned for our special guest? A pizza party!!! Years ago when all the kids were young (his, mine, and ours) we came up with a couple of kid-friendly meals that had something for everyone. One of them was individual pizzas and the other taco potatoes. I'll cover taco potatoes in another post. Our original recipe for individual pizzas came from Bon Appetit. We would make the pizza dough ahead, mise en place all the toppings, gather the family around our kitchen island, and each make our own personal pizza. We could always count on Jeff piling the toppings high! Over the years our dough changed with new recipes we'd read and try with our most recent favorite being a no-knead dough that uses very little yeast and rests on the counter at room temperature for 18 hours. It's so easy and the taste and texture is excellent. We make it ahead and freeze it for those evenings we have a hankering for pizza (actually, we most often just drive to Pine Grove Pizza and enjoy the best pizza in Amador County). Our toppings include a few of the old favorites (pepperoni, sausage, and green bell pepper) as well as a few new and slightly more gourmet toppings. One of my favorite combinations is garlic-olive oil, fontina cheese, prosciutto, and parsley.

We finished our meal last night with individual lemon meringue pies, also to be covered in a later post. Verne calls them "pies of the hand"(it has some obscure reference to the movie Witness). They were delicious and a sweet way to end a great day with friends!