California Baseball: Day 15
Temecula Wineries
I first visited the Temecula Valley in the early 1990s, when my wife Marianne and I were still living in San Diego. On our way north on that initial weekend foray, the timing belt on my Nissan Sentra snapped on Interstate 15, just before the Riverside County line. We coasted to a stop, out of the way, but with a whole new set of plans for the day. We would need to get it fixed, which meant staying overnight in Temecula.
What some might see as a curse, others embrace as a blessing, especially if it means tasting more wine. We visited a few of the valley wineries via taxi and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The attractive, verdant, rural valley, so different than anything in San Diego, felt like a real getaway destination. We returned to Temecula several times in the next few years, and here I will be man enough to admit that, yes, that included going to a Dave Koz concert at Culbertson Winery (now Thornton Winery).
Modern winemaking came to the Temecula Valley in the late 1960s. One of the first vineyards was planted at what is now Mount Palomar Winery, whose owner, Peter Poole, had been a pioneer in UHF television and FM radio broadcasting. In 1974, the first winery was established by Eli Calloway Jr., creator of Calloway Golf.
That same year, Joe and Nancy Hart planted their first acre at what would become Hart Winery. Today, the estate includes 8 ½ acres planted with Rhône and Bordeaux grapes: Syrah, Viognier, Roussanne, Sauvignon Blanc, and Cabernet Franc, plus a bit of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The Temecula Valley is particularly suited to growing Rhône varietals and other grapes from the Mediterranean, such as Sangiovese and Montepulciano from Italy, Zinfandel from Croatia, and Tempranillo from Spain. The climate here is similar to those sunny spots – cool, misty mornings followed by warm, dry afternoons and cooling Ocean breezes late in the day.
We had enjoyed Hart wines all those years ago, so I made it my first stop on a morning mini-tour of Temecula Valley. I was thrilled to find Joe Hart himself in the tasting room. Although he has passed the winemaking duties on to his son, Jim, Joe remains very much involved in the operation. And because I had arrived fairly early in the morning, before respectable people begin their day-drinking, we were able to have a nice chat as I sipped Sangiovese, Barbera, and Mourvèdre. I discovered that Hart had also graduated from San Diego State, and that we had both made big changes in our early careers — his from teaching in San Diego to winemaking in Temecula, mine from journalism in San Diego to user experience design in the Silicon Valley.
Hart remains a small-scale winery, producing about 4,000 cases per year. But the valley itself has expanded quite a bit since Hart opened its doors. It now supports more than 40 wineries, some of which are very much large-scale enterprises. I drove a little further east under a cloudy, “June gloom” sky — typical this time of year in Southern California — to one of these bigger operations, Wilson Creek Winery.
Wilson Creek has a massive tasting room and gift shop, plus a restaurant, gardens and courtyard. It produces about 75,000 cases per year and receives some 1,500 visitors each weekend. Opened in 2000, the sprawling facility hosts weddings, private events, and concerts. Quite apart from the quiet, contemplative atmosphere at Hart, Wilson Creek was buzzing with people, elbow-to-elbow at the tasting-room counter. I tried a selection of nice Zinfandels and red Bordeaux wines before escaping the clamor for the serene courtyard and surrounding vineyards of the estate.
I had selected Wilson Creek as a place to stop not only because of its high ratings, but because the restaurant featured one of my very favorite things: a Reuben sandwich. I enjoyed a tasty early lunch on the edge of the courtyard, watching giddy gaggles of guests giggling from grapes.
Attracted by the “Big Reds” sign out front, I made my last stop at Wiens Family Cellars, another modern estate that opened in 2006, three years after original winemaker Doug Wiens moved his vineyards from the Sacramento area to Temecula Valley. Producing about 9,000 cases per year, Wiens is truly a family operation — one Wiens brother designed the facility, two other brothers are responsible for financials and engineering, and now second-generation Joe Wiens does the winemaking.
The big reds were indeed big. In the attractive Wiens tasting room — decorated with with wooden beams, mahogany bars and a huge marble fireplace — I enjoyed a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Zinfandel, and a few big-red blends. One of these was the aptly named “Crowded” bottling, which included eight different grapes in the 2017 vintage that I tasted but in 2018 featured a whopping 11 different grape varietals: Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Sangiovese, Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Grenache, Malbec, Dolcetto, Mourvèdre, Petit Verdot, and Primitivo.
As the Temecula Valley wine region has continued to mature and diversify — from early experiments producing inconsistent results to showcasing novel varietals in some of the best wines California has to offer — it has received growing acclaim. In 2019, Wine Enthusiast magazine declared Temecula one of the top 10 wine travel destinations in the world, and The Boston Globe called it “the next Napa Valley.” After a long absence, I found it full of the same charm and good wine that attracted us to Temecula nearly 30 years ago.
And psst — Jim Hart believes the 2019 vintage may be the best in a decade.