Passport Day

Diane and I are back from Passport Day in Aptos. Three wineries visited, six wines acquired:

• Pleasant Valley Vineyards – a beautiful backyard winery (well, it’s a 5-acre backyard) with an amazing stand of redwood trees. The wines were rather pricey (mostly north of $40), but quite tasty. They specialize in Pinot Noirs, which were very drinkable, but we really liked their Syrah and Zin, both of which were on the spicy side; we bought one bottle of the 2009 “Sean Boyle” Syrah, which will go well with a well-spiced steak.
• Nicholson Vineyards – this was a slightly larger operation than Pleasant Valley, but still small and friendly. Their wines are made for drinking fairly soon and were considerably less expensive than Pleasant Valley. I wrote my tasting notes on their order form, which I seem to have left with them, so I’ll just list the wines we chose to purchase:
  • 2010 Estate Chardonnay
  • 2010 Pinot Noir Cuvee
  • 2010 TC Vineyard Old Vine Zinfandel
  • 2008 Sierra Foothills Cabernet Sauvignon
• Finally, we visited Alfaro Family Vineyards, an even larger operation than Nicholson (they sold wines under three different labels, in fact). They had seven wines available for tasting, but we decided, in the interest of safety, to skip the Chardonnays; all of the wines were interesting, but we only picked up the Corralitos 2012 Syrah, which was pleasantly spicy, with a long finish and a relatively low price (hmm, I guess I can’t bring this one to a party now that I’ve written that!).

Three wineries in the space of 2.5 hours is a pretty brisk pace, and I’m sure I didn’t do Alfaro justice – I guess we’ll have to return.