Preston (3.88)

https://www.prestonvineyards.com/

Open: 11:00am-4:30pm

Appt required? No

Last barlinwine.com visit: 2011

Directions:

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Tasting:

Oink! Welcome to the farm! The Preston winery and tasting room sits on the northern end of Dry Creek Valley. Visitors follow a long gravel drive through the vineyards before arriving at a parking lot. To one side sits a large building with an adjacent picnic ground which houses the tasting room and winemaking facility. Across the parking lot from the facility are animal pens with extra-friendly pigs who will oink their way up to the fence to greet you as you exit your car. What a bizarre start to a visit!

In we went to start our tasting at the medium-sized bar. In addition to some pretty good wine, Preston also makes their own olive oil and serves it in the tasting room with fresh-baked bread. We tried four wines on our visit: a Mourvedre, Zinfandel, Syrah, and blend of Syrah and Petite Sirah, inventively called..."Syrah-Sirah". Nothing blew my socks off, but the Zinfandel was good enough to warrant a trip home to the Barlin household. Overall, this is a good spot for a pig lover and maybe a picnic (I hear the house-cured bacon is fantastic and fresh)…but otherwise nothing remarkable. Probably best to pass.

Recommended wine: Nothing stood out as a recommendation, but the Zinfandel was our favorite of what we tried.

Ratings (out of 5):

WINE	3.50	TASTING ROOM	4.25
ATMOSPHERE	4.00	VALUE	3.75
OVERALL		3.88

Landmark (4.25)

http://www.landmarkwine.com/

Open: 10:00am-4:30pm

Appt required? No

Last barlinwine.com visit: 2007

Directions:

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Tasting:

The Landmark tasting room is nestled in between the busier sections (downtown Sonoma and Santa Rosa of an already less-busy-than-Napa Sonoma Valley makes it a laid back tasting experience. When we visited, there was just one person working the tasting room and we were the only people there for almost our entire tasting.

The tasting is straightforward, and the only knock is that they sell out of their wines quite quickly! With only a few to taste, it's a bummer when their top Pinot Noir isn't available to try. Landmark makes Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, a single Syrah (the Steel Plow Syrah), and sometimes a Grenache. The Pinot Noirs are particularly good. We have picnicked and "bocce'd" at Landmark, and they are very welcoming and accommodating to visitors. The picnic area is tucked in among the vines behind the tasting room, complete with the obligatory metal animal sculpture (at this location it was a rooster).

This is a good picnic stop on your way to or from downtown Sonoma (with a Sonoma Cheese Factory sandwich, perhaps?). Go early in the year so you can still get some Grand Detour in 750ml bottles!

Recommended wine: The Grand Detour Pinot Noir was one of the better Pinots I tasted on my last trip. Unfortunately, both times I have been to the winery, they have been sold out of this in anything but the 1.5L format.

Ratings (out of 5):

WINE	4.00	TASTING ROOM	4.25
ATMOSPHERE	4.50	VALUE	4.25
OVERALL		4.25

Sherwin Family (4.75)

http://www.sherwinfamilyvineyards.com/

Open: By appointment

Appt required? Yes

Last barlinwine.com visit: 2013

Directions:

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Tasting:

I had not heard of Sherwin Vineyards before I started planning my 2011 day on Spring Mountain, and I never expected to discover what I did. Sherwin was my “fill-in” tasting, conveniently located in between two spots I knew I wanted to hit (Pride and Barnett). I had hopes for a nice smaller winery we could relax at before finishing our day at Barnett, and I found that and then some.

The Sherwin tasting room is in what looks by all accounts to be a home. There is a kitchen, and I believe I saw a bedroom made up. The house backs up to a beautiful porch overlooking a large pond. As the only two guests at our 2pm tasting, we had the pick of spots at which to try Sherwin wines, and Stephanie and I selected a shaded patio table with large cushioned chairs near their outdoor fireplace. We asked if we could have our lunch while we tasted and were told that of course this would be fine.



Sherwin Winery has 3 employees: the owner (and winemaker) Steve Sherwin and his wife, plus Donna, who runs hospitality and hosted our tasting. Sherwin uses Mike Hirby as a winemaking consultant, and Donna started us with a pour of a chardonnay that the Mike had made for himself and Sherwin had purchased a few bottles of. As we ate sandwiches from Dean and Deluca, we moved on to try Sherwin’s “Cellar Scraps” wine, a blend that they produce each year. This was quite good, but couldn’t prepare us for the Sherwin 2007 Cabernet, possibly my favorite wine of the day.

We noticed that all of the bottles had wax tops, and Donna explained that when the winery was just starting out, the Sherwins wanted a way to distinguish themselves and so they decided to hand-dip all of the bottles. The winery is still quite small, but much larger than it was in those days, but they now spend (with Donna’s help) 2-3 weeks hand dipping each year’s wines. The extra personal touch is indicative of the type of relationship Sherwin likes to have with its customers.



We finished the tasting with a very good Syrah. My only surprise was the order sheet – I expected given the size of the winery that the prices would have been a bit more favorable, but the Cellar Scraps was listed at $55, the Cabernet at $90, and the Syrah at $70. While I think the wines were probably worth the price, they certainly weren’t underpriced by any means, and I likely would have taken more with me if they were more what I expected ($45 and $65 for the Cellar Scraps and Cabernet, respectively). Aside from the slightly expensive on wine, everything else about the tasting was great.

Recommended wine:The 2007 Sherwin Cabernet was outstanding -- one of the better wines of the trip. The Cellar Scraps was also very good.

Ratings (out of 5):

WINE	5.00	TASTING ROOM	5.00
ATMOSPHERE	5.00	VALUE	4.00
OVERALL		4.69

Matanzas Creek (4.19)

http://www.matanzascreek.com/

Open: 10:00am-4:30pm

Appt required? No

Last barlinwine.com visit: 2009

Directions:

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Tasting:

What a hike it is to get to Matanzas Creek! Coming from Napa, there is no easy way to reach the winery, and so a series of winding roads get you over the mountains and eventually to the property. The tasting room is nestled on a hillside and surround by lavender gardens. Visitors walk up a gravel-strewn path that acts as a drawbridge across the moat the purple bushes.

Tasting at Matanzas Creek is straightforward. They make the varietals most commonly found in Northern California: Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, PInot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay. Their wines are attractively priced -- nothing is over $40 -- but the wines are also not overly memorable. On our visit, my longtime friend Elisa was pouring in the tasting room, and so it's hard to judge what a regular walk-in tasting would be like, but the vibe in the tasting room was generally relaxed. Picnic tables are available for shaded lunches overlooking the beautiful grounds.

Overall, my advice would be to head to Matanzas Creek if you're a) coming from Santa Rosa (it's too hard to get to from Napa), b) tasting with people new to wine tasting that will appreciate the grounds, or c) just looking for a nice, out-of-the-way place to have a standard tasting and a relaxing picnic lunch. For the deeper connoisseurs, the wine is not exciting enough to make this a regular stop.

Recommended wine: The Chardonnay and Syrah were my favorites, but not overly memorable.

Ratings (out of 5):

WINE	3.25	TASTING ROOM	4.75
ATMOSPHERE	4.50	VALUE	4.25
OVERALL		4.19