I’ve always been puzzled as to why San Francisco lacks tasting rooms. There are a plethora of wine bars in every neighborhood in SF- I like to frequent Blush in the Castro, and Hotel Biron in Hayes Valley. That being said, it would be nice to have the winery experience right here in the city, and get the chance to do tastings and buy wines directly from the producer, rather than schlepping all the way to Napa. I’m a Santa Cruz native and we have an awesome urban winery area a little outside of downtown- Surf City Vintners hosts no fewer than a dozen tasting rooms featuring local Santa Cruz wines.
I had heard there were a few urban wineries in the Jack London Square area of Oakland, and decided to head over on BART on a sunny Friday to meet my friend L* and check out a couple tasting rooms. We ended up at Dashe Cellars and met the winemaker, Michael Dashe, as well as the lovely woman working in the tasting room.
I tried a flight of most of the wines in the Dashe portfolio, and ended up picking up a bottle of the 2011 Grenache Les Enfants Terribles, Dry Creek Valley. It was a fairly light Grenache, which ended up being perfect for the hot summer day it was. From a flavor perspective, it had a fair amount of ripe red fruit, and some hints of spice. It reminded me of some of the great french wines I’ve had- unlike a lot of California grenaches, it was not over oaked or bursting with fruit, and was pretty light bodied. The woman in the tasting room said that they had tried to make the wine in a Beaujolais style and had used french oak; so it was made in more of an Old World style.
Dashe shared a tasting room with JC Cellars, so we figured we would check it out as well since it was right there. JC Cellars produces the majority of their wines in Oakland and did not have a tasting room up in Napa/Sonoma, unlike Dashe which boasts a tasting room in Dry Creek. I especially liked their 2011 Rose – which was light and refreshing on a hot day, with hints of strawberry and spice. I picked up a bottle of that to have with dinner. Before we took off, we took a look at the production area itself and were particularly charmed by the shape of this particular barrel .
In any case, I’ll be back to Oakland to try some more urban wineries- apparently there are about 10-15 in the area so I plan to spend a few more days sampling all the area has to offer.
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