A Weekend in Temecula

For Christmas the last couple years, I have looked for more experiential gifts for my mom. In 2017, I bought a mini plan for the 2018 season at the Pantages and in 2018 I bought her tickets to see one of her favorite Christian bands, MercyMe, in San Diego in 2019. I wanted to keep that tradition going this past Christmas so I started looking for ideas. There were a couple cool shows at the Pantages but not enough to justify the cost of a mini plan (although I AM taking her and my aunt to see Hamilton… yay!). And for some reason none of the concerts were screaming out to me. And then I just happened to go on the website of Wiens Family Cellars (one of the wineries I am member of) to look up some shipment information and figured I’d check out what events they had coming up, and that’s when I saw the perfect idea! They were having a wine blending event. How fun is that? My mom was super stoked about the idea, too.

The event was at 7pm on Saturday, January 18, so we knew after probably 3 or 4 hours of wine blending and tasting, we wouldn’t want to drive back to the San Gabriel Valley so we decided to look into staying in Temecula. It just so happens that Wiens is right next to Ponte Winery, which is another wine club I belong to, and they have an inn that I have heard great things about, so we decided to look into staying there. As it turns out, they had a special for wine club members, where if you stayed two nights, you got a bottle of wine and a $100 gift card. Score!

We ended up checking in Friday night, after a LONG day of work (including staying later than I intended because of some projects I needed to take care of) and Friday night (of a long weekend) traffic. Guys… this hotel is wonderful! As we checked in they offered us glasses of the winery’s sparking wine and then, thanks to the special, they had a nice bottle of red wine waiting for us in the room… which we cracked open that night to enjoy by one of the fire pits on the property.

   

On Saturday, we decided to take it easy for a couple hours in the morning since my mom and I are both early risers… we are often up by 7/7:30 at the latest. And for some reason that day my body decided it need to be up at like 6:00 am. Whelp, might as well watch the sunrise, right? And the view from the room meant a pretty spectacular sunrise. We even saw a hot air balloon over the vineyard. How cool is that?

         

After some relaxation, we ventured over to the property’s restaurant, Bouquet. They had a la carte breakfast/brunch items and an option for a breakfast buffet. We elected the a la carte option that day. We started with some Bellinis and coffee. I went with the pork hash (pork belly with potatoes, poached eggs, and lemon hollandaise), while my mom went with the French toast (brioche with caramelized apples, bananas, and candied walnuts). Both were absolutely delicious!

   

While eating breakfast, we decided to plan what wineries we wanted to visit that day. We ended up going to three, including two new ones.

For our first stop we decided to check out Oak Mountain, one we have been wanting to check out because it has a wine cave… the only wine cave in Southern California! Even though we didn’t have reservations, we were able to sign up for one of their tours. The tour was super interesting. They gave a little bit on the history of wine in Temecula and the history of Oak Mountain itself; some information on the growing, harvesting, and fermentation of wine; information on the cave itself and the barrels in the cave; and finally, a wine tasting. They had some pretty good wines at this place… easy to drink and affordable for the most part. I wouldn’t say there were the BEST wines but I would buy them for a party and I would definitely recommend doing the tour to anyone who is interested in wine.

    

Our next stop was a place called Vitagliano Winery, a gorgeous property that started out as a wedding venue and expanded into a wine operation as well. The atmosphere here was great, with lots of people sitting on the lawn, listening to music, while others sat at various fire pits. I will say that in terms of the wine, I think they could definitely use a little more time. We ended up finding a couple we liked enough to buy bottles of, but others definitely needed some more time. I think in a couple years, they will be a great winery though.

    

After Vitagliano, we headed back to the hotel to rest a bit before heading over to Wiens. We decided to do one last tasting there before the wine blending thing. Wiens is one of my favorite wineries. They have a pretty extensive selection and are constantly releasing new options. Their staff is always super helpful, especially in the members’ only barrel room. I would definitely recommend coming to this one if you’re in Temecula!

The tasting room closed about an hour before the blending event, which is nice because it gave us time to let some of the wine we already had wear off a bit. The event started at 7 and included some light appetizers (cheese, meats, and crackers, plus a couple passed hors d’oeuvres like chicken skewers and some beef sliders). The way the blending itself worked was that they poured five of their wines and told you which five they poured, but didn’t tell you which was which. The five they poured were their Refugio cabernet sauvignon, a sangiovese, a Mourvèdre, their Refugio malbec, and their reserve tempranillo. The presenter was one of the owners and he walked you through tasting them and gave you tasting notes on each of the varietals he had picked… if you were able to correctly guess all five, you got a prize. I did not win. But that really was just a side thing anyway. The main idea was to taste the wines and decide what proportions you wanted to use of each to make up your blend. If you liked wine A the most, you could use more of that and then play with amounts from there. Once you decided which you liked best and your percentages, you poured those into 75 ml beakers. Yes, they expected you to do math (and math has never been my strong suit, even on a good day, let alone after drinking wine all day). So for instance, wine C (which ended up being the sangiovese) was favorite and I wanted that to make up 35% of my blend, so I did roughly 26 ml of that one. Next was the tempranillo (25%), Mourvèdre (20%), malbec (15%), and the cabernet sauvignon (5%). One your beaker was filled, they had you taste it and if you were satisfied, they had you do even more math and figure out the proportions for the bottle. Luckily all you had to do was multiply your previous ml by ten, since the bottle is 750 ml. Then you’d go to the five stations they had set up and you would pour in the correct amount. Once you were done, you even got to press down the cork with the cool cork contraption! The presenter did recommend letting it age for at least six months so I’ll report back toward the end of the year when we open it and let you know how we did!

   

I’m going to be honest, I am not sure how I wasn’t slightly hungover Sunday morning. We drank a LOT of wine Saturday, definitely did not drink enough water, and really didn’t have much food after breakfast aside from some nibbles of cheese and crackers here and there.

We had liked the food at Bouquet so much the day before we decided to back, and this time we tried their breakfast bar. Most of the food was your usual breakfast buffet food: some eggs, pastries, bagels, bacon, and sausage… it was really good quality though. But my favorite was definitely the chilaquiles. I definitely went back for seconds on those. Before heading home, we decided to do a couple more wine tastings.

We started off at Ponte, since we were at the property anyway. Not only do they have really good wine, Ponte has some of the most beautiful grounds and a Reserve Room for their members that overlooks their vineyard. And since we had that gift card to use, we ended up stocking up on some of their white wines, which were 30% off that weekend!

We also knew that they had recently opened a new property just down the road called Bottaia (the order of the wineries on that road is South Coast, Ponte, Wiens, and then Bottaia) and we wanted to try it out, so we asked the people helping us at Ponte about it, and I am glad we did, because they gave us a coupon for a two for one charcuterie tasting so we called just to make sure they had reservations available and they were able to accommodate us!

We headed over for our reservation. The first thing I noticed was it was a very modern vibe but still warm and really quite beautiful. The staff confirmed which charcuterie we had chosen (they had three options: a traditional charcuterie, a Mediterranean board, and an antipasto one, which is what we chose), then had us sit in a waiting area while they set things up. While we waited, they gave us a taste of their rosé.

Once they had stuff arranged for us, they ushered us into the next room where we actually did the tasting. We were each presented with our charcuterie boards and then our server walked us through the tasting… we tried five of their wines and he made recommendations of what items they paired well with. This place apparently focuses on Italian varietals. We tried their vermentino, one called Caldare (which apparently is made from the pecorino grape… not to be confused with the cheese), one called Cartuccia (which was a blend of primitive, Sangiovese, and I think final), a Montepulciano, and one called aglianinco. All of the wines were AMAZING and paired super well with all of the delicious items on the cheese board.

The cheese board itself was also absolutely delicious. It had burrata (one of my favorite things) with pesto, prosciutto, two kinds of salami, a pepper dip, stuffed eggplant, sweet peppers, marinated artichokes, cornichons, olives, dates, manchego, and provolone.

We finished off with desert, which was a brownie with a blueberry sauce, a chocolate raspberry truffle, and a raspberry dust, which was paired with a late harvest. Now, I usually don’t like sweet wines and pretty much LOATHE late harvests since they are almost like drinking syrup. But the late harvest here was actually really good and I drank the whole tasting (I usually take a sip of the sweet ones and dump them out).

We ended up joining this place because they have amazing wines and have some really great member perks (like eight tastings a month!). I would highly recommend going to this place. One of the cool things about it is that they have pools and cabanas.

I am glad I ended up finding out about the wine blending experience and was able to get a good deal on the hotel, because we ended up having a really good time that weekend! I know people still like to turn up their noses at Temecula wines but I have found some places I really love there. Yes, there are some big commercial ones out there that I don’t care for but there are like 56 winners I think we heard and we have found several good places, now just to try to find time to start trying the rest!