Amador County tasting.

I went tasting in Amador County yesterday, up near Sacramento/Folsom. We hit three wineries, none of which had tasting fees. That's nice, but I'd almost rather pay the $5.00 and not feel like I have to buy a bottle. We went to:

(1) Youngs Vineyard (www.youngsvineyards.com). There were some pretty good wines here. My friend noted that their wines are on the more expensive side in Amador, the least expensive being $26. The highlight: 2007 Petite Sirah. Oh and the really cool wine labels...

(2) Montevina (www.montevina.com). They had a ton of wines to taste; probably 20-30 different wines. They have two different labels here, one being Montevina and the other Terra d'Oro. The highlight: Zinfandel Port. Also, getting to taste about 8 wines for free was cool.

(3) Dobra Zemlja (www.dobraz.com, pronounced "DO-bra ZEM-ya". It means "the good earth" in Croatian). They had a cool tasting room crankin' some pretty good tunes. They offer a cool 1L, refillable, screw-top jug wine, which they call Milan Ruž (pronounced almost like Moulin Rouge). The highlight: 2007 Kikas Zinfandel, which they call a dobra-style port. The story behind this wine is that the grapes were harvested so late, that they had basically become raisins on the vine. They obviously yielded very little juice. But they distilled this juice twice and fortified it with grappa (Italian liquor distilled from pomace, which is the leftover skins, stems and seeds from winemaking). Traditionally, ports are fortified with brandy (liquor distilled from wine). And the wine is pronounced "kick ass", but they had to alter the spelling to put it on the label.

Overall a great time. If it wasn't so far away, I would frequent Amador County more often.