Winery Visitation: Canadian River Vineyard and Winery

This was my first visit to a winery, and I had a great experience! Although the vineyard is a mere 10 acres, standing in the vines and looking down the vines, it looks massive! It makes me wonder what a Napa vineyard would look like, likely 10 times the size of this vineyard. We sat down and were greeted by Shelia and Cindy, they were very nice and super knowledgable on the good and bad of the harvested wines.







We began with a tasting and were able to try the majority of their wines. We started with the dry reds, Cabernet Sauvignon. It was rather tannic but had a very fruity after taste, over all it was delicious! Then we tried the Merlot, that one was weird, it had a strange flavor in it that I wasn't entirely fond of. We also tried the Classic Red, which was a mix of the latter, unfortunately the strange taste in the Merlot really came out in this one for me so I was not a huge fan of it. We then moved onto the dry whites, Taryn Blanc, I think that this one was spoiled or something because it had virtually no taste. Shelia was tasting them with us and thought it might have not been a great harvest for this wine. Then we tried my favorite wine of the 6 we tried, the Moscato. It was sweet but not overwhelmingly sweet, and very fruit-forward! The last one we tried was the Chocolate Drop, a dessert wine. It was different, I had never had a dessert wine up to this point and this one was overwhelmingly sweet. I think I would be able to get through a glass of this wine but more than that would be way too much sugar for my palate.

We then began the tour and were showed a video of the process that they go through every season. Gene was there explaining everything to us and right next to the TV was this bottling system. Gene said that they bottle over a hundred cases a day after harvest. I was shocked by that especially to find out that only two people bottle that many cases!

After we finished watching the video we went into the barreling area and saw the de-stemmer which is pictured below. This is for red grapes, they are poured into the top of the de-stemmer, and they come out of the tube at the bottom into a stainless steel barrel. After in the barrels it sits there for about 4 months, while in the barrel the skins are placed in here so they can change the color of the wine to the perfect red that they want for each wine! From there the wine is placed in the oak barrels off to the side where they will sit there for at least two years. In the two years the wine will age and simmer down so that it wont be so tannic and bold upon being bottled.

For white grapes they go through a different process, they come out through the "balloon", which is this machine on the left. They come out through a tube and are aged for less time than the red grapes. The white grapes are in a stainless steel barrel for about 3 months, Gene said that he is always very impressed by these machines because he has no idea how they work, but they work every time. Before they go into this they are put in this giant refrigerator, in buckets and buckets of grapes.




They already had grapes harvested that were in the fridge because that next morning they were going to have their annual grape stomping festival. Gene and Shelia also remembered then that a couple hours before the stomp itself they needed to take them out of the fridge. I guess one year they failed to do this and peoples fees were frozen from stomping on grapes that had been left in the fridge right up until the stomp!







After we finished the tour we were able to go explore the vineyards, unfortunately they had already harvested the red grapes so they said the vines were not happy with them so they were almost in shock. We stuck around the white grapes because they were harvested that day so the vines were still flourishing and looked amazing! As you can see the vineyard looks huge, it was beyond beautiful and looks like it goes on for miles!



The grapes were beautiful and the vineyard itself was a small one in the middle of nowhere, however, the inside and the people within this vineyard really set it apart from anything else I could ever imagine. I learned so much about the production and before going into this tour I had literally no idea how the entire production even worked. This vineyard made for a fun little outing and had great wines to help me enjoy the day with! I would definitely recommend this vineyard to anyone and I will most likely be attending it again, maybe for the next annual grape stomp!