KPBS Midday Edition,

I was in my car today lis­ten­ing to KPBS and they were talk­ing about local Hol­i­day gift ideas. The con­ver­sa­tion turned to wine tast­ing out of the San Diego area. I called in and lucky me, made it on the air! I informed Ali­son St. John of the 70 winer­ies oper­at­ing in San Diego and Ramona. Click the KPBS logo at left to hear me…in my own words, jump to 10 min­utes 30 sec­onds; 10:30.

-Darrell Grant

Inside the Winery

As Assis­tant Wine­mak­er to chief Wine­mak­er, Lin­da McWilliams at San Pasqual Win­ery, we are pleased to announce the release of a few of our out­stand­ing wines. One of my favorites is the 2009 Alexan­der Val­ley Caber­net Sauvi­gnon. This wine was quite a chal­lenge for us dur­ing fer­men­ta­tion. Lin­da and I stopped by the win­ery after class late one night to find that the fer­men­ta­tion was up to 99 degrees; too hot.

High tem­per­a­tures like this will kill the yeast and stop fer­men­ta­tion. Lin­da and I were faced with the sit­u­a­tion of need­ing to bring the tem­per­a­ture down with­out adding water to the Must. Look­ing around the win­ery, I noticed that we had shrink wrap. From there we bought blocks of ice, encased them in the shrink wrap, ster­il­ized them, and added them to the Must, intro­duc­ing them into the macro bin of fer­ment­ing wine. This tac­tic was suc­cess­ful in low­er­ing the tem­per­a­ture, allow­ing the wine to com­plete its fermentation.

We just released this vin­tage. This Caber­net Sauvi­gnon has a rich and full bod­ied fla­vor, low in tan­nin. This is an excel­lent­ly bal­anced wine; though hot due to an alco­hol con­tent of 15.4%. This does not take away from the taste. Cur­rent­ly this is my favorite among our wines.

As a native San Die­gan I have always loved going to the moun­tains around San Diego and explor­ing the nat­ur­al beau­ty.  The quaint town of Julian, about an hour out of town, at 5000’ has been my favorite escape.  For the last 15 years my favorite local win­ery has been Witch Creek Win­ery, to vis­it one of my favorite per­son­al­i­ties and win­ery ambas­sadors, Tina Mar­tin, and her sis­ter Tammy.

Tam­my the Good Witch

Dar­rell received a let­ter of com­men­da­tion over his inven­tion, hand signed by none oth­er than Dianne Jacob, hon­or­able Super­vi­sor of the Sec­ond Dis­trict.  Con­grat­u­la­tions Dar­rell for this lat­est acknowl­edge­ment.  A framed copy will be on dis­play at the San Pasqual Win­ery.  Come on down, check it out, and enjoy some chilled Pas­sion Fruit Habanero on this beau­ti­ful sum­mer evening.

The Wine Bear­er has hit the big leagues!!  Dar­rell will be sign­ing auto­graphed copies of his arti­cle in the La Mesa Patch ‚(click to read), tonight at the San Pasqual Win­ery.  Max­i­mum guests not to exceed 500.

The 2009 Neb­bi­o­lo is almost gone! 3 bot­tles left from 19 Sat­ur­day. I don’t think there will be any tomor­row so if you want it.…come to the La Mesa Tast­ing room & get it quick­ly. We close at 8 pm tonight.   For direc­tions click here.

Brenda Nason, event coordinator for the San Pasqual Winery was featured in The La Mesa Patch.

Come on down to the tast­ing room and try our 2008 Dry Creek Chardon­nay before it’s gone.  We are down to our last 2 cas­es.  The Vignes is gone.  For more info on San Pasqual Win­ery, check us out on Face­book.

50 local winer­ies with chefs pair­ing amaz­ing dish­es to each wine, all for only $25 a per­son $40 cou­ple dis­counts avail­able too.

click here for info

Here is a place for every­one to share all things relat­ed to wine.  Please be respect­ful of all view­points and opinions.