Amador County vintners played host for the Big Crush over the weekend. This is the annual event during which they oversee festivities that include special wine tastings, tables of picnic foods and musical entertainment.
Big Crush was a name originally chosen to salute the fall harvest and pressing of wine grapes, but it might as well mean the squeeze necessary to get up to the tasting counters.
We've attended this event for years, and while the congestion has intensified – good luck avoiding gridlock on the narrow lane into or out of Dobra Zemlja – so has the commitment of vintners to make the visitor experience more bearable. Several wineries, for example, supplemented their usual tasting room with additional tasting venues.
Too many people douse themselves with too much scent to be wine tasting, too many monopolize the tasting bars, and too many swallow when they should spit.
But vintners can't do much about that, other than to provide more spit cups, and I did see a tipsy group get cut off. And to be sure, more participants do seem to be assuming more responsibility for the safety of themselves and others, to judge by the number of designated drivers, limousines and buses.
We attended Big Crush primarily for information and tastes of proprietary blended wines for an upcoming feature, but we also found some exciting varietals.
They included the sweetly fruity and sharp-edged C.G. Di Arie 2006 Shenandoah Valley Estate Primitivo (14.6 percent alcohol, $25), even more elegant than the 2005; the rich and long Dobra Zemlja Winery 2006 Shenandoah Valley Syrah (16.8 percent alcohol, $26), which shows that even a wine with that much fuel need not be hot; the spirited and spicy Chianti-inspired Vino Noceto 2005 Shenandoah Valley Misto Sangiovese ($28), which we liked so much that we took a bottle to dinner; the floral and fun Bantam Cellars 2007 Bella Grace Vineyard Vermentino (12.8 percent alcohol, $16), which I first tasted last spring and still found as effusive with peachy fruit; and all the vineyard- designated zinfandels at Amador Foothill Winery, the 2006 Esola (15 percent alcohol, $18), the 2006 Ferrero (14.5 percent alcohol, $18) and the 2006 Clockspring (14.5 percent alcohol, $16), each fresh and bright but differing slightly in weight and fruit profile.
Call The Bee's Mike Dunne at (916) 321-1143.
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