Day Two of the El Dorado Wine Weekend Passport Tour

Our day started with a hardy breakfast in Plymouth, California at Marlene and Glen's Diner where Sam talked to the proprietor and found out she was a 5th generation Shenandoah Valley resident. The towns website is by far bigger than the town itself.

The first winery we stopped at was up a 1 1/2  mile single lane, very steep road to the top of a hill and a winery called Mount Aukum. With their Casablanca theme and live band it was one of the bigger family wineries we visited and I would of loved to sample more of the famous Syrah or Zinfandel wine but the band was just too loud. 

Well if I have to be chased outside by loud music, this view sure can settle my disappointment somewhat. Coming up the hill to the winery I could see the Sacramento Civic Center about 50 miles away and a little further south the now decommissioned cooling towers of Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant. The plant was shut down by the citizens of Sacramento in 1989 after a series of accidents. 

Donna wasn't as bother by the music as I was...either that or it was the pull of free wine?

At the Busby Winery, Sam had told of this huge oak tree growing straight out of the granite outcropping, and it certainly was.

 Also, on the Busby Winery property was this beautiful old barn sitting in the middle of the rows of grape vines.

        Today Glenda concentrated on showing Donna and I the different ways the vine masters support and stage the grape trunks. These are most likely cabernet or zinfandel trunks that have not yet sprouted new growth this season. These 30 year old trunks are pruned to send out a 4 to 5 foot limb on the wire, each going in the opposite direction.

This is what the trunks will eventually look like, two arms reaching out with buds sprouting helter skelter all over the place. They will be bent towards the ground come summer when the fruit starts growing and weighing it down.

Here the talk was of the steel posts and wire that have to hold the weight of a September crop, year after year. Barley visible is the wire above the trunks where the growing limbs will not be allowed to droop as in the previous photo. They will be trained to grow on that hard to see wire above the top trunk.

Sam is explaining to me that typically each arm will throw out 5 to 8 buds that of course grow into limbs which in turn then produce the wonderful grapes. (I think he was also casing the vineyard for cuttings) ☺

These are railroad grape vines. Instead of one arm branching out along the wire, they prune these two arms out to the side and they allow two more arms to stretch out in opposite directions on the wire, which looks a railroad track. This seems to my uneducated mind, a much more efficient structure.

Then again in the valley below there were these, old gnarled grape trunks, that do not have or use any external support and grow very much like trees.

 While driving from winery to winery we came upon scattered fields of poppies which are the California State Flower.

How can you go wrong with two beauties, Donna and lilacs. 

(well, maybe three counting the wine)

Ok back to the vineyards. This is Fitzpatrick Vineyard where I met Diane, who knows Glenda and Sam very well. It really helps when the people you know, know people that you want to know! Diane has recently sold the winery to a Chinese couple but will stay on for 5 years to help the new owners get settled while her husband sails the worlds oceans...what a wife!

While at the Fitzpatrick Vineyard it was the only time all weekend we saw a deer, which was pointed out to me by Glenda...must be the eye of a hunter in her to spot it. We watched the deer and her young'un for awhile and they were only eating the grass and not the new grape buds.

Donna put in a bid for this barrel of 2009 Award Winning Port but lucky for me someone with "actual" money outbid her, ha ha.

Time to say goodbye to some dear friends as the weekend has ended and it's time to go home. Stormy, their wonderful dog, was so patient and quiet, we would love to have him teach our dogs how to travel!