Red Car Wine Co
Six vineyards, every one of them within ten miles of the Pacific, and the estate block planted in Fort Ross-Seaview in 2005. $35 for an hour, walk-ins welcome, last pour at four.1
Why go
Fort Ross-Seaview is the cold end of the Sonoma Coast, up on the ridges above the ocean, and Red Car planted there twenty years ago.2 Five more vineyards sit inside the same ten miles of coast.2 They make Pinot Noir, Syrah, Chardonnay and an old-vine Cabernet, and they say what they are after: site-specific wines with bright fruit, complex aromatics and moderate alcohol.2 That is the aim as they state it. The tasting room is in Graton, and the flight is built out of the single-vineyard bottlings you cannot buy anywhere else.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Coastal Reserve Tasting, $35 for the hour. Buy two bottles and the fee comes off.1
- Avoid: cutting it fine. The last tasting of the day starts at 4pm and the room shuts at 5.1
Good to know
- They take walk-ins, which is rarer out here than it used to be. Same-day appointments on 707.829.8500.1
- Seven or more people means calling ahead. There is a separate reservations-only Wine Lounge for bigger groups.1
- Club members drink free, up to four guests a visit.1
Verdict
could-visit — Every vineyard Red Car farms is within ten miles of the Pacific, and the estate block went into Fort Ross-Seaview in 2005, which is about as cold as California gets for Pinot Noir. The tasting room is in Graton, open daily 10 to 5, walk-ins taken, $35 for an hour of single-vineyard wines the winery sells nowhere else, and the fee comes off if you buy two bottles. The rung is could-visit and not higher because the winery is the only witness: nobody in the record has tasted these wines in print, so the aim is on the page and the result is not.