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Up the Road: Gold Country IV – Tasting From Place To Place

Joe Parks

This week we continue exploring the “gold country,” the Sierra Nevada foothill areas where the gold rush rushed California into statehood. We checked into historic hotels last time. This time we’ll sip and nibble our way from town to town, sampling fresh veggies, fruits, and fruit of the vine.

Especially if you’ll have the kids or grandkids in tow, at some point you’ll want to visit Apple Hill

On a ridge running east from Placerville almost to Camino, the Apple Hill “tour” follows a path originally blazed by Pony Express riders—a great bike ride when the roads aren’t choked with cars. In late summer and fall, farms along the way sell tree-fresh apples and tasty homemade treats: apple pies and strudel, cheesecake, other baked goods, apple cider, spicy apple butter, even caramel and fudge apples. Earlier you can get cherries, strawberries, plums, peaches, and pears, all kinds of farm-trail pleasures. Later, come for the Christmas tree farms. There are dozens of special events year-round, too. An online map will help you get from here to there.

Credit Kent Kanouse
Placerville Historical Museum

But there are lots of opportunities to sample local wares otherwise, from fresh produce and flowers to bread and cheese. Certified farmers’ markets pop up all through the gold country, including the Saturday morning markets in Grass Valley, Nevada City, Auburn, Placerville, Sutter Creek, and Sonora. Get a complete county-by-county list from the state’s Department of Food & Ag before you set out, or download it on the road. Many towns also host their own de facto farmers’ markets, with all kinds of local crafts and creations added, so ask around.

Credit Mitch Lorens
It’s a pleasure just wandering the streets—and alleys—of Placerville and other gold rush towns.

There are some serious, homegrown, adults-only stops, too, places kids probably won’t enjoy—most particularly the hundreds of wineries included in the 2.6 million-acre Sierra Foothills American Viticulture Area and its several sub-AVAs, taking in eight foothill counties. There are worse ways to go than nibbling and sipping here and there while also moseying from one gold-rush museum or Clampers history plaque to the next—especially since even wine snobs rate many of the Zinfandels and other vino varietals here as exceptional.

Not only that, touring wineries offers the chance to directly support local economies. Most wineries are small and family owned, unable to supply big distributors, so they do most of their business selling directly to consumers. Early holiday shopping, anyone?

Credit Wayne Hsieh
Fiddletown, Shenandoah Valley

Growing wine grapes and making wine are also part of regional history. To supply those thirsty miners the first grapes were planted by 1856, in Amador County, the first winery established in 1860 nearby in El Dorado County. The region’s famous Zinfandel focus is no recent development either. About a third of vines now grown throughout the gold country are Zins, some of them very old. The state’s oldest Zinfandel planting is here, in fact, and still going strong at the Deaver family vineyard in the Shenandoah Valley. You could easily start there, in the small California Shenandoah Valley AVA, an area south of Placerville, northeast of Plymouth, and west of Fiddletown, as the crow flies. Current winery stars include Easton, Helwig, Montevina, Renwood, and Turley. Also well worth a stop: the nearby Fiddletown and Fair Play AVAs. According to Wine Spectator magazine, most top Sierra Foothills wines come from Amador, Calaveras, and El Dorado Counties. Which means you might want to make a point of exploring family wineries in the other five Sierra Foothills counties, too—just to take the wine road less traveled and otherwise expand the realm of possibilities. In addition to the region’s excellent Zinfandels you’ll find many other wine styles, because direct-sale wineries try to come up with something for everyone who may wander into their tasting rooms.once home of Fountain & Tallman Soda Works

Credit Eric Fredericks
There are frogs everywhere in Angels Camp—even on street signs—which is the setting of Mark Twain’s break-through story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

Get started by looking at maps from the various AVA associations and area visitor bureaus, or study current “best of” wine lists. Or plan occasional gold-country wine tours around the region’s seemingly endless special events, such as the ongoing concerts and the upcoming Easter Egg Hunt & Brunch at Ironstone Vineyards and Vino Noceto’s Farm to Glass Tours in April.

Until next time, when we ride the rails and raft prime whitewater, this is Kim Weir for Up the Road and North State Public Radio.

Kim Weir is the founder of Up the Road, a nonprofit public-interest journalism project. She researches, writes, and hosts Up the Road, a radio show and mini-podcast about California co-produced by North State Public Radio. Kim got her start as a travel journalist in 1990 with the publication of the first and original Moon Handbooks Northern California, a surprise best-seller. Six other Moon books on California soon followed. She is a member, by invitation, of the venerable Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). Kim earned a BA in environmental studies and analysis, with an emphasis on botany and ecology, and also holds an MFA in creative writing. She lives in Paradise.