Winery Visit-Loxton Cellars

After the terrifying descent down the goat track Sonoma County calls a "road" (Trinity Grade)**, I stopped by one of my favorite hidden small winery...Loxton Cellars near Glen Ellen (Dunbar Road). Run by a wiry Aussie expatriot, Loxton consistently makes balanced, savory, and varietally correct wines at a relative bargain. Friendly tasting room too...and they don't charge!

The highlights were the 2008 Syrah, which is apparantly mostly clone 4 from the Russian River Valley and showed lovely floral aromatics and flavors with plum skin and red fruit and the 2008 Cabernet from a site near the winery in Sonoma Valley, which showed a bright leafy character which I love in Cabernet...definitely a leaner style. $30! (For comparison nearby Audelessa charges 2-3x as much for their cabernet, which is made in a berry bomb style I don't like nearly as much)

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** Sonoma County must be the worst county in the region for rural road maintenance. The roads are just sad. A perfect illustration of the Brazilification of the United States...private wealth and public squalor. Trinity Road is a beautiful bicycle ride, although the two mile climb up from the bridge near Dry Creek Road in Napa County is a leg burner)

Loxton is fun, especially when you get to talk with Chris.
Wellington, next door as wineries go, is a good visit too. They do have some very good Cabs. Chris used to work there.

Roads in Sonoma County are a very serious problem. It stems from the usual combination of legislators and bureaucracy. State and federal road money for counties is distributed basically by population. Sonoma County has (IIRC) the third most rural road miles in California, and somewhere around the 30th or something wonderful like that (If you like NOT living in LA!!) in population. Therefore the bucks per mile to maintain the roads is (according to the PressDem) something like half the average.

John

Chris was in the winery and chatted quite a bit with us when we visited (in a car this time) again on Saturday. The 2008 McGraw Vineyard Cabernet from the nearby hillside was extremely nice in a Bordeaux-esque way, but he poured a new wine for me...a Russian River Valley Pinot that was very earthy and tasty. My friends bought 6 bottles!

Hey, it's been a while since I've been over there. I'll have to check him out again.