Continued.. The Oroville Wineries: When we finished our ride we decided to try a couple of the local Oroville wineries and see what they had to offer.  We headed first to Long Creek Winery located not far from the Oroville Casino, off the Olive Highway.  The location of the winery is in the rolling Sierra Nevada foothills at the 800 foot elevation.  This is a beautifully pastoral setting with vineyards surrounding one side.  This time of the year everything is an incredible light green, new spring color and the air is still fairly cool and clean at this elevation.  The winery is a lovely, Italian style building; not large, but with a classic design.  The proprietors, Yola and Lou Cecchi, were serving wine and we had a chance to discuss their wines and vineyards at length while tasting and enjoying a tour of the winery itself.  The winery produces a very nice Barbera that is light, with good acidity, lovely fruit and is truer in style to an Italian wine than most in California.  To find out more about this winery, access our sister site Sierra Wines.

The next winery on our list was Grey Fox, not far from Long Creek and in a similar topography.  Grey Fox is on a little knoll surrounded by the estate vineyards with views of nearby Table Mountain and the Sutter Buttes across the valley.  Near the winery is an inviting picnic area under a huge oak tree surrounded by a large lawn.  Across the driveway is the winery, built into the side of the hill to maintain the perfect wine storage temperature.  We were served by one of the winery owner’s, Jeanne Cecchi, who told us stories of the area, and their winery in particular as we tasted their fairly extensive choice of wines.  Their Tempranillo was a very nicely made wine; wonderfully spicy, with nice background fruit and a good finish.  Also fun is their Dolcetto, which was very fruity in the attack, but not at all sweet; the finish was almost dusty.  To read more about this winery, its wines, vineyards and how to get there, access our sister site Sierra Wines:  Grey Fox Vineyards.

The Wineries of Chico: The actual ride took place on fourth Sunday in April; sadly predicted to be a gloomy, wet day.  We went up the day before in order to tour the wineries around Chico while we were in the area.  It was a very wet, dark day and the drive up the Sacramento Valley was not very scenic through the rain.  We decided to go straight to our first destination; the only Monastic Winery in North America, New Clairvaux, located in the little town of Vina, 16 miles north of Chico on Highway 16. It is located on the site of the original Vina Ranch owned by Leland Stanford in the late 1800s and the site of his pet project, the then largest winery in the world.  This is a spot that it is hard to describe in words, where so many pieces of California and wine history come together in the beautiful treed lined grassland of Tehama County.  This is the site of the original million plus acre land grant of Peter Lassen who planted an acre of Mission grapes to make his own wine.  The chain of ownership went to Leland Stanford who thought he could create the world’s best winery if he just spent enough money, building one of the finest examples of winery architecture to be found in California.  This site is now the site of a small, successful vineyard and winery owned and managed by a group of Trappist Monks with an 800 year history of winemaking from France.  They also brought with them a monastery building from Spain, built originally in 1213 and bought by William Randolph Hearst, taken apart and shipped to San Francisco in the early 1930s, where it sat rotting behind the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.  To read a more complete history, as well as get information on this incredible winery and its 5th generation California winemaker, see our full article on this website: New Clairvaux, Monastic Wine in California.To get to our second winery we traveled back to Chico on Highway 99 to the Highway 32 exit, traveling east toward Mt Lassen.  It was raining when we finished the trip from Chico to the small village of Forest Ranch. Continued