California - Ramona - Salerno Winery

Salerno Winery - We pulled in their parking lot and realized this was one of the more popular wineries in the area. Today, they had live entertainment, a duo performing Italian songs. The patio area was crowded, but we were able to find a spot off to the side to enjoy the wine and music. The majority of their wines are estate wines - we know we are going to see the love put into these wines. We also ordered a soppresata and parmesan cheese plate to go with our wines. Their entire wine list was available for tasting. We both started off with the bianco tosto, a chardonnay, chenin blanc and sauvignon blanc blend. It is the only white available for tasting - pleasing to the palette, you could taste the hint of apple. We moved to the reds and I chose the malbec while my wife had the estate syrah. The malbec grapes are grown next door to Salerno. The syrah was better; we even tasted the pepper finish. We moved on to the duet, a blend of syrah and petiti sirah, and the ruby cabernet. Both of these wines have similar flavors, but the duet won hands down. Moving on to the next wine, we again did a split where I went for the petit sirah and my wife went for the Francly Ruby, a blend of ruby cabernet and cabernet franc. The petit sirah had exactly what they said, a hint of the 2007 Witch Creek fire; it is the smoke scent that made it a very unique wine (a way of having a barbeque without having the grill). Our last tastings were the Serenade, their blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and petit syrah, and the Temptation, their port. My wife does not like "oak" in her wine, but ejoyed the port. While we enjoyed our wines and meat and cheese plate, we were listened to Italian songs. Herman and Rosaria each sang a song for us. As we were leaving, Herman noticed my wife taking a picture and asked her why she did not take one of a particular sign. When he translated the Italian for us, it all made sense - Friends and wine get better with time.