Tag Archives: Winemaking

Community Events, Education

Sacramento Home Winemakers Club Are International Winners, 2013

Typical Sacramento Winemakers meeting. Photo credit: Sacramento Winemakers
Typical Sacramento Winemakers meeting. Photo credit: Sacramento Winemakers

 

Yes, the Sacramento Home Winemakers Club was the top amateur international winemaking club winner again this year!

Judy and I went to the 2013 WineMaker Magazine’s International Home Winemaking Conference  held in Monterey, California, May 17th and 18th to hear the results of the wine  judging. Judy is twice past president and has been on the Executive Board of the Sacramento Home Winemakers Club for many years.

It was an exciting time for the club, since they were the club winners last year and were hoping to be a winner again this year. It is such a stiff competition that some winemaker clubs were subsidizing their members by paying entry and shipping fees to their members. The Sacramento Home Winemakers Club did not do that for their members.

This was no small feat, since the judging was held from April 19-21, 2013, with a record total of 4,564 different wines at the Burlington Hilton in Burlington, Vermont.  This year’s competition was the largest in the 11-year history and is again the largest wine competition of its kind in the world. The 4,564 entries arrived from hobby winemakers throughout North America in all 50 American states and 8 Canadian provinces and as far away as Italy and Australia. It was the single largest and most diverse collection of hobby wines ever assembled under one roof.

Over the course of three days, experienced judging panels worked through 923 flights, examining each wine using the UC-Davis 20-point wine scale evaluating appearance, aroma, taste, aftertaste and overall impression. The wines were entered in 50 different categories and included an astonishing array of varietals and wine styles. Kit wines competed alongside fresh-grape entries in this blind tasting.

Entries were awarded gold, silver, bronze and best of show medals based on the average score given by the judging panel. The Grand Champion wine medal was the top overall scoring wine across all categories. The Club of the Year was given to the club whose members won the most medals and the Retailer of the Year and U-Vint of the Year awards were given to the winemaking supply stores whose customers outperformed other similar shops.

Finally the Winemaker of the Year award was given to the individual entrant who has the highest average score across their top 5 scoring wines in the competition.

Winemakers of the Year &
Best of Show Dessert Wine
Rex Johnston and Barbara Bentley

Front: Barbara Bentley, Rex Johnston - Photo credit: Sacramento Home Winemakers
Front: Barbara Bentley, Rex Johnston – Photo credit: Sacramento Home Winemakers

In all, SHW won 13 golds, 10 silvers and 12 bronzes for a total of 35 medals.

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Community Events, Entertainment, History

Museums in Auburn : Barnhart Museum, and Gold Country Museum – Mining

museum-sign

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By Judy J. Pinegar

Arriving in Auburn on a hot Sunday in July, John and I decided to tour a couple of museums. First was the historic Bernhard Museum just off Auburn Folsom Boulevard near the fairgrounds. The house is over 150 years old, built in 1851 by George Bishop and John Long as the Traveler’s Rest Hotel, one of Auburn’s oldest surviving buildings.

In the Gold Rush, this hotel held teamsters traveling the old Auburn Folsom Road, and miners working in nearby Rich Flat. In 1858 the building was converted to a home for one of the builders, George Bishop. The house and 30 acres were sold in 1864 to Eliza Caruthers, and again in 1868 to the Bernhard family. This family and their descendants lived here for over 100 years. They started planting vineyards, making wine and then built a two story natural rock winery into a hillside in 1874.

Now with only 2+ acres left, the house has become a beautifully restored museum of the Victorian Era (mid 1830’s to 1900). No pictures are allowed inside the museum, but it is truly a sight to see. Also on the grounds is an old wine processing building, displaying wine making and barrel making artifacts, as well as a barn with a hearse, a sleigh, buggies and wagons of days gone by.

The top of the stone winery is now an art gallery, while the bottom still houses and operating winery, Bonitata (more on this later).

Next we visited the Gold Country Museum, housed in a historic Works Progress Administration (WPA) building, on the Auburn fairgrounds itself.  We began by touring a replicated hard rock mine (thanking our lucky stars that we didn’t have to do that job!) Many other mining displays are also on display, as well as a model stamp mill, and an assayer’s office, a miner’s cabin and an old saloon.

After this tour we went back to the Barnhart Museum Parking lot, but walked down to the winery to do a little wine tasting in the Bonitata Boutique Winery (see last picture in the slides).

Judy J. Pinegar is a writer and winemaker, and her articles appear in many publications.

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