El Dorado Passport Weekend (El Dorado County, California)

 

For several years now, I have been traveling down to the Placerville, CA area for Passport Weekend. Essentially for two weekends in April, many of the El Dorado County's wineries form a cooperative and offer tastings, food bite pairings, music, tours, etc. to visitors. A single pass grants the purchaser access to all of this at twenty or thirty wineries all within a short drive of each other. It really is a fantastic way to spend a weekend. In addition to all of my hiking adventures, I also lead and teach a wine education meetup group. Starting last year, we turned this into a sort of field trip. 

While some of my group drove down early, we all met for dinner at the Heyday Cafe in downtown Placerville. It was a terrific dinner and we had nine members in attendance. As we enjoyed the local fare, we drank our way through a few bottles of locally produced wine. We also made our plans for the next day and finally departed for our respective accommodations. Four of us had rented an AirBnB, which had turned out to be pretty nice and perfect for our purposes. The others were staying in various local hotels.

Waking early Saturday morning, I suggested to my housemates that we should do a nearby hike to get our blood pumping a little bit. I'll write of that in my next post, but the entire group seemed to enjoy our trek to Dutch Creek and the Johntown Waterfall. Returning to the house, we cleaned up and then headed to our first winery of the day, Lava Cap, which just so happens to be my favorite in the area. 

We tasted their offerings and snacked on some wonderful hor d'oeuvres. The VIP library tasting was particularly tasty and our group walked out with several bottles in tow. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, we bounced around between a number of wineries on and around Carson Road. In total, I think we hit about seven locations through the afternoon. I would know the exact count, but as I did not have to drive today, I had taken advantage of some of the finer offerings and was a bit tipsy at this point. Eventually, we ordered a few pizzas and invited the entire group back to our house for the evening. We chatted, played games, and snacked well into the evening.

Rising early again the next morning, I wanted to get in a run. I had the tiniest little bit of a hangover, but still managed to get nearly five miles of rolling hills in before returning to the house to get cleaned up. As today was my turn to drive, I planned on only tasting ever so slightly along the way. Our first stop was Narrow Gate, followed by Mira Flores, followed by four or so more wineries. 

Around three o'clock, everyone had pretty much had their fill and agreed it was time to head back towards Reno. We had learned from one of the winemakers that an avalanche had occurred over highway 50, which was our best way home. Instead, we were forced to return via CA 88. It added a little time to the return trip, but with good company, no one minded.