A Magical Day at Eagles Nest Winery

Ever wish for a magical day and then get more than you ever hoped for? Well yesterday that is just what happened to me. My husband David and I went out to Ramona for a little wine tasting. “Ramona?” you say…that’s what I thought.

Who knew there was wine in Ramona? In fact, who knew there was great wine in Ramona?

Our story begins a few months ago when our friends, Kathy and Brandon, brought a bottle of wine to one of our parties and upon tasting it we asked, “Who makes this wine, it’s really good?” “Eagles Nest Winery in Ramona”, was their reply and we knew we had to make a trip to experience this for ourselves.

And now the real magic begins. We were greeted at the gate by the smiling face of Julie, who welcomed a group of us in like long lost friends. Then she paused and split the two of us off from the rest of the group saying she thought we would enjoy being in the barrel room and talking with Dennis, the wine maker. How did she know this? Not only did we want to taste but we wanted to learn about the wines and what made them so good and she seemed to know this.

The barrel room was chilled to make the wine happy and Julie, a wine maker in her own right, provided us with snuggly throws to wrap around ourselves to make us happy too, as we tasted the wine.

Dennis sat beside us, served us each tastes of wine to savor. He took the time to explain origins and unique histories of the grapes that brought the whole tasting experience to life. We tasted a Souzao, which is a wine grape from Portugal used in making Port.

Dennis decided to make this into wine and instead used a Cabernet grape to make one of his Ports. Every wine we tasted was excellent and each distinctly different from the last. It often seems that small boutique wineries produce a few wines that all have a similar taste and style, but that is not the case with Eagles Nest Winery.

With each new wine you experience the essence of that grape varietal and unique layers of complexity. Our favorites were a Ruby Cab and a Lagrein, although we would have been very happy with any of their other award winning wines.

My husband is a red wine lover and he tends to stay away from the white wines, so a sweet white port seemed out of the question. However, we were both so pleasantly surprised by the White Ports that Dennis had produced.

The Viognier Port has a slightly pink color and a silky feel in your mouth. It is sweet but so beautifully balanced that what you really taste is the stone fruit, toasted almond and a faint caramel flavor. It is heavenly on the nose.

The Picpoul Blanc Port has a light gold color and a crisp, clean flavor. As soon as you bring your glass to your lips the aromas of pineapple and tropical fruit hits your nose. It is wonderful!

By the time we had pried every tidbit about the process of making port from Dennis’ lips it was growing dark outside. We wound our way back to the Cottage, which can also be rented for a lovely romantic getaway, and found a small group of people re-creating a Thanksgiving feast.

Immediately Julie invited us to join them and I thought, can this be true? We are strangers that came to taste and have been taken in as if we are family.

Could my magical wish get any better…..and then it did. I met, of all coincidences, Dianne, the sister of Karen, a college friend, that I had not seen for 30 years right there in the kitchen!

Meanwhile, the girls in the kitchen, Janis, Sarah and Shannon were having so much fun putting the last minute touches on dinner and between the tossing of salad, the stirring of rosemary gravy and the slicing of the most succulent turkey breast, they engaged us in conversation.

Everything was served buffet style along with wines from the vineyards we were overlooking. The food, wine and most of all the wonderful people that we shared this day with completed the magic that had begun at the gate when Julie first greeted us.

The views are spectacular but it is the warmth and generosity of Dennis and Julie that take your breath away!