Spring is often a bustling time of year for wineries. New and delicate buds break, wine gets bottled and locals and visitors alike spend afternoons tasting and sipping wines at local wineries.
While this spring may be markedly different than years past due to shelter-in-place orders, some local wineries such as Lynmar Estate and Comstock Wines, are working to bring the wine and wine tasting experience to people’s homes.
Kelly Comstock Ferris, the general manager for Comstock Wines in Dry Creek Valley, recently started a “SIP (shelter in place) Comstock Wines” program where folks can order a discounted flight of three wines and participate in a virtual live wine tasting activity via Facebook live with Ferris and head winemaker, Chris Russi.
The featured flight changes each week so participants can experience the winery’s diverse portfolio of varietals such as chardonnay, zinfandel, cabernet, merlot, rosé, sauvignon and grenache.
A fairly new winery that opened in 2015, Comstock is a direct-to-consumer business, and Ferris said the impact of not having guests visit their tasting room off Dry Creek Road is big.
“We are direct-to-consumer, so no guest visits is a huge impact on us … and who we are,” Ferris said. “This is our fourth week (doing the SIP).”
The live tastings take place at 4 p.m., Friday, Saturday and Sunday each week. Kelly said this week, April 10 – 12, they will feature a sparkling blanc de blanc, a grenache and a Rockpile zinfandel.
So how does it work?
All wines are available on their website and are 30% off (with special code “BeWELL”). Shipping is $1 for the virtual wine tasting orders and $5 for other orders. Ferris said curbside pick up is also available.
When the livestream airs on their Facebook page, “We have a tasting with the winemaker, myself and sometimes our assistant winemaker,” Ferris said. The crew takes time to discuss the winemaking process, flavor profiles and wine pairings among other topics.
During each event, participants can also ask questions and interact with the winemakers and sometimes be taken along on a virtual tour of the vineyards.
“They are getting more of a look at the winery through the digital platform,” Ferris noted. “It’s kind of like having a winemaker dinner in your living room.”
Ferris said they worked on bottling last week, so they incorporated bottling into their live video.
She said so far the wine tastings have been popular, and while not everyone watches their sessions while they are live, folks often go back to view the archived videos on the winery’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
“It has been great. It has given us the opportunity to connect,” Ferris said. “We will see that when we first go live it will go from 500 to over 2,000 views the following day.”
Comstock Winery’s chef has also been doing livestream food pairings and cooking demonstrations, as well as creating two different soups a week that folks can order and pick up to pair with their wine.
While they miss interacting with their tasting room guests, Ferris said wine is a great “shared experience,” right now.
“A lot of us in Sonoma County are small family wineries, so that glass of wine that you toast with is all of our blood, sweat and tears, so you are like toasting with us,” she said.
“It has always been my comfort food,” she said. “We hope to bring comfort and a lot of great flavor.”
Over at Lynmar Estate in the Russian River Valley, the team there is doing a similar series of virtual wine tasting activities.
With their Sebastopol tasting room closed, Lynmar started virtual wine tasting sessions on April 7 with small group experiences hosted by lead wine educator, Andrew Lynch.
“Each Tuesday to Thursday at 3 p.m. Andrew will be joined by 10 guests for a customized ‘Lynmar in Place’ experience, including tasting wine in our guest cellars,” said Anisya Fritz of Lynmar Estate.
The following week, April 13, Lynmar will start a new series, “Friday’s with a Lynn,” videos that feature 30 minutes of Lynmar Lore and questions from Lynn Fritz who founded Lynmar 40 years ago.
“The following week we will debut our six week series ‘Pinot Noir Master Class,’ exploring the nuances of growing this heartbreak grape, the winemaking process, and exploring its many manifestations around the world,” Fritz said in an email. “In between we will have recordings and live broadcasts from the gardens and the kitchen.”
The winery features several different wine collections including their “Pinnacle Tier,” “Block Designate Tier,” “Vineyard Designate Tier,” “Proprietary Blends,” and the “Appellation Tier.”
The “Pinnacle Tier” is a collection of small batch production wines, such as chardonnay and pinot noir, allocated for their top tier wine club members. The block tier features wines that showcase select blocks of their estate vineyards. The vineyard tier is a collection of single vineyard pinot and chardonnay, proprietary blends focus on wines from various vintages and the appellation tier features wines that “capture the essence” of the Russian River Valley.
Not all wineries have virtual wine tastings, but many are doing curbside pickup or delivery options so people can get their wine fix.
Mutt Lynch Winery in Windsor is offering curbside pickup and local delivery in Sonoma County. Curbside pickup takes place from 3 to 5 p.m. daily, or by appointment, at their Town Square location at 9050 Windsor Road. They are also doing free wine delivery within Sonoma or Northern Napa County for four bottles or more according to Mutt Lynch Winery owner, Chris Lynch.
In Cloverdale, wineries who are part of the Left Bank partnership are participating in a different kind of tasting on Thursday, April 16.
“Left Bank is a group that we formed several years ago to showcase small wineries in the northern end of Alexander Valley and Cloverdale,” said Jim Rickards, of J. Rickards Winery, one of the wineries in Left Bank.
Every year, the collective hosts a handful of events that showcase their wines. One of those annual events is the “Tax Relief” event, which pairs wines with different kinds of house-made soups on tax day.
“One year we decided to create our own kind of soup kitchen,” Rickards said.
This year, however, the soup kitchen is going digital. J. Rickards Winery, along with Mercury and Kelley & Young will be tasting some of their wines live, along with their soup recipes. The individual soup recipes are posted on the Facebook event page for the wine and soup pairing event, and participants are encouraged to make their own soups at home.
Additionally, all three wines featured during the event (Mercury 2019 Sauvignon Blanc, Kelley & Young 2018 Nuits de Young Rosé and J. Rickards 2017 La Cosecha Zinfandel) are being offered as a bundle package for shipping or curbside pick-up.
“What’s different with this is we have three of the Left Bank participants that are independently-owned wineries that are doing this together in a kind-of virtual soup tasting,” Rickards said, emphasizing that the event isn’t about different wineries competing with one another.
While the soup and wine pairing is only on April 16, Rickards says that the J. Rickards Winery Facebook page plans to post videos every Thursday. The videos began a few weeks ago and tend to follow themes — one showed Rickards discussing bud break, another showed him talking about the soil and grafting process. Most recently, on April 9, Rickards joined Brad Beard from Mercury Wine for a wine tasting wherein they discussed making their wines.
“I was so excited that this turned out so well last week, if (the soup and wine pairing) turns out good then we may be doing it again,” Rickards said. “It’s not all about selling wine … people that come here come because they like the place. That is our thing, our desire, is to offer something else besides our wine.”
For a list of wineries offering specials, deliveries or curbside pickups, check out the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce’s list: healdsburg.com/sip/.
To learn more about Comstock’s virtual wine tasting program, visit: comstockwines.com. To learn more about Lynmar Estate’s virtual wine tasting program and activities, visit: https://lynmarestate.com.
To view the Left Bank wine and soup event, visit facebook.com/J.Rickards.Winery/.
Zoë Strickland contributed to this article.
