{"id":1651,"date":"2020-09-28T14:44:35","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T14:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1651"},"modified":"2020-09-29T13:28:17","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T13:28:17","slug":"preston-farm-and-winery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1651","title":{"rendered":"Preston Farm and Winery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preston (www.prestonfarmandwinery.com<\/a>) isn\u2019t like other wineries and that\u2019s because Lou Preston and his wife, Susan, aren\u2019t like other winemakers.\u00a0 The Preston winery is\u2026different, verging on odd and definitely unique.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been making wine there since 1975 and once were into some serious production.\u00a0 And then in 2001, Lou decided he\u2019d rather be a farmer as well as a winemaker and cut down to 8,000 cases a year.\u00a0 The land that wasn\u2019t left under vine was used for olive trees, grains, vegetables and lambs.\u00a0 Lots of vineyards used to be farms; only Preston that we know of has a farm where there were once grape vines.<\/p>\n

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The Preston Farm and Winery tasting room.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

There are many reasons why a visit to Preston is worthwhile.\u00a0 For one, the winery is very intentionally in touch with the history of Sonoma County.\u00a0 The building itself looks like an old farmhouse, with clapboard sides and pitched eaves on the roof.\u00a0 The tasting room is functional and decorated with farm implements, books and the occasional cow horn.\u00a0 That latter is because everything at Preston is organic.\u00a0 (The cow horn is used for\u2026well, it\u2019s a long story.)<\/p>\n

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The grounds are a well-kept garden, much as you\u2019d expect for a visit to your rural grandparents, if you ever had them.\u00a0 There are also picnic grounds in a wooded area, so stop at the Dry Creek General Store<\/a> on your way to bring lunch.\u00a0 But be sure to bring extra, because you will have to feed some of the many importunate cats who prowl the grounds.\u00a0 After lunch or your tasting, you can play a little bocce on their court.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Lou didn\u2019t eliminate wine altogether and we always come home from a visit with a supply of bottles.\u00a0 In the pre-farming days, Preston made an inexpensive red Rh\u00f4ne blend called, cleverly enough, Faux.\u00a0 It was widely shipped so we never bought it at the winery because we could get it at a local wine shop back home.\u00a0 In its place today is a powerful blend of Syrah, Mourv\u00e8dre, Cinsault, Grenache and Carignan, called without pretension simply L. Preston, which is stenciled on the side of the bottle\u2026and nothing else.\u00a0 Did we mention that Preston Farm and Winery is a bit eccentric?<\/p>\n

As may be seen, the specialty at Preston is Rh\u00f4ne grapes.\u00a0 The partner to L. Preston is a white blend called Madame Preston, with a similarly simplistic label.\u00a0 It consists of Roussanne, Marsanne, Viognier and Grenache Blanc.\u00a0 All the varietals are bottled individually. The Mourv\u00e8dre is our favorite, but we haven\u2019t been able to buy it for years because it\u2019s always sold out when we visit.<\/p>\n

As you\u2019re tasting, you can usually sample some olive oil and freshly baked bread.\u00a0 For sure, Lou bakes bread too, though we\u2019re not sure that every loaf available for sale at the tasting room has passed through his hands.\u00a0 As you leave the tasting room, turn right and there\u2019s a little country store featuring whatever was recently harvested on the farm.\u00a0 We\u2019ve never bought any vegetables because we don\u2019t have a kitchen in California, but they do look good.<\/p>\n

We miss some of the old wines, especially the aforementioned Faux and a dessert wine that they called Moscato Curioso, with the emphasis on the cat<\/em>.\u00a0 Still, we keep coming back to Preston and always will, whenever we come wine tasting in Dry Creek.<\/p>\n

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Preston (www.prestonfarmandwinery.com) isn\u2019t like other wineries and that\u2019s because Lou Preston and his wife, Susan, aren\u2019t like other winemakers.\u00a0 The Preston winery is\u2026different, verging on odd and definitely unique.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been making wine there since 1975 and once were into some serious production.\u00a0 And then in 2001, Lou decided he\u2019d rather be a farmer as … Continue reading Preston Farm and Winery<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1651"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1660,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1651\/revisions\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}