lgsjr – Page 9 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Discovering New Places

There are two kinds of places: those you know and those you don’t. And every place you do know was new to you at one time. And some of those places you don’t know make wine, some of which you don’t know anything about either. This was our situation when we set off to visit the Santa Rita Hills, but the same could be said for our first times in any of the world’s winemaking regions.

We had a great time that day, as we have had on numerous other occasions when we have discovered new corners of Wine Country. There are certain tips that should be considered if you are going wine tasting somewhere you haven’t been before. We have written before about planning for such a trip, but these tips are about maximizing your pleasure while you’re there.

The Santa Rita Hills. Photo courtesy of Wine Spectator.

Getting there and coming back are parts of the trip. Pay some attention to the scenery, the homes, the stores, even the industrial sections. (Of course, pay more attention to the road, if you’re the driver.) The places you pass are the places where the wine people live. Part of the pleasure of visiting Wine Country rather than opening bottles at home is to get a sense of the people who live there, not just tasting the wine.
Geeting a little lost is okay. The only way you can have serendipity is if things don’t quite go as planned. Note that we say, “a little lost”. You might discover a great little winery just down the wrong lane. But if you find yourself on the highway with no vineyards in sight, maybe it’s a good idea to turn around.
Factor in the weather. In some ways the coldest, nastiest months are the best time to visit someplace you’re already familiar with. There are no crowds and tasting rooms have lots of space for walk-ins. If one of those months is when you are discovering a new place is in, say, January, make the most of it. Snow on the vines can make a pretty sight. Of course, you’d rather be there when the sun is bright and fruit hangs from the vines, so make every minute count at those times.
Open yourself to that particular experience. There’s no need to compare what you are seeing to what you have seen before. The Santa Rita Hills, for example, have their own beauty just as does Chianti or the Barossa Valley or St. Emilion or… Enjoying what you see and taste for its own merits will give you more pleasure than thinking that somewhere else is better.
Think about how you will tell the folks back home about your visit. Attempting to verbalize what you are seeing, feeling, tasting and doing helps to lock all those things into your memory. It is certainly the technique we use in writing the articles in Power Tasting. Try it out when you’re doing something fun in your own neighborhood. You’ll see how much more vivid it makes every fun thing you do.

Beaumes de Venise

We recently attended a trade show for the wine industry, which happened to be dominated by wines from France. Among them was a kiosk for Beaumes de Venise, which is a small, centrally located village in the Southern Rhône region. Tasting the wines from there brought back quite a few memories.

Beaumes de Venise a nice village but no more so than its neighboring villages, Vacqueyras and Gigondas. Red wines are made there, good ones but again no better than others made nearby. What distinguishes Beaumes de Venise is the luscious honey-flavored wine made there from the Muscat grape (or to be more specific, the Muscat de Frontignan).

[A few words on the name of the village. Literally, it means “Balm of Venice”, but there is nothing about either balm or Venice in the origin of the name. Beaumes comes from the Provençal word for caves, “baumo” plus the name of the county, many centuries ago, “Venaissin”. The caves of Venaissin became the “Balm of Venice” over the years.]

For many years, American wine lists were rather sparse when it came to dessert wines, and they still are. One that was featured the most frequently back then was the rather light but fruity Muscat from Domaine de Durban. So the first time we visited Beaumes de Venise we made a point of visiting that winery. It’s a drive from the center of the village, up a narrow, windy road to the top of what seemed like a mountain to us. After all that, we discovered that, like all French enterprises, Durban was closed for a two-hour lunch. We never did get to taste their wine on the premises.

The Domaine des Bernardins. Photo courtesy of Ventoux Provence.

Some years later, we were vacationing in Provence and we had a fancy dinner in the especially charming town of St. Remy. We ordered foie gras as a starter and asked the waiter for the usual accompaniment, glasses of Sauternes. As only a French waiter could, he told us “Non!”. Startled, we asked why not. He told us that in this region of France the wine of choice with foie gras was Beaumes de Venise and recommended one in particular, Domaine des Bernardins. (He did say that if we were dissatisfied he’d find us a glass of Sauternes.)

Not only were we satisfied, we were blown away. We loved it so much that we drove to Beaumes de Venise the next morning, located the winery and bought a case to be shipped home.

Our Provençal friends drink Beaumes de Venise as an aperitif which is rather enjoyable sipping it under a chestnul tree or in front of the fireplace. “Un petit Beaumes” as our friend Catherine would say. Of course, you can drink it with (or as) dessert, too.

A word to the uninitiated. Domaine des Bernardins, like many dessert wines, has a lovely golden color and is fresh with good acidity when it is young. Over time, it turns brown and has a more profound flavor. Keep it too long (a decade or so) and it just deteriorates.

The Dentelles de Montmirail. Photo courtesy of Provence Guide.

One feature of Beaumes de Venise that you cannot fail to see if you visit the village: the Dentelles de Montmirail hover over the vineyards. These are a row of jagged rock mountains that form a wall to the east of the Rhône valley. They reflect the afternoon sun and give the grapes below an extra dose of warmth. This is especially useful for grapes with a high sugar content, such as Muscat.

They have been making sweet wines here for millennia, and if climate change doesn’t mess up everything, they will continue to do so for centuries to come.

Champagne Mercier

In the city of Épernay, there is a famous street called the Avenue de Champagne, which Power Tasting has featured in the past. It is lined with Champagne houses where you can taste all day long. At the far end, away from the center of town, is Champagne Mercier (www.champagnemercier.com). They may not make the best Champagne in France (we’ll leave it to others to choose which one is) but it is the most popular one in that country. Considering the combination of quality and price, that’s understandable. Their top Brut Rosé costs about $38 a bottle. Alas, it can’t be found in the US and wouldn’t be that inexpensive if it were.

However, the price of a bottle isn’t the attraction at any winery, it’s the enjoyment of the visit and the tasting. And here Mercier excels. As you approach the entrance, there’s an antique truck that evidently was once used to deliver Champagne. It’s a way of telling a visitor that Mercier has been around a long time, since 1858 in fact. The current facility was erected in 1871. When you enter, you are confronted with a massive, decorated wine barrel, that holds 200,000 bottles worth of wine. It was built for the 1889 Paris World Exposition.

Viewing the artwork from the train at Champagne Mercier.

The actual visit begins with a tour of the cellars. Groups are taken together onto a glass elevator that descends slowly down 98 feet. The walls of the shaft have paintings, to get you into the spirit right away. At the bottom you are ushered into an open train, sort of like at Disneyland. It winds its way through parts of the 11 miles of chalk tunnels. Evidently the founder, Eugène Mercier was concerned about the cultural well-being of his workers, so there are carved works of art throughout the cellars. And of course you get to see where Champagne bottles are stored, riddled and aged.

There is a recorded guide as you progress through the cellars, which is available in English as well as in French. Be sure to bring a sweater. The whole reason for cellaring Champagne is to age it and concentrating the sediments in a stable, cool environment. Rolling along in an open train, you definitely feel a little chill.

At last, the tasting.

At length you return to the surface and have the chance to taste. Tours include either one or three Champagnes to try. At this point you’re so eager and thirsty that of course they seem quite good. It takes some taste memory to summon up how you felt about better-known labels you’ve had in the past (or an hour ago elsewhere on the Avenue de Champagne. If you wish, you are free to wander around the public area, admiring that big barrel and taking in the modernist interior architecture.

When you step outside at last you find yourself in a vineyard. We think it’s the only working vineyard inside the city limits of Épernay. Once you’ve seen the hectares after hectares of vines in Champagne, you may not be surprised by the size of this vineyard, but it’s mere existence is another reminder of what Champagne production must have been more than 100 years ago.

Mercier is among the most fun tours we have taken at a Champagne house. It is worth the visit.

Comparing French Wine Regions

If someone were to ask, “Where should I go to taste the best California wines?” most of us Americans would probably point the questioner to the Napa Valley. But if that question was applied to France, the only reasonable answer is “It depends”.

Virtually every part of France produces wine. Burgundy is renowned for wines made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. In the region around the city of Bordeaux, the grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Semillon. The Rhône Valley produces Grenache, Syrah, Roussanne and Marsanne grapes. Which is the best? Well, it depends on what you like.

The town of Gaillac in Southwest France. Photo courtesy of Ville de Gaillac.

And we could complicate matters by pointing to Riesling and Gewurztraminer in Alsace, Gaillac (made of Duras and Fer grapes) in the Southwest and Malbec in Cahors (known locally as Côt). If all of this is confusing, it needn’t be. Winemaking in France arose from many different histories and ecosystems. If you’d like to travel around France, just enjoy whatever you find that’s produced locally.

We Americans are used to a lot of these different grapes grown in the same general vicinity. (Well, maybe not Duras or Fer.) But the differences are not as deeply rooted in the culture of each location. So if you’re wine tasting in France, keep a few things in mind.

There are laws in France requiring certain regions to make wine from certain grapes, and in certain blends, if they want to be able to claim AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée) status. So, while you will find some Cabernet Sauvignon in Russian River, you won’t be able to do the same in the Burgundy’s Côte d’Or, for example.
There are regions where vignerons (French for winemakers) grow the “wrong” grapes. For example, Château Canet in Minervoix makes Merlot and Malbec (but can’t label them Minervoix, because different grapes are required there). For another example, Mas de Gourgonier in Les Baux de Provence has a Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah blend, which is fine in Australia but not in France. If you don’t get hung up on the rules, you can enjoy some interesting alternatives while you are in various parts of France.
You can take a chance with some grapes you’ve never heard of. We’ve already mentioned the virtually unknown grapes in Gaillac wine, which is readily available in Toulouse. There’s Melon grapes in the Jura mountains, Auxerrois in Alsace or Chasselas in the Savoie. You may never get another chance to taste wines made from these grapes, so if you’re in the area, give them a try.
On the other hand, you might find a familiar wine by a different name. In the 1860s, Francois Durif, a French botanist, had a vineyard growing Peloursin and Syrah. The two cross-pollinated and he found himself with a different grape entirely. He made wine from it and named it after himself. If you happen to find a bottle of Durif, it may seem familiar, because in the US we call it Petite Sirah.

The overall messages are that a) If you travel in France you’ll encounter great wine wherever you go. b) Enjoy what each region is famous for, but keep your mind (and your mouth) open for new and unexpected experiences.

Avignon

Philadelphia is still bragging about the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell. Boston hasn’t gotten over the Tea Party. Those things happened around 250 years ago. There is a place in France where they’re still identifying themselves with something that occurred more than 700 years ago: Avignon, in the south of France.

From 1309 through 1417, the Pope decided not to live in Rome but rather took up residence in Avignon. This all had to do with conflict between the Papacy and the Kings of France and is way too complicated to be explained here. The point for contemporary visitors is that everywhere you go in Avignon you’ll see the papal insignia of the Triple Crown and the crossed keys.

The Papal Palace in Avignon, with the cathedral to the left. Photo courtesy of Horizons Provence.

The most impressive and important site should you visit Avignon is the Papal Palace. It’s actually two joined buildings, erected by different Popes. It is one of the largest gothic edifices ever built. Its massive walls and battlements give witness to the perilous nature of the Avignon papacy, with the constant threat of attacks by the forces of various kings and church factions. As the center point of medieval western Christianity, the palace, and Avignon more generally, it became the administrative hub of Catholicism. It was the precursor to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which was built 100 years after the return of the papacy there.

At the same time, Avignon is very much a living city. It is famous for its annual festival of the arts. There are performances in the courtyard of the Papal Palace and in theaters (and in the streets) around Avignon. Of course, most of the theatrical works are in French, with an occasional Shakespeare or other classic piece presented in English.

Saint Benezet’s Bridge, with the bell tower of the Avignon cathedral behind it. Photo courtesy of Provence-Alpes- Côtes d’Azur Tourism.

Of course, there’s a cathedral, Notre-Dame des Doms, next to the palace. Over the centuries, this church has collapsed, been reconstructed, abandoned in the Revolution and restored in the 19^th century. Its bell tower hovers over the city and it is topped by a golden statue of the Virgin Mary that can be seen for miles around. There are also gardens worth visiting. The Doms is the rock on which Avignon was founded. Visitors can climb up to it from the cathedral, enjoy the greenery and the views over the Rhône and pretend to be Avignonais.

Avignon is the capital of the Vaucluse region, which contains most of the Côtes du Rhône vineyards. Nearby is a town wine lovers have heard of: Châteauneuf-du-Pape translated as “the Pope’s new castle”. (One of the Avignon Popes built it as a refuge in case of attack on the palace.) Avignon is a bustling little city , modern amongst all the antiquity. After seeing the Papal Palace and the cathedral, the best thing to do (other than wine tasting all around the city) is just to walk around, taking in many beautiful sectors and sights.

Finally, don’t miss Saint Benezet’s Bridge, or what’s left of it. If you remember the childhood song Sur le Pont d’Avignon (on the bridge of Avignon), this is it. Half of it collapsed centuries ago, but you can still dance there today, if you’d like to.

Editorial: Tipping

We have noticed a new phenomenon, a bit concerning, on our last few wine-tasting trips in California, both in Napa Valley and Santa Barbara County. Evidently, the servers expect to be tipped. Sometimes that expectation is subtle; the server may bring up tipping and then say it’s completely at our discretion. In other cases, they have let us know that a little something extra was what most tasters left behind. In one case, shockingly, a tip was added to our check without asking us and without our approval.

We have been visiting wineries and tasting for decades and tipping is new to us, limited so far to California as far as we can tell. We expect that servers are fairly paid and that a tip is unnecessary. Why is this happening now? It seems to be linked to software on tablets used to generate bills that have a button for tips of various percentages.

Some might argue that we would tip a bartender so why not a server in a winery’s tasting room? Well, a bartender pours us a healthy drink, not four little sips. He doesn’t try to sell us a bottle or a case of wine and he doesn’t try to convince us to join the bar’s club. He leaves us alone if we want to enjoy our drink in peace and chats if we initiate the conversation. A bartender’s purpose is service. Servers in tasting rooms are salespeople.

We find the advent of tipping to be just another way wineries try to intimidate their customers. The whole rationale for Power Tasting, as our masthead states, is “to empower the visitor to get the maximum advantage out of each visit, not to be intimidated by wine snobs on either side of the bar”. We understand the need for wineries to charge tasting fees; labor, real estate, electricity and taxes have to be paid somehow. But tipping on top of that is an insult to the people who try and buy their wines.

So our advice is that when presented with one of those tablets or even a check on paper, tap the button that says, “No tip”. We would very much like to hear readers’ opinions on this matter. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Wine Tasting in Santa Barbara

There’s something wonderful about tasting wine in sight of the vineyards where the grapes were grown. But it can also be a lot of fun to visit tasting rooms in a city or town, near the countryside. No city that we have ever visited has more opportunities for urban wine tasting than Santa Barbara. The official count is 25 tasting rooms, primarily in three districts.

Power Tasting has reviewed several wineries’ tasting rooms in Santa Barbara in the past. The fact is that what we wrote previously has in some instances become inaccurate. There are new wineries represented, existing ones have disappeared and others have relocated, creating new wine tasting experiences.

The courtyard of El Paseo, with the Grassini Family Vineyards tasting room under the flags. There are four other tasting rooms scattered around the courtyard.

To the best of our knowledge, there are no vineyards within the city limits of Santa Barbara. But there are many of them in Santa Barbara County, with a good cross-section represented in town. Moreover, there are other winemaking regions within the southern end of California’s Central Coast, including Santa Ynez and Santa Maria Counties, available for tasting in Santa Barbara. (There are a lot of saints in California.) Wines from all those regions can be tasted in the city’s tasting rooms.

We used to associate Santa Barbara with Burgundy-style wines, i.e., Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. While this is still true, the broad Southern California region has many microclimates and terroirs that support Bordeaux and Rhône-style grapes as well. This makes a wine tasting visit to Santa Barbara a more varied experience than in the past.

There are three districts within the city where the tasting rooms are concentrated and each presents its own personality. Uptown, where the better stores line State Street, there are ten of them. The Sanford Winery has moved out and now offers tastings at their vineyards. It has been replaced by a husband-and-wife team of Barbieri and Kempe, each with their own tasting lists in the former Sanford facility, located in a classy shopping mall. There are five tasting rooms in a passage called El Paseo, the best-known of which is Au Bon Climat, where you can get your Pinot Noir/Chardonnay kicks. Finally, Kunin Wines, which used to be in the Funk Zone is now on the outskirts of the uptown tasting area.

Easy tasting at Paradise Springs Winery, in the Funk Zone.

In the so-called Funk Zone, the ten tasting rooms are not as classy (with some notable exceptions, like Margerum, which is reviewed in this issue). That is not to say that the wines available to taste are inferior; we were quite impressed with some of them. If you do go there, try to do so between Monday and Thursday, if your intent is some serious wine tasting. On the other hand, if you want to party hard, the weekend is for you.

Finally, on Santa Barbara’s east side, an area of light industry, there are five tasting rooms. They’re rather spread out, so going by car from one to the other is called for. To our surprise, there was some quite creditable wine being pressed and aged there, for instance at Jaffurs Wine Cellars. Wine tasting in this sector is a different experience than we have ever had elsewhere. Wine is wine; you just need to be prepared for the factory atmosphere you’ll find there. We weren’t, but will be the next time.

Too Many Tasting Rooms?

As reported elsewhere in this issue, there are 25 wine tasting rooms in Santa Barbara. If you live there or nearby, you can take it easy on a weekend afternoon, stop in one or two of them, have lunch, visit the sights and head home. But for those of us for whom a visit to Santa Barbara is either a vacation or the extension of some other trip, we don’t have the luxury of trying lots of wineries over an extended period of time. Whatever wineries we’re going to stop at, we’re going to have to visit over just a few days.

The bar of the tasting room at Happy Canyon Vineyard.

So many wineries, so little time.

Here are a few tips for optimizing your time, in Santa Barbara or any other in-town tasting destination.

Start with a winery you know. At the very least, you’ll be assured of finding at least one spot where the wines are familiar to you and, we assume, that you like. For example, we began our most recent excursion at Au Bon Climat, where we have been before and whose wines we often buy. And then the big question: We asked our server where else she would recommend in the area. Her tastes might not be the same as ours (they weren’t) but at least we weren’t picking places at random.
Leave some time for serendipity. Now for the contrary advice. If you are in a region where all or most of the wines are unknown to you, pick one and try it out. So, for instance, we were at that point in the day when we’d ask ourselves, “One more or call it a day?” Opting for the first alternative, we passed Longoria on State, which has more of a vibe of a night club than a tasting room. We enjoyed it greatly and will publish a review in a future issue.
Too many is too much. Just because there are ten tasting rooms within three blocks of each other doesn’t mean you have to try them all. In fact, if you did try ten in a day you’d be a menace to your own health and to those around you. For goodness sake, don’t get behind the wheel of a car. Or jaywalk, for that matter. Even if you’re walking from place to place, set a limit on how many tasting rooms you’ll enter and the stick to your intentions.
Enjoy the ambience as well as the wine. Whether you’re relaxing in a well-appointed room, such as at Happy Canyon Vineyard, soaking up the sun on a terrace or partying in the Funk Zone, you don’t have to bolt as much wine as you can as fast as you’re able. The whole premise of Power Tasting is that the experience of wine tasting can be as important as the wines themselves.
Take advantage of the rest of what the city or town has to offer. Yes, you’re there for wine tasting, but have a nice lunch and see the sights. And don’t soak up so much alcohol during the day that you haven’t got the room for a good bottle of a local wine with your dinner, if you’re staying over.

Margerum Wines

Power Tasting reported on wine tasting in Santa Barbara several years ago; this edition is an update of sorts. At that time, we visited the Margerum tasting room, then at the El Paseo complex. The wines were enjoyable but the room was on a dark alley and it was dark and uninviting inside as well. Power Tasting’s policy is that we don’t print bad reviews; we believe that silence is the best way to deal with wineries that we couldn’t recommend. So we never said anything about Margerum at that time.

The entrance and one of the patios at Margerum Wines.

Margerum (https://www.margerumwines.com) has moved, somewhat surprisingly, to the Funk Zone. But their tasting room in Santa Barbara is anything but funky. (They also have a tasting room in Los Olivos that we haven’t visited.) From the elegant, soaring entrance to the broad, capacious room inside, the message is: “Margerum makes serious wine and should be taken seriously”. [Is the Funk Zone evolving? Time will tell.]

The interior of the tasting room at Margerum in Santa Barbara.

The overall ambiance is that of Spanish-accented lounge at a fancy resort. There is a wide bar, terraces in front and on the side, and a separate section above for groups and parties. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a restaurant at resort, because Margerum also has a rather extensive menu. Many wineries will offer a cheese and charcuterie plate, as does Margerum, but this one also has a lengthy list of hors d’oeuvres, sandwiches, salads and pizzas, all prepared on the premises.

All of this would mean nothing if the wines were subpar. While Power Tasting doesn’t review wines as such, we can say that there were several that we enjoyed quite a bit. While Margerum does offer Pinot Noirs and several Sauvignon Blancs, their specialty is wines made from Rhône-style grapes. Our favorites were the Pinot Noir from the Sanford-Benedict vineyard, their Reserve Syrah and particularly their Mourvèdre. The Margerum Rosé is also quite Rhône-like.

Doug Margerum, the winery’s founder, is a Central Coast wine pioneer and continues to advocate for and consult to other vineyards in the area. He has started a second label, Barden, using his middle name for these wines. The intent, according to their web site is “an exploration of cold climate grapes grown in and around the Santa Rita Hills AVA”. We didn’t enjoy them as much as the Margerum-labeled wines. We visited the new tasting room on a weekday and so can’t speak to the weekend when the Funk Zone fills with partiers. We were told by our sever that weekends get quite crowded. We don’t understand why the decision was made to relocate to an area better known for high times than fine wines. We prefer to taste wine in an environment that to some degree replicates the atmosphere of a dinner party in our home: a happy buzz of conversation but not the clang of a wild night of drinking. We can only advise that wine lovers visit Margerum and do so on the days of the week that best fit their temperaments.

Santa Barbara

For wine lovers, Santa Barbara is paradise. So many tasting rooms in such a concentrated space! We address the wine tasting aspect of the city elsewhere in this edition, but even if you are not planning to go wine tasting there – or even if you are – the city of Santa Barbara has a great deal to offer the visitor besides wine.

A Santa Barbara street scene. The tower in the background is a movie theater!

For one thing, it is a particularly beautiful city. Much of the architecture harkens back to Santa Barbara’s colonial past, as a part of Mexico. Scrubbed white walls and tiled roofs are evident throughout the city. In another direction, there are also many beautiful Victorian buildings. Power Tasting doesn’t recommend hotels, but our favorite one, the Upham, is a jewel, erected in 1871, still maintaining its original form and is worth a look.

Even, perhaps especially, when you get off the main commercial streets and into the nearby residential areas, your eyes are still delighted. The homes themselves may or may not have architectural interest, but the gardens in front of them are wonderful to see. The Santa Barbarans love their gardens and fill the fronts of their houses with palms, cacti, succulents and a wide variety of flowering plants and shrubs. Take a walk around just to enjoy these sights.

For a city with fewer than 90,000 residents, Santa Barbara is a remarkably cultured city. On State Street, the main drag, there are several grand old movie palaces from a bygone era, still showing the latest films. Moreover, there are several legitimate theaters providing live performances. The most notable cultural magnets are its museums. There’s a history museum, one for natural history and the gem is the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. It doesn’t have a huge collection – you can see it all in less than a day – but what there is is fine. The highlight, to our eyes, is the museum’s collection of Impressionists.

The Old Mission Santa Barbara.

Two other historical cultural attractions stand out. The Presidio is today more of a district than a single attraction. It consists of many of the buildings that the Spanish erected to govern and protect the city in colonial times. (Not coincidentally, the military was there to conquer the Chumash people, who just happened to be living there at the time.) The buildings are well-maintained and many are open for public viewing. Happily, the Presidio is only a few blocks from the tasting rooms.

While the soldiers were occupying Chumash land, Franciscan monks were opening a mission to convert them. What started as a modest farmstead grew over time into a cloister and a church. The Old Mission Santa Barbara is open today for occasional masses and every day for self-directed tours. It includes the gardens, the church, a museum and the cemetery. The latter, originally intended for burial of the monks, has over the years outsiders become the resting place for other, some not even Catholic.

Add to all the above the beaches, resorts, fine dining and oh, yes, wine and you can see that Santa Barbara is an excellent place to visit. One note about the weather. December through March are months with particularly fine weather, warm for those of us facing real winter. But starting late April and onward through June, the weather turns cool and overcast. The locals say, “May grey, June gloom”. Bring a sweater if you go in those months.