{"id":2103,"date":"2022-05-29T18:14:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T18:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2103"},"modified":"2022-05-29T18:32:46","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T18:32:46","slug":"robert-young-estate-winery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2103","title":{"rendered":"Robert Young Estate Winery"},"content":{"rendered":"

They say that in Sonoma County, the farmer is king.\u00a0 And in Alexander Valley, Robert Young (www.ryew.com<\/a>) was the king of farmers.\u00a0 Born in 1919 and passing away 90 years later, Young was one of those wine pioneers who had the temerity to pull out fruit trees and plant Cabernet Sauvignon.\u00a0 Keeping in mind that the farm had been in his family since the mid-19th<\/sup> century, that took a lot of guts.<\/p>\n

He was a \u201cwinegrower\u201d as he styled himself, not a winemaker.\u00a0 He raised premium crops and sold his grapes to such houses as Ch\u00e2teau St. Jean, Blackstone, Clos du Bois, Simi and others.\u00a0 Ch\u00e2teau St. Jean was the first Sonoma winery to identify a particular vineyard on its label and make a single-vineyard wine.\u00a0 That Chardonnay is still one of their biggest sellers.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of the winery.<\/em><\/p>\n

All this history is fine, but how does that translate into a reason to visit the winery?\u00a0 For one thing, there is<\/em> a winery and a tasting room, but only since 2010.\u00a0 It seems that the younger Youngs, who operate the family farm for yet another generation, pressed Grandpa to press some of the best of his grapes himself.<\/p>\n

Getting there is half the fun.\u00a0 You drive off the northern end of Alexander Valley Road onto Red Winery Road.\u00a0 (There is no red winery to be seen, but there must have been once.)\u00a0 If you\u2019re there on a lazy summer afternoon, you\u2019ll be all alone on a windy road surrounded by nothing but farmland \u2013 mostly vines \u2013 with some well-placed trees and open sky.\u00a0 You\u2019ll know when you get to Robert Young, because there\u2019s nothing else around.<\/p>\n

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Scion House.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of the winery.<\/em><\/p>\n

In old Robert\u2019s day, the tasting room was in a building that appeared to be the ancestral farmhouse.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t, but the effect was pleasing.\u00a0 Today, there\u2019s an aptly named Scion House that serves as the tasting room.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t a farmhouse and never will be, but it has that vibe.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t review wines at Power Tasting<\/em>; we write about the experience of wine tasting on travels through Wine Country.\u00a0 And as we have written before, when you consider that each winery has its fans, they\u2019re all good. \u00a0At Robert Young, they pour Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay.<\/p>\n

The best way to enjoy them is to take your glass to the patio and gaze out over the more than 300 acres that constitute Robert Young\u2019s vineyards.\u00a0 It is truly impressive, vines \u2013 their vines \u2013 as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 You feel as though you\u2019re looking back through time, to the era when Sonoma County and Napa Valley were just fertile farmland, but without tourists.<\/p>\n

In a way, a visit to Robert Young hearkens back to the early days of Northern California wine tasting.\u00a0 A farmer had some grapes and made wine out of them.\u00a0 He wanted you to come and have a taste and maybe buy some.\u00a0 That bit of living history is worth the drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They say that in Sonoma County, the farmer is king.\u00a0 And in Alexander Valley, Robert Young (www.ryew.com) was the king of farmers.\u00a0 Born in 1919 and passing away 90 years later, Young was one of those wine pioneers who had the temerity to pull out fruit trees and plant Cabernet Sauvignon.\u00a0 Keeping in mind that … Continue reading Robert Young Estate 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":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2114,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions\/2114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}