Red Truck Road Trip – WEST Coast Team

It’s been a while since I’ve been on a true road trip… needless to say, I’d forgotten just how much fun they can be or just how many cool things and people you can encounter. After the lovely kickoff party and subsequent goodbyes to family and friends, the three of us headed north to the first stop of the day: 585 Wine Partners’ corporate headquarters, where we proceeded to meet some of the office staff and wolf down some of the leftover food from the party.

Along the way to Sonoma, we missed a turn but ended up discovering a derelict freight train station which we decided to explore for a few minutes. The whole place was really interesting, since it was located right along a major road but happened to be completely abandoned, so the train cars were totally rusted and the building itself was beginning to fall apart. We, of course, loved every minute climbed all over the boxcars and the train’s engine car… it was like discovering a little piece of America’s history that most people have forgotten simply because it’s in plain sight.

But I digress, and should return the narrative to what happened after we’d invaded Sonoma itself. Once the tour was over, Dan Leese took us out to Cline Cellars, where Red Truck Wines is actually produced, and walked us around the property for a bit, including the museum displaying some incredible scale models of all the different California Missions. All the models were built for the World’s Fair which was held on Treasure Island back in 1939, and they still look incredible. After the introduction to the overall property, Dan introduced us to Charlie Tsegeletos (”Seg-a-let-ohs”), who gave us a backstage tour of the winery and invited us to taste the various blends which were being produced in the Cline Cellars tanks.

Charlie is one of those guys who truly loves what he does, and his enthusiasm for wine was palpable throughout our entire visit with the man. Brad and Mikey seemed to have a decent concept of wine and how it’s made, but my knowledge on the subject is pretty rudimentary; there’s a lot more science than one might expect (which was never a particularly strong field of study for me), and Charlie held my interest all the way through our time with him. It was great to learn so many new things, but it was even greater to learn it from someone who kept it interesting and fun all the way through the impromptu lesson. One of the coolest moments during the tour was when we were all taken up to the roof of one of the buildings and were shown how the company had coated the entire top of the structure with solar panels. According to Charlie, the panels are totally covering the electricity bills and will have paid for themselves within six years. On top of being awesome for the environment, I thought they looked really cool and like something out of a sci-fi movie… cut me some slack, I’m a giant nerd. Ultimately, we were all touched by the fact that both Dan and Charlie would take that amount of time to just show us how things work and let us see a lot of stuff that the general public normally doesn’t get a chance to look at.

Eventually, we said our goodbyes to both Dan and Charlie, and then proceeded to wander around for a little longer. I was quickly enamored with the red truck sitting at the entrance to the parking lot and proceeded to take a bunch of different photos of it and my friend, The Bottle, posing together. We were lucky that the weather turned out to be as nice as it did, and the colors were simply fantastic. If you ever get a chance to see Cline Cellars, I’d highly recommend walking everywhere you can because it’s such a beautiful area; on top of that, there’s a fantastic sense of history and respect for the past almost everywhere you turn… so if you’re a history buff you’ll have a particular blast.

We drove around Sonoma for the next couple of hours and eventually ended up in the Mayo Family Winery where we found ourselves having a great time with Rich Pena, one of the pourers, and a great group of people from the East Coast. One of the men in the East Coast group, John Leonard, is the owner of The Acorn Restaurant in Tennessee. Both he and his wife, Pamela, invited us to come visit (we promise, we’re gonna try, guys!). Once the tasting room closed, we headed up to Truckee and arrived around 11 PM, so stay tuned for all of our thoughts on Tahoe in the next few posts.