Change is constant, even in wineries. Recently the Mitchell Katz Winery moved from the Palm Event Center grounds to a new facility on Buena Vista Avenue. We took our first look at the new Rubino Estates Winery that took its place. As you might guess, we loved what we saw.
Rubino Estates is a sister winery to the Ruby Hill Winery right down the street. They share the same ownership, the same winemaker, the same vineyards and even some of the same promotional offers. Since we are big fans, and members, of the Ruby Hill Winery, this was great news to us.
The Rubino wines are made in the Italian wine tradition. Given winemaker Chris Graves’ previous experience making wines for Tamas Estates, this style comes naturally. Sharing vineyards with Ruby Hill Winery, we are really looking forward to this new family of wines.
The tasting room is ready to handle a huge crowd. We appreciated the various areas for tasting, each somewhat isolated from the next. This broke the vast room into less intimidating sections and also cut the noise a bit. The feeling was a lot more intimate than the size of the space would imply.
One “feature” of the tasting room could use a bit of revision. It seems that every new wine club member is invited to strike a gong to celebrate their initiation. Yes, a gong. When you visit the tasting room, be aware of the gong and choose your tasting area accordingly. We did not see this issue coming, so we took up residence at a bar located a dozen feet from the gong. Expect that future visits will be better informed.
We tasted a few of their wines and found them, without exception, wonderful. In a future post we will discuss the wines themselves, but our first visit was too brief and far too late in the day to properly record our impressions. We will return for a second, more in-depth visit in the near future. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.
We welcome Rubine Estates to the Livermore wine scene and look forward to many happy tastings together!
About the Author: John grills a mean steak and is always in the market for another wine fridge. Believes that if a winery has more than 10 employees, it's probably too big. Buys wine faster than he drinks it, but who cares?
