Grapes of quaff: California’s smallest city has become a major player in the wine world
Grapes of quaff: California’s smallest city has become a major player in the wine world
Amador City is so small that “you can put your arms around it,” says Kevin Carter, the bar’s owner. At just 0.3 square miles, it’s California’s most bijou-integrated city, but it packs a big punch of history: It’s where modern California began.
In 1849, gold was found in these hills, and 300,000 dreamers flocked to it, creating the tribe from which California’s alien population would grow.
Amador City, and the county of the same name, is a two-hour drive from San Francisco, on the edge of the High Sierra.
Between 1846 and 1852, the population of San Francisco would grow from 200 to 36,000. In the last century, Amador City’s fell from peaks of 1,000 to 200.
I had driven from Yosemite, only a 90 minute drive, a route that took me across the High Sierra, down through pine forests. Now, as I speed past the hamlet of Fiddletown, named for the prospectors’ love of dancing, trees give way to vineyards.
Ruaridh Nicoll visits Amador City, “California’s most bijou-integrated city.” It is located in Amador County, a place where wine has been made for three decades
Over the past three decades, winemaking has taken Amador County by storm. At Rest, a boutique hotel in the quiet town of Plymouth, I’m served a glass of Zinfandel as I check in. It feels like I’m in Napa or Sonoma, California’s famous wine regions – just 30 years ago.
Nearly all of the 45 wineries here survive by selling wine to visitors, who then continue to order for years after they’ve gone home.
The slopes are known for barbera, a rich red grape variety that takes a long time on the vine to overcome its natural acidity, something the best owners of small vineyards achieve.
Upstairs is Rest, a boutique hotel in the quiet town of Plymouth in Amador County
Amador County has 45 wineries
I could spend all day strolling through these vineyards – in Napa and Sonoma, a single tasting can cost $40 (£32); here it’s $5 (£4) – but instead I head to Amador City and stop at the Small Town Wine Bar for a bowl of mushroom soup.
Ginger Budrick has been running it with her husband Matt for six years. ‘When we first moved here, it was a kind of ghost town. We joked about how maybe we were ghosts too, but we just didn’t know it.’
Now there’s a line of lovely original stores, like 3 Fish Studios, where I buy a woodblock print of a redwood.
The biggest change is being forged by Kevin Carter. He built a brewery, the Break Even, and converted the tavern into a tap room.
His final move is to buy the Imperial Hotel. Kevin walks me down Main Street to the old west front. Inside is an old miners bar. The crystal ball lights hanging from the ceiling would make the perfect target for an old gunfighter. Indeed, Amador should be a target for anyone touring California.