Renaissance Vineyard and Winery is a wine writer’s delight. Many have made the one-and-a-half-hour drive from Sacramento and written rave reviews. Here is a sampling. A writer for Vinography wine blog says, “There is some seriously amazing wine being made in a little out of the way place in the northwest part of California’s Sierra Foothills. At the hands of soft spoken Winemaker Gideon Beinstock, Renaissance Vineyard is making small lots of Bordeaux and Northern Rhone style wines that are pretty much unlike any other wines being made in California.” Wine Spectator’s esteemed Matt Kramer writes, “Renaissance makes some of California’s finest Cabernets, bar none.” And, from Wine Critic James Halliday in the pages of Wine Atlas of California, “If there is a more remarkable vineyard in California, I did not see it. Their wines are stunning.”
Renaissance Vineyard and Winery is also a wine tourer’s delight. Located 70 miles northeast of Sacramento, Renaissance cultivates a 50-acre vineyard on curving slopes between 1,700 and 2,300 feet of elevation, on red topsoil over decomposing granite. One might think this soil composition might create austere, detailed, slightly hard wine that doesn’t yield to modern tastes for soft, oaky, overripe fruit. But this is not what this unusual site imparts.
Renaissance Vineyard was planted between 1975 and 1982 using the carefully selected microclimates and soil conditions to maximize the varieties of grapes. Their vines grow on their own roots, something not often seen in California, where phylloxera requires grafting rootstocks. The vineyard practices organic viticulture using no pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides other than elemental sulfur. Winemaker Gideon Beinstock has grafted over nearly one quarter of the vineyard installing Viognier and Syrah and expanding the proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. The combination of poor soil and old vines limits Renaissance’s production to an average of one-and-a-half tons per acre compared to the Napa Valley average of four tons per acre. Adding to their signature, Gideon adheres to a philosophy of no new-oak barreling and lower alcohol content for most of their wines.
Renaissance wines tend to be concentrated and intensely flavored with pure fruit aromas, spicy minerals, and a powerful structure—leading to outstanding aging potential and an increase in complexity and harmony over many years in the bottle.
Fine wines aren’t the only experience waiting at Renaissance. Wine tourers can take a stroll through two formal European-style rose gardens patterned after La Roserie Bagatelle in Paris. These gardens contain more than 300 varieties of labeled roses. There are also hundreds of palm trees lining the gardens’ boulevards, featuring some of the most unusual varieties from throughout the world. At dawn and dusk these garden journeys are illuminated by gilded French streetlamps to enhance these unique settings. And if the mood is right, wine tourers can choose to take the custom Lakeside Mediterranean picnic lunch in the winery’s tranquil lakefront tasting room, which includes a guided appreciation of five wines specifically chosen to complement the lunch. Sipping a Renaissance Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, or possibly a Syrah and strolling through dreamlike gardens might indeed make a wine tourer feel “reborn.”