Sierra Wines - El Dorado County Wineries

El Dorado County

If you like the idea of tasting incredible wines with a back drop of beautiful mountain vistas and being served by people who pride themselves on hospitality, this growing wine region may just be what you are looking for. El Dorado County has more wineries than any other foothill county and is number seven in the state of California. The major difference you will notice immediately as you tour the area is that these are almost exclusively small, family owned wineries.

The largest in the area is Boeger, which produces about 25,000 cases a year. These boutique size wineries pride themselves on their small batches of hand made, premium wines.

There are two American Viticultural areas located completely within El Dorado County; Eldorado and Fairplay. Click below to access the Winery Links or Interactive Maps for these areas:

Winery Links and Informational Pages:

Wineries of the Fair Play AVA

Wineries of the El Dorado AVA.

Interactive Winery Maps:

Maps to the Wineries of Apple Hill and Pleasant Valley

Maps to the Wineries of Coloma and the West County

Maps to the Wineries of Fair Play.

Although never a winner in the 'volume of cases produced' category, El Dorado County has had a rich wine history that dates back to the gold rush. The concept that the 'gold is in the grapes' was a fact not lost on some of the early immigrants to the region. Many came for the gold and soon saw that the real money was in supplying goods to the miners; and always in high demand were wine and distilled spirits.

David Girard Winery , Coloma

One of the first commercial wine producers was not surprisingly found near the gold discovery site in the Coloma Valley. Martin Allhoff, an immigrant from the German Rhineland, settled with his child bride from Ohio, Louisa, in Coloma in 1852. He purchased 35 acres of land and planted vineyards on the hillside. The terraces from those vineyards are still visible today. By 1858 Martin had produced his first vintage and was soon selling his wines as far away as Virginia City, Nevada. When he was implicated in an embarrassing distribution scandal, he committed suicide in a hotel room in Nevada.

After Martin Allhoff's suicide, his widow, Louisa, married widower Robert Chalmers. Together the couple expanded the winery and renamed it under the Chalmers name and began producing a number of wine types including Zinfandel, Riesling, Muscat, brandy and port. In 1879 Robert and Louisa completed the Vineyard House and opened it as a hotel. Sadly, shortly after its completion, Robert began slipping into a demented mental state and had to be detained in a room in the house for his own protection, dying there in 1880. Many stories have been told since of one or more spirits inhabiting the Vineyard House and it has always made for a great ghost story to tell out of town guests. Continued ...