The Tour of Peju

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

After lunch and our wine pairings we began our tour of the Peju Province Winery with Herta Peju.

The first stop was the tasting room which includes the 50 foot Peju Tower a collaboration between Calvin Straub and Tony Peju. The Tower was completed in 2003 and is designed to resemble a French provincial tower made of stucco and stone complete with a copper roof. The Ulurhu Room was added later and has beautiful silk covered lights and a beautiful red and green quartzite floor which I did NOT photograph well (mea culpa).

Next we began our tour of the grounds. Behind the tasting room are some of the vineyards and the rear access to the winery. The wooden barrels are the emergency water supply. As you walk clear of the winery buildings there is a wall (virtually) of plantings and trees. When you walk through this area you enter the family’s private domain which is exactly what we did (though some in the group did take a moment to check out the Taxi-yellow stretch Hummer limo. Assessment? Even more hideous than it appeared from the outside). In the course of our tour we walked past the poultry coop (HA! Girls! People really do keep backyard chickens), a pomegranate tree, another of peach and a mulberry from which we snatched a few berries and then back to vines that were undergoing veraison. The final stop on our tour was the old family garage which is the site of the original tasting room. You could feel the history in that room and I certainly hope Mrs. Peju keeps it just as it is…

Peju Province Winery
8466 St. Helena Highway
Rutherford, CA 94573
707.963.3600
www.peju.com

Tags: Peju, Rutherford

This entry was posted on August 12, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Gretchen Neuman, Road Trip!, Win(e)ding Roads, Wine Bloggers Conference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.