Last weekend, 13 food and wine writers from Southern California
joined the Gilroy Visitors Bureau to tour South Valley’s often
overlooked wineries, and they were delightfully surprised.
Last weekend, 13 food and wine writers from Southern California joined the Gilroy Visitors Bureau to tour South Valley’s often overlooked wineries, and they were delightfully surprised.
“Little did we know, before this past weekend, that there were so many truly outstanding wineries and agricultural attractions in the South Santa Clara Valley,” travel and food writers Philip and Lorraine Shapiro wrote in an e-mail to Jane Howard, executive director of the Visitor Bureau, which rented a bus to tote the writers around last weekend. The group stopped at six wineries, and Gilroy Gardens.
It began 5 p.m. Friday with appetizers and wine at Guglielmo’s Winery in Morgan Hill and ended at Tasso’s Old House Restaurant Saturday evening. Winemaker Gene Guglielmo was personally on hand to pour for the writers, who “were amazed by the beauty of the valley and of our area,” he said.
“They were surprised because they discovered a wine area that, although the oldest, is not always the one people are aware of,” Guglielmo said. “It was a rediscovery of an old wine district.”
“The writers were enamored with the producers and pourers being the same person,” Howard added. “They were just so taken aback.”
The group of 13 wordsmiths composed just a fraction of the 500 people or so who passed through Guglielmo’s winery, Gene Guglielmo said. The semi-annual Passport Weekend tours the regions 14 wineries each March and October, but this was the first time for a southern cohort; last year a group of travel writers visited from the Bay Area, Howard said.
To see more photos of people enjoying wine during Passport Weekend,
