Comments on Jenn's review of A. Rafanelli Winery

Jenn A.
378 reviews
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Great local winery!

Rafanelli is a family-run winery - though it seems obvious, this means that there are some limits on what they can accommodate in terms of traffic to the tasting room and production. Usually, there's one person in the tasting room - and she's also the same one answering the phone. I had the pleasure of talking to Stacey, one of the young daughters of the owner, who was very knowledgeable and friendly. She grew up around wine and she is lovely, smart and gracious.

The wines are fantastic. My sweetie and I had some of the 2005 zinfandel at River's End in Jenner back in March and swore we'd have to find some for our selves. They were out of zin when I called for reservations in May, so this weekend we took the opportunity to pop in to taste the wines.

The 2006 zin wasn't as good as we remembered the 2005 -- but we bought some to keep for a year to try next winter. I've never been a huge fan of Merlot but they have 10% cab which really improves the taste for me. The cab was also fantastic and I ended up buying 9 bottles of wine, half to keep in the back of my closet, er, cellar, for a few years.

I'll definitely go back and plan to get on their mailing list. They limit their sales per person because they want to make sure someone doesn't just buy them out -- they don't sell retail. The limits change over the season and they try to stretch it out so that they can keep their tasting room open as much of the season as they can. Makes sense to me, I'll be back!

Jenn's keywords: winery, wine, dry creek, california, zinfandel