The first time we went to Murphys, CA we tasted a lot of wine. The one we almost missed turned out to be one of our favorites. If you blink (or have had too much wine to drink) you will miss the Hatcher sign on the South side of the street just before you get to Lavender Ridge tasting room.
Once you locate the sign you must then navigate the stairs down to their tasting room. When you walk in, you feel like you have entered a winery cave: it's dark, it's cool and smells like the earth where the grapes are grown in Calaveras and Amador counties.
That day the place was hoppin', but we bellied up to the tasting bar and after waiting several minutes we were greeted by one of the brothers (Matt and Sewell Hatcher) who create this amazing wine. Side note: I have looked up Hatcher on Yelp and they don't get the best customer service reviews. Let's face it, they have great wine, but if you are looking to be coddled and schmoozed, this is not the place. Now, if you become a wine club member or buy a bunch of their wine in one sitting, they will give you a little more attention...haha! On that note, I cannot imaging how hard it must be some days to work in a tasting room and have people only tasting and not buying, so I'm sure some of the distance comes from not wanting to get attached when you might not even buy. I digress....
Every wine we tasted was incredible! Hubby calls all of our Murphy wines "no resistance" wines meaning a bottle goes down too easily on a summer night sitting on the porch at the cabin. Our favorites from the Hatcher collection are their red zinfandels. We bought several that first trip and we keep going back! In fact, we are wine club members.
If I haven't convinced you yet to visit Murphys, I'm not sure how else to do it. We love, love, love to visit Murphys every time we are in California! We will keep going back and I just saw a new restaurant...new to me anyway...on Google and want to try it the next time we are in town.
Thank you Mom and Mike for introducing us to this wonderful little town and the locals who have become so dear to us!
Cheers!
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