Only in CoCo, you guys.
As Buster Poindexter might have said, “smack dab in the middle” of century-old vines sits an active, and popular, golf ball driving range.
As the brains behind this blogging endeavor, Kathy began researching our old vine heritage through search engines, using keywords such as “wine,” “region,” and “Contra Costa County” to land on a unique grape source.
Echelon Vineyards, headquartered hundreds of miles away toward the Pacific Ocean, and situated in a town just east of San Simeon’s Hearst Castle, is another label now owned by booze Goliath Diageo. And Echelon was the only Google match to label a wine as a vineyard designate from a “Driving Range Vineyard” in CoCo County. Diageo was awesome; when Kath phoned the number for Echelon, she was connected to a local Diageo rep, who called right back to hip her to the wine’s backstory.
See, there’s a driving range in Antioch that is ringed by high netting to stop errant golf balls, but it’s slapped right in the middle of acres of old vines, circa 1910, carved into the landscape. If any wine was going to earn a CoCo vineyard designate as “Driving Range Vineyard,” this was definitely going to be it.
But ya know what? It’s totally fake. Kath phoned the Vineyard Practice Tee driving range (complete with wine barrels and a row of “just for show” vines at the entrance to the parking lot); the folks there thought that the plot was owned by a Gonzalez or Gonsalves family, but they had no knowledge of a vineyard name. According to Tom at Diageo, the name “Driving Range Vineyard” was a “proprietary” designation (i.e.: made up).
Apparently, Echelon made two vintages (2003 and 2004) of Driving Range Zinfandel before exiting the course and declining to sign the score card. Kath found a 2003 Echelon Driving Range Vineyard Zinfandel from CoCo County, and it’s just hoping to make the cut. It shows a bogey on first glance: some red/orange brickiness, and more than a little Port-like whiff. And the ripe fruit smacks of a rusticity, but there’s raisin and prune on a short finish. An inexpensive Zin, for about 10 bucks, that’s starting to show its age.
Par for the course?
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