Wine Country: The Valley That Surprised California

Temecula Valley's wine country is younger than it looks. Commercial viticulture here dates only to the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, when a handful of pioneering vintners recognized that the valley's combination of warm days, cool nights, coastal breezes, and well-drained granitic soils could produce high-quality wine grapes. Callaway Vineyard and Winery, started by Ely Callaway, who began planting grapes in nineteen sixty nine, opened the valley's first public tasting room in nineteen seventy four, and his early wines attracted enough critical attention to encourage other investors.

By the time the Temecula Valley received its federally recognized American Viticultural Area designation on October twenty third, nineteen eighty four, there were enough wineries operating to warrant an official geographic boundary. The elevation of roughly fourteen hundred feet, combined with a gap in the coastal mountains called Rainbow Gap that funnels afternoon sea breezes from the Pacific through the valley, moderates what might otherwise be purely desert heat. The result is a grape-growing climate unusual in Southern California, capable of producing both white wines from varieties like Viognier and Chardonnay and red wines from Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.

Today the Temecula Valley has more than forty licensed wineries clustered along Rancho California Road and the surrounding hillsides, making it one of the most visited wine regions in California for day-trippers from Los Angeles and San Diego.