Exploring Murphy, Ca: Gold Country’s Home To Great Wine & 24 Tasting Rooms
The town of Murphy , CA, population 2,213 , hosts 24 California wine tasting rooms on its downtown. That’s one for every 92 residents. Some might call this a small slice of heaven.
Newsome Harlow Winery is one of those right on Main Street with a beautiful patio and small tasting room. Their wines were mostly single varietals except for one blended with Carignan, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel and Alicante Bouschet (AB is always an interesting twist when blended into other reds.)
Here’s what we tasted:
2022 Sauvignon Blanc $22 ✰
2022 Rose (Carignan) $24 ✰+
2022 Foothill Zinfandel $25 ✰+
2021 Big John Zinfandel $40 ✰+
2019 Deviant (Zin) $48 ✰+
2020 Petite Sirah $25 ✰+
2020 Syrah $36 ✰
The wines were good. Pouring host Nikki was gracious but a bit overwhelmed as she was the only host sharing wine for eight groups. That works well, except when someone wants to purchase wine, causing a distraction for the host and slowing down pourings. Nikki handled it as well as she could.
While exploring the main street zone of Murphy, this is a great respite of good tasting wine.
Some notes on our wine ranking system.
Bill & Erin Hodge write about California Wine, the estates & winemakers producing them and educational information about Vino. Living in California Wine Country provides a front row seat to the places you want to visit the most here in the Golden State.
– -✰ means -What’s next on your list of wines
-✰ means -Not liking it too much
✰ means -We’ll drink this wine, especially if it’s hosted!
✰+ means -You’ve got our attention and we might buy this wine.
✰+ + means -We’re hooked and we’re going to buy this wine.
When you see -✰/✰+ with a slash, it means we disagree.
