Festival celebrates wines made in San Diego

May 16, 2019 4:13 PM PT

Wine lovers looking to explore the varietals being grown in their own backyard should enlist their favorite designated driver for a visit Saturday to the annual San Diego County Vintners Association’s 2019 Annual Wine Festival.

Featuring unlimited pours from more than 20 wineries, the festival puts a spotlight exclusively on wines being made in the county, from urban wineries like Gianni Buonomo Vintners in Ocean Beach to such longtime producers as Fallbrook’s Fallbrook Winery and Orfila Vineyards & Winery in Escondido.

Other participating wineries include Hungry Hawk Vineyards and Winery, Charlie and Echo, Forgotten Barrel — established on one of San Diego’s oldest vineyards, in Escondido — and Ramona’s Milagro Farm Winery, whose winemaker is the famed Bordeaux-trained Hugo D’Acosta, considered the Robert Mondavi of Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe.

2019 San Diego County Vintners Association Wine Festival

1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. Sikes Adobe Historic Farmstead, 12655 Sunset Drive, Escondido. $55. 21 and over. sdcva2019.brownpapertickets.com

Michele Parente

Michele Parente is the Dining, Wine + Lifestyle reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Her areas of expertise include the Valle de Guadalupe wine region, fashion, television, women’s issues and coverage of aging, such as the impact of Alzheimer’s and dementia and family caregiving. Michele is the former Sunday and features editor, where she oversaw profiles, special projects, such as the Legacy of WWII and in-depth reports on a variety of topics. She joined the U-T in 2003, supervising coverage areas that have included features, fashion, TV, Food, Consumer Health and Arts & Entertainment. Previously, Michele was the assistant features editor at The Oregonian, in Portland, as well as the Portland City Hall reporter. She spent 10 years at New York Newsday as a reporter on the crime, education, state legislature and New York City Hall beats. She was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting. A native New Yorker, Michele received her B.A. in political science and Italian Literature at UC Berkeley. In 1980, she studied at L’Università di Urbino, in Italy. One of her life’s goals is to make her way through each of the world’s great wine regions.