Lone Madrone Winery / Bristols Cider

Damn that’s a beautiful place. Decent cider too, I like it a lot. The wine is also top stuff. Tried a few ciders, a few wines liked the lot. Bought a mix of bottles and went on my merry way. Definitely worth a stop if you’re winding your way out to Tablas Creek or wherever.

Visited July 26, 2014.

I really hate giving low scores to great places but there really isn’t much in the way of cider here, mostly wine.

I suspect that this shouldn’t be in the database much longer, but we’ll see what happens. They have a new brewery/taproom down the way in Atascadero where they will start making a lot more cider starting with this harvest season. It remains to be seen though if they’ll keep some production here too. Would be cool if they did since it’s a beautiful place.

Once you get off the freeway you end up driving about 7 miles inland through the hills. This place is at the top of one of the ridges looking out over the valley. Because the address is right on the street your GPS might put the place in the middle of the vineyard, so look for a gate on the right side of the road about 100 yards early. The windy 5 mile drive up Adelaida Rd is very scenic. Every farm has a sign on it advertising local produce; mostly nuts but also some olives, grapes, and some honey. Naturally there are about a half a dozen wineries on this stretch. I also spotted the drunk bus ("Uncorked wine tours") on my way back down the hill. What I also spotted that I probably should have stopped at was a place about a mile from Lone Madrone called Find Distillery which is part of the Villicana Winery. They have a tasting room but I scrolled on by. Apparently they’re going to be making whiskey at some point so someone should stop in there at some point to see if they sell the pre-distilled beer-type whatever it’s called which would probably count as a tick. At the moment it looks like they only make brandy. As I learned at Bristol on my next stop a lot of these wineries are experimenting with making brandy out of their wine. Hmm.

So enough about the area. On to the cidery. it’s in a great spot on top of the hill. These guys do mostly wine but they have a line of ciders as well. The tasting is $10 for the wines and three out of five were zins. I guess this area is big on zinfandel. Of the ciders they have about three in the bottle for sale to go but the only one you can actually try there is the classic. The bottles are mostly around $9-$10 but a couple of them (Blackbeerd and Blackbart) are closer to $20. Service was very friendly and they directed me to Atascadero to try the ciders. The place is dog friendly too.

One last note: this year will be the first year that they actually use grapes grown on the estate.

Came here to try/buy the Bristols ciders, but also did some wine tasting. The ciders and wines are both pretty decent to good. The women working the bar were very friendly and more than happy to answer questions, chat, and maybe even offer a slightly heavy pour. The tasting costs $10, but if you buy two bottles of wine they waive that fee. But of course, they are also $30-$50 bottles. Ended up just buying the ciders they weren’t pouring that day. The place itself is beautiful. Small tasting room, but lots of grapevines on the property, some apple trees visible, and a nice view of the valley below. This took a bit more of a drive to get to than expected, but it was quite nice.