Elizabeth Spencer Winery

Elizabeth Spencer Winery was on several of my lists. Jean Charles Boisset acquired the winery in 2021, but they kept on their same head winemaker so I had hoped it would remain the same caliber. We were sadly disappointed.

The tasting room is housed in a historic post office. There’s also a secluded patio off to the side; while it has know view it has a great playlist to muffle the sound of the street. It’s also dog friendly and had awesome wall paper. That’s about all the positive things we could come up with.

We chose the Artisanal Pairing Experience. At $95 ($10 more per person than the winemaker’s tasting selection), we tasted five wines with a cheese pairing.

I was most excited for the Russian River Valley Viognier, but it was blended with Grenache Blanc, overwhelming the floral and stone fruit notes with citrus and making it flabby. Of note: you can’t even find specs for this wine on the ES website. We couldn’t find anything remarkable about the reds and the cabernet franc was undrinkable. To top things off, the service was slow, the pairings all wrong, and our server ignorant.