A Visit to Ficklin Vinyards

[Eric Ifune]

I was driving from Northern California back to Las Vegas and found myself close to the town of Madera, California and so decided to stop in by Ficklin Vinyards. I've had quite good value and good quality port-styled wines from them in the past.
A bit of backround. Ficklin was one of the first, if not the first in California to devote itself entirely to port-styled wines. The vinyard was planted in 1947 with Tinta Madeira, Souzao, Tinta Cao, and Touriga Nationale grapes by Walter Ficklin who was originally a raisin grower. His two sons, Walter Jr. and David ran the vinyard and winery until their sons, Steven and Peter took over. Peter is currently the president. The vinyard is over 60 years old the the vines around the winery are suitably old and hory, but beautifully maintained.
It seems to me, that the winery has, over the past few years decided to broaden and upgrade the product line. Their old vine tinta is a nice, inexpensive wine, reminding me of some LBV's from Portugal. It's approximately 5 years old and unfiltered. Their vintage ports are bottled 26-30 months after the harvest. They are quite rich and ripe, soft and very fruit forward, perhaps missing some grip. Still very nice fortified wines for the price. Within the past year, they've released a series of colheita wines from the 1997, 1998, and 1999 vintages. They also recently released a 20 year old tawny to go along with their 10 year old. The 10 year old tawny is quite good and a bargin at $19.99/750 ml. The 20 year old and the 1997 colheita are marvelous. Also nice was the 1999 Late Bottle Vintage which I would have sworn was from the Douro.
Two facinating wines were a pair of single variety ports, a 2001 Touriga and a 2001 Tinta Cao. These were excellent as well, and not at all lacking in grip. The vinyard was in Lake County, of all places, and the grapes needed until November to ripen to fortified wine sweetness. Unfortunately the vines were riped out after 2003. Makes me wonder what they could have done with table wines.
All in all, a wonderful visit. Very instructional with some terrific fortified wines.

[Raj Patil]

Ficklin was the first total port winery in California according to their website. I haven't had a chance to try their wine however because the prices are the same, sometimes higher, than the Portugal ports on the shelf right next to it.

[Andy Velebil]

I recenlty had a Ficklin and was surprised at how good it was.