Barrel tasting

Wine lovers flocked Saturday to the Russian River Wine Road Barrel Tasting, one of the largest wine events of the year.

Cars and tour buses, many of them from San Francisco, filled narrow Wine Country roads with traffic and packed into winery parking lots.

The expansive tasting at wineries from the Russian River, Dry Creek and Alexander valleys has doubled in size last year when organizers added a second weekend to facilitate crowds. The number of wineries has increased from just six when the event formed 32 years ago to over 100 this year.

Crowded tasting rooms, cellars, outdoor kiosks and parking lots have gone from being the exception to the norm, winemakers say, but organizers still try to keep the barrel tasting wine centered and relaxed.

"It's very different from going out to a tasting room,"� said Ken Fischang, president of the Sonoma County Visitor's Bureau. "You get to go to different settings, talk to the wine makers, get a sense of what's coming."

At barrel tastings, sippers are able to purchase "futures" on tastes they like, then pick up their order when it's bottled 12 to 18 months down the line.

Some wines sell out in futures without ever hitting the market, making barrel tasting one of the only opportunities to purchase new premium and limited vintage wines, said Beth Costa, executive director of Russian River Wine Road.

"So many of our wineries are so small it's overwhelming if 40 people show up at once," Costa said. "As long as the number of wineries are up it's really not a crazy weekend."�

Some of the more exclusive wineries, though, have opted out of the tasting because of what they said were overwhelming crowds.

"We don't have enough wine and it's a lot of people coming,"� said Lisbeth Holmefjord of Lambert Bridge Winery, where only 9,000 cases of wine are bottled annually.

Lambert Bridge, in Healdsburg, will not participate for the second year after large crowds poured into their tasting room for the organized barrel tasting. Their 2004 cabernet sells for $90 a bottle, Holmefjord said, and the winery's club members buy nearly all the wine.

"Our wines are not for the everyday consumers,"� she said.

"People have a good time but there is not enough in the barrels for them. It is not for the masses."�

Another Healdsburg winery, J Vineyards and Winery is not participating either, although their tasting room will be open during the weekend, said Steven Pirak, assistant tasting room manager.

"It's gotten to be bigger than what we can participate in,"� Pirak explained. "We prefer to keep the focus on folks tasting wine and purchasing futures, the way barrel tasting traditionally is."