Eleven wineries scattered across the Sierra foothills of southern El Dorado County are throwing open their tasting rooms for Labor Day weekend, when the Fair Play 250 — Red, White and You festival turns the rural Fair Play AVA into a two-day wine crawl. Running September 5 and 6, the event pairs award-winning pours with live music, food trucks and games, and organizers are billing it as a celebration of 250 years of freedom and community.
According to the Mountain Democrat, a two-day pass costs $25 and includes a wristband along with an assigned starting winery, though individual winery reservations are not required beyond that first stop. Tickets are available through fairplaywine.com/fairplay-250-labor-day, and proceeds support the Fair Play Winery Association, the regional non-profit that promotes the Fair Play AVA and markets its boutique member wineries, according to the Fair Play Winery Association. The association represents more than 20 family-owned, boutique producers across southern El Dorado County.
Eleven Stops, Eleven Different Vibes
Each participating winery is putting its own spin on the weekend. Chaney Family Winery, located at 8175 Fairplay Road, will pour wine slushies and hand out complimentary mini cupcakes while celebrating winemaker Scott's birthday, per the Mountain Democrat's rundown of the event. Element 79 Vineyards at 7350 Fairplay Road is hosting a Bites & Beats gathering with chicken and waffle bites and live music, while Gwinllan Estate at 7060 Fairplay Road will serve pulled pork sliders and homemade mac and cheese alongside its méthode champenoise sparkling white and red wines.
Medeiros Family Wines, at 7480 Fairplay Road, is offering barrel tasting and a complimentary light bite along with live music, the newspaper reports. Windwalker Vineyards, located at 7360 Perry Creek Road, is pouring five zinfandels paired with bites, and Château d'Estienne at 2700 Omo Ranch Road will feature Portuguese wines, bites and views of the Sierra foothills.
Music, Samosas and a Food Truck
Mellowood Vineyard, at 2979 Mellowood Drive, is pairing Kenyan beef and vegetable samosas with its wines and features an air-conditioned indoor lounge for guests looking to escape the late-summer heat; the winery has live music from Nick Kantar scheduled for September 5. Golden Leaves Winery at 3625 Omo Ranch Road is offering grape picking alongside blues and jazz and three separate wine and food pairings.
Cielo Sulla Terra Estate Vineyards and Winery, located at 8061 Perry Creek Road, will offer wine, bites and special bottle discounts, with live music available for a $10 add-on and a food truck running from 6 to 9 p.m. on September 5. Mirador Winery at 2501 Omo Ranch Road is serving estate wines with red, white and blue tacos, and MV Winery at 7261 Fairplay Road rounds out the lineup with its own Red, White & You celebration.
Why the AVA Label Matters
The Fair Play name carries legal weight behind it. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officially established the Fair Play American Viticultural Area on February 26, 2001, as California's 84th AVA, later approving a formal boundary expansion in January 2015, according to the Federal Register. That federal designation recognizes the distinct geography, soil and climate of southern El Dorado County's grape growers across roughly 33 square miles.
Under Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau labeling rules, at least 85 percent of the grapes used in a wine must be grown within the AVA's boundaries before a producer can put the Fair Play name on the bottle, per federal regulations. A separate rule requires that at least 95 percent of the grapes in a vintage-dated, AVA-labeled bottle be harvested in that same calendar year, enforcing strict vintage integrity for estate-labeled wines produced in recognized viticultural areas.
High Elevation, Wildfire Scars and a $300 Million Industry
Sitting between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above sea level in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Fair Play features the second highest average elevation among all California wine appellations. That altitude brings warm, sunny days paired with cool mountain nights that help grapes retain acidity, a climate profile detailed by Visit El Dorado County. Local vineyards cultivate 82 distinct wine grape varietals, with 34 tracked annually for commercial yield and pricing data, according to the El Dorado County Department of Agriculture's 2023 crop report — a diversity that reflects microclimates capable of supporting both Rhône and Italian grape varieties.
The stakes for growers are real. El Dorado County agricultural reports indicate the local wine industry generates more than $300 million in annual economic impact for the county, with wine grapes ranking among its top agricultural commodities alongside tree fruit, timber and livestock. But that economic engine has proven vulnerable to wildfire: the El Dorado County Agricultural Commissioner found that the 2021 Caldor Fire reduced local wine grape values by 25 percent to $7.2 million, after smoke taint forced growers to discard 30 percent of that year's harvest.
Commercial grape growing in Fair Play traces back to the 1840s Gold Rush era, before Prohibition shut the local industry down; modern viticulture wasn't re-established until the late 1960s, through trial plantings by UC Davis researchers, according to Grape-Nutz. The area's first post-Prohibition commercial wineries opened in the early 1980s. Located about an hour's drive from Sacramento, the region has since built its identity around small-lot, family-operated tasting rooms paired with outdoor recreation at Jenkinson Lake and the American River — a rustic alternative to California's larger commercial wine regions that this Labor Day weekend's eleven-winery crawl puts on full display.
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