October 12

Today we left the campground for Ironstone Vineyards Tour & Wine Tasting.

This is a big plantation, here there is over 7,000 acres here at this location.  They do a lot more than grow grapes here, they have a big Museum, Amphitheater, Weddings in the large gardens, and a beautiful music room, and yes a big gift shop and wine tasting room.

 We started our tour in the gift shop and wine tasting bar, no sampling yet.

 We got everyone together out side to start tour.

The flowers in these gardens are beautiful.

 This has to be one of the high lights of this tour, inside we got to see a small amount of the quartz that was mined in this area.

A little bit of history about this next few pictures. On December 26, 1992, owners of the Sonora Mining Corporation mine near Jamestown, Tuolumne County, received an unexpected Christmas present.  Excavations in the company's Crystalline mine uncovered a "pocket" of Crystalline leaf gold.
Approximately 1,568 ounces of specimen gold were found.  The largest piece, the Kautx specimen, weighs in at 44 pounds of gold.  This is the largest specimen of crystalline gold in the world.  The specimen consists of many layers of leaf gold separated by rock consisting mostly of clay, quartz, maraposite, decomposed shale and pyrite.

I should say it is in a vault and be hind a very thick peace of glass.

We were looking for a way to get it out but no luck.  They say that this small peace of gold is priceless!!!!

 After the tour of the museum we took a short walk to the wine celler where all of the wine barrels are stored.

 All of these are waiting to go into the cavern for storage.

 These caverns were carved out of the rock here and covers over with a covering to keep it from deteriorate, this help keep it a constant temperature of about 55 degrees if I recall correctly.  They have over a million gallons of wine being cured.

This small water fall helps keep the humidity at about 78%.  They also have weddings down here also.

This is were they process all of the grapes, they are just finishing up with this years crop.

 This is some of the gardens were they have weddings, if you notice the coyote cuts out in the field.  They are there to keep the  Canada Geese out of the grass, and it is working just fine.  They move them every day so they don't see them in the same place.

This is looking out into the area from the Amphitheater, they say that over 7000 people is a full house and they have big name groups here.  They average over 20 different groups through out the summer.
Our next stop is the Music room with a pipe organ that is as big as the one in the Slat Lake City for sound.

If you are ever in this area make this a stop to see for a Vineyard, it has so much to offer.  It is located just outside of Murphy's, CA., also stop and take a look at this neat little town.  There are a lot of small shops to look into and a great Marisolio Olive Oil Tasting Bar.  Tomorrow we head to Yosemite, CA.