Vineyards surround Miraflores Winery in rural El Dorado County, left. With flavor influenced by soil, topography and climate, the winery’s grapes, right, are picked at peak ripeness. General manager and in-house sommelier Ashlee Cuneo, at right below, pairs food and recommends the wines that Fernando Abarca crafts.
offered by in-house sommelier and general manager Ashlee Cuneo, who also oversees food-and-wine-pairing events. “We are consistently rotating out the wines according to season and according to what we want to showcase next,” Cuneo says of the tasting menu, which peaks at about 20 options. With a specialty in pairing food and wine, Cuneo looks for wines that stand up to, enhance and are enhanced by food. “Miraflores is a winery of distinction and distinctive wines but also (one that) produces really great food-pairing wines,” she says.
custom-crush clients. In the latter role, he works alongside Cappelli, who is now a consultant. Wanting to showcase the taste of the fruit, Abarca crafts wines that he says “speak for themselves.” The philosophy is “less is more,” with as few additives as possible. “We want every single varietal to express its own flavor,” he says. What’s in the vineyard It starts with planting the right varietals to suit the climate. For Miraflores, at an elevation ranging from 2,200 to 2,900 feet in the rolling Sierra Nevada foothills, that means
Winemaking team Now retired in San Diego, Alvarez is a frequent visitor to the winery and trusts in Cuneo to present his wines and winemaker Fernando Abarca to craft them. Abarca understands exactly how a vineyard ends up in a glass. He worked part-time harvesting in the vineyard at Miraflores while a student from Mexico studying computers. In the style of wineries throughout history, Abarca was in 2007 asked by then-winemaker Marco Cappelli to apprentice. Today he makes all the wine for not only Miraflores but also for the winery’s
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