SatPic: God’s (Twisted)(Wine) Country
The first SatPic comes from Twisted Oak Winery. It’s located in a part of California many call "God’s Country", AKA the Sierra Foothills.
I’ve spent a bit of time in this part of California and more than anything it’s the rolling quality of the land that strikes you. Wineries first made a hit in the region via very nice and compelling Old Vine Zins as well as lovely Sauvignon Blanc. The Twisted Oak Folk are doing it a bit different:
Albarino, Verdelho, Viognier, Tempranillo, Grenache, Syrah, Petite Sirah….just to begin with.
It’s also the folks at Twisted Oak that maintain El Bloggo Torcido, a killer winery blog
hi Tom – thanks for allowing me a bit of fun! I hadn’t really played with Google Earth but I am now messing with it a bit. The “Ruler” function is kinda fun – you can even set the units. For example, it is 746 inches from the dark car in the parking lot to the front door of the tasting room… (I note that they offer Smoot as a unit, but not the Mackerel – I grew up near Cal Tech, what can I say?)
Another fun thing to do is deduce when the picture was taken – time of year and day. (I’m sure there is metadata embedded somewhere on Google that I haven’t figured out how to access yet.) The time is near noon since the shadows are aligned to the north. And the shadows are long which argues for sometime near the winter solstice.
I’m going to say November 2005 because the deciduous oaks still seem to have some of their leaves. The grasses appear to be in transition between the two primary California seasons – from brown to green. And it is after crush since you can see all those white Macrobins lined up on the lower right asphalt, stored for the winter. And the landscaping had not yet been installed…
thanks again! – j
ps: BTW, that AppAm site (don’t call it AA!) is really coming together – both fun and informative!
Do I see a rubber chicken down there?
Tom Wark, over at his Fermentation blog, has been having fun with Google Earth, and asked for people to send in their favorite winery and vineyard satellite views. Naturally, Twisted Oak was first on the scene! I wrote a comment
It almost looks like a crop cirle..