Beer, Wine & Spirits in Palm Springs

Though they loved wine, Les and Dorian Linkogle didn't move to Temecula for the grapes; and even though their land was home to one of the largest, oldest olive trees in the city, they didn't move for the landscape. They moved to give their motocross cyclist son a place to ride his bike, but in time the siren song of the vines got through to them. In the late 1990s they planted acres of grapes—viognier, merlot, zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, and riesling—to ship to other vintners. However, it wasn't long until the Linkogles began handcrafting small-lot artisanal wines of their own under the banner of Briar Rose Winery.

Soon, Briar Rose Winery’s vintages began racking up accolades and awards in international competitions. All of the winery’s wines are unfiltered with no sugar added, and many are aged in oak barrels. Guests can literally taste the fruits of these labors at the winery's tasting room, sipping zinfandel, a bordeaux blend, and Talking Frog, a wine lager that becomes a prince when you drink it.

Uncorked Tours Megan Franks does all she can to separate stuffiness from wine connoisseurship. For tours of Temecula's wine country, she dispatches a Cadillac Escalade or a limo party coach with two flat-screen TVs and a dancer's pole, which she gaily poses next to in a photo on her website's About page. She also launches tipplers into the air during morning hot air balloon rides that begin, like the chauffeured tours, with a complimentary champagne toast. To contribute to the party vibe during each trip, a staff member continuously works a camera's shutter, producing digital photos that are then uploaded to Facebook for sharing and downloads.

Amid Temecula Valley's rippling foothills, equestrian farms, and estate vineyards, Frangipani Estate Winery has carved out a rural post of its own overlooking the Deportola Wine Trail. Since 2003, owner and winemaker Don Frangipani has fused French varietals with old-world Italian styles, exhibiting a passion for red wines along the way. Today, Don's facility produces 5,000 cases per year, and every day, it swings open the doors to its boutique tasting room so visitors can stop by and test drive samples.

Specializing in Italian varietals, Cougar Vineyards and Winery sprawls across 17 acres of land on the De Portola Wine Trail, cultivating an ever-growing selection of specialties such as vermentino, aglianico, pinot grigio, and brachetto. Patrons can sample a consistently rotating arsenal of flavors inside a tasting room that’s open every day of the week, or take their wine education a step further by taking a tour of the production facility or helming a tell-all interview with one of the grapevines. Cougar Vineyards also plays host to a variety of events every month, including live musical acts on Saturdays.

Keyways Vineyard & Winery–owner Terri Pebley Delhamer presides over the only woman-owned-and-curated winery in Temecula Valley. Enlisting her close friend and designer Deborah Daniel to select the amber stucco walls and terracotta roofs, Terri cultivated the winery's classic mission-style aesthetic. Inside a tasting room that the California Winery Advisor dubbed "rustic yet elegant," head winemaker David Raffaele calls on experience gained during studies in the Italian wine country, crafting numerous varietals that grace the black onyx bar. Raffaele’s adherence to craftsmanship results in limited-run vintages that fill the vineyard’s trim annual production of 4,000 cases, or what Dionysus referred to as pregaming.

When the vintners aren't harvesting plump grapes on their equestrian-friendly property, they keep busy by hosting special events and overnight guests at a recently renovated estate home surrounded by rolling foothills and nearby ranches. Matrimonial knots take hold beneath a dark-stained trellis that caps a paved walkway perched in the foreground of the distant mountains.