One to Avoid In Temecula Wine Country

The Temecula wine country in between San Diego and Palm Springs would be a fine place to stop for an evening, if there were a charming place to stay. I had high hopes for the year-old Ponte Vineyard Inn, hailed by a major glossy travel magazine as one of the world’s 10 best wine resorts, along with favorites of mine such as Italy’s L’Andana and Chile’s Lapostolle Residence. Clearly, no one from that magazine has actually bothered to visit. On our weekend stay, the mission-style hotel lacked any sense of tranquility or exclusivity. We pulled in from the busy road in front and arrived at an empty valet stand. After we dragged our luggage inside ourselves and started the check-in process, a boisterous group of wine tasters invaded the lobby, half-filled glasses in hand, taking photos of each other wearing birthday hats.

Our overpriced King Junior Suite had innocuous contemporary décor, but its small patio overlooked a sprawling parking lot as much as a vineyard. We switched to a Double Queen Room which had better vineyard views, but it could hardly be considered private. Small groups, including a tiara-clad bachelorette party, would periodically pass by, curious to see the hotel grounds after a few glasses of wine in the tasting room. And a few glasses of wine is exactly what Ponte Winery’s loud gift shop/tasting room provides. Here, learning about the wine is secondary to simply drinking. The eye-popping $20 fee buys six “samples” which easily add up to about four full glasses of wine. Ponte’s tasting room doesn’t encourage tasting — it encourages inebriation. What a disappointment, to be unable to recommend a hotel in this up-and-coming wine country. We later visited several wineries in Temecula crafting serious and memorably delicious wines, most notably Palumbo, Wiens and Doffo (where owner Marcelo Doffo himself was pouring). Unless you relish staying at a hotel with a parking lot on one side and tipsy groups of wine tasters stumbling past the other, it’s best to visit the wineries above and keep on moving.