Get a taste of Yolo County at Turkovich Family Wines, a family-owned winery in Winters, California.

Winters, California – just 30 minutes outside of Sacramento – feels like a classic slice of small-town America – the type of place where everyone knows their neighbors and kids ride their bikes down quiet country roads. The flourishing food and wine scene, however, is what sets Winters apart from most small towns. 

Surrounded by family-owned farms, with abundant access to fresh, locally grown produce, the historic downtown is lined with standout farm-to-table restaurants.

The wine scene is arguably even more exciting. Winters is just a few miles outside of the Napa County line and within the newly established Winters Highlands AVA, known for intense, flavorful wines with rounded tannins and a touch of acidity.

While visitors to this agricultural community are just now discovering this hidden gem, the families that have lived there for decades have just been waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Chris Turkovich grew up on his family farm in Winters and recognized early on that the region was well-suited to growing winegrapes. After earning a degree in enology from Cal Poly SLO, Chris honed his craft at well-regarded wineries around the world before founding Turkovich Family Wines in 2007.

Along the way, he met – and married – Luciana Moreno Turkovich. A second-generation winemaker, Luciana studied enology in Argentina and built an impressive résumé at acclaimed wineries, most recently Silver Oak in Napa Valley. In 2012, Luciana left Silver Oak to lead the winemaking program at Turkovich Family Wines. 

World Class Wine in Downtown Winters

We met with Chris and Luciana at their downtown Winters tasting room to learn more about their family-owned winery and why Winters is such a great place to visit. Leading us into the tasting room, Chris explains, “We’re in historic downtown Winters here; the tasting room building is a little over 100 years old. Winters has a really kind of heavy-hitting restaurant scene – we have a number of restaurants and tasting rooms here. We have so much farming around, and it’s so easy for them to get all that farm-to-fork.” 

Unlike many tasting rooms, Turkovich Family Wines stays open until 8:00 or 9:00 pm, depending on the day. The extended hours allow them to take advantage of dinner-time traffic. Chris notes, “When we first opened, the plan was to be a traditional tasting room. And we would start closing down the tasting room, and the restaurant crowd would start to show up. Pretty early on, we figured out we’d better stay open a little bit later, and it’s turned out to be great. We have a restaurant next door that we partner with for food. So we do tastings, and then in the evenings, we do food and wine by the glass as well.” 

Winery Tastings

In addition to the Downtown Winters tasting room, Turkovich Family Wines hosts events and tastings at Turkovich Winery from March through October.

Chris states, “We’re open on weekends out there, as well as for our wine club events. We’ve got vineyard tours and some lamb days. In fact, we use some lambs and sheep for vineyard grazing, so we do some educational events around those vineyard tours.” 

Sustainability Spotlight: Continuous Grazing

Over the last few years, vineyard grazing has become one of the most significant sustainability initiatives at Turkovich Family Wines. Chris notes, “We’ve been doing vineyard grazing for about 15 years now, and it’s not uncommon for sheep to be in vineyards. What we’ve been trying to do is expand it to what we’re calling continuous grazing. A lot of vineyards will bring animals in during the dormant season, and they’ll graze through once and move on. We’re using the animals for continuous grazing throughout the year.  So, they’ll go through our vineyard about 5 to 6 times a year. We’re doing all of our weed control or vineyard floor control with the sheep, and it’s been a big project for the last couple of years.” 

Chris continues, “We’re trying to make decisions that are good for the grapes and for the wine, but now as well for the sheep. We’ve been doing a couple of different trials to figure out the ideal cover crop, again, not just for the vineyard anymore, but for the vineyard and the animals. So, we’ve moved our irrigation away from the vines and actually put them in the centers. As we’re greening things up, we’re greening the cover crop in the center and not under the vines, which makes the weed control a little easier.”

Small, sustainable changes make a big impact

All of the seemingly small changes associated with continuous grazing really add up. He explains,  “A lot of different kinds of subtle changes, but it’s making a pretty big impact. For example, last year, the first time a tractor went into our vineyard was the morning of harvest.” He shakes his head and adds, “And it wasn’t for harvesting; it wasn’t just to hold the bins, because everything was hand-harvested, and we needed a tractor to put the fruit into the bins. So it’s really cut down a lot on our fuel and tractor passes, and it’s been a really interesting project.”

Rooted in Variety  

Guests visiting Turkovich Family Wines tasting room and winery are spoiled for choice, with roughly 25 distinct wines crafted each year. Luciana explains, “We specialize in the Rhone and Spanish varieties.” She continues, “We have Grenache, Mourvedre, Petite Sirah is a big one. Syrah grows excellently here. We now have Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Mourvèdre, Chardonnay, Viognier, Roussanne and Albariño.” Chris, who runs the farming end of the operations, chimes in, “The fruit quality here is really good. We have a really great climate, we don’t have a lot of disease and pest pressures that some other areas deal with, so we have good, clean fruit to start the winemaking process.”

While over 90% of their wines are Estate Grown, Chris and Luciana aren’t opposed to buying fruit from trusted local grape growers. Luciana notes, “The goal has always been primarily estate, but never exclusively estate, so that way we can help support other people and try the varieties. There’s only a handful of producers in this area, so we want to support our neighbors. If a neighbor has a variety that we don’t have and we want to try making a wine, we don’t mind buying from neighbors.”

Winemaker picks: What to order at the tasting room 

With nearly two dozen wines to choose from, deciding where to begin isn’t easy. We asked Luciana and Chris to point us toward a few personal favorites. Luciana eagerly suggests, “I would say start with the sparkling wine, because it’s my specialty. The Blanc de Blanc is delish. And after, jumping to an Albarino – that is excellent. Luciana continues, “And to finish, you can have a little bit of Grenache, and after The Boss, which is a Petite Sirah blend.”

She looks to Chris, who adds, “If you’re looking for a refreshing white wine,I would recommend Albarino in the summer months. I think my go-to wine is our Syrah Viognier, which is 95% Syrah with 5% Viognier that we blend in the field. The floral notes in the skin of the Viognier grape really adds to the Syrah. It’s just a really good red wine.”

Why small wineries matter

Luciana and Chris encourage everyone to seek out and support small, family-owned wineries. Giving her husband a conspiratorial side eye, she quips, “We’re not here for the profit. We’re here for the lifestyle.” Luciana elaborates, “Small family wineries represent the area, and every day, we put a little bit of our hard work and love into each product. Every time you open a bottle of wine, that wine has a meaning, and we put our love and effort into those bottles.” Smiling back at his wife, Chris adds, “The small family wineries are truly the wineries that are holding down the terroir of individual areas. All of our fruit is grown here, and has an expression from this area. The larger wineries are bringing grapes from all over. If you go to the small family-owned wineries, it’s where you can really taste some of the uniqueness of these different regions.”

Visit Turkovich Family Wines

Downtown Winters Tasting Room

304 Railroad Ave. Winters, CA 95694

(530) 795-3842

Sunday – Wednesday 10 am – 8 pm | Thursday – Saturday 10 am – 9 pm

Turkovich Family Winery

30471 Buckeye Road, Winters, CA 95694

Check Instagram and website for updated info on hours and events

Visit Yolo County

While many people plan to pass through Winters on the way to Northern California destinations like Napa or the Bay Area, we suggest taking a weekend to explore Yolo County. Beyond wine tasting and enjoying Yolo County’s exceptional wines, there are countless farms, tasting rooms and restaurants to explore.

Article by Hilary Rance. Photography by Hilary Rance and Turkovich Family Winery.