Winemaker got here on a Chinese junk, sort of

Jill Brackett

(Updated: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 7:34 PM)

With an ear pressed to the opening of a barrel, Anna Marie dos Remedios listens to a crackle and pop. By her side, and waiting a turn, is Deb Payne. For the two, the sound its sweet because it marks a dream coming to fruition: Oakhurst now has i's very own winery.

The story, or perhaps more accurately, the message in the bottle, converges somewhere along the path of a queen and a Chinese junk sailor.

The name's Queen, not granny

In 1963 Naomi Ashby and husband, Nelson, purchased a motor lodge off Highway 41; a riverfront gem, the property had unrealized potential. The two leased it out and it became a group home. Years later, after the property fell vacant, an idea came to breathe new life into the empty rooms. Naomi's granddaughter, Payne, would help renovate and run the property as an inn with Naomi's blessing. The new name was chosen to honor Naomi, who, not to be called grandma, would only answer to "queen." In 2003 Oakhurst welcomed the Queen's Inn with eight contemporary, yet cozy, rooms.

How to spend your Idle Hour

More than a decade after Naomi's purchase, in Hong Kong, a little Portuguese girl drifted weekends away on her grandfather's boat.

Though dos Remedios moved from Hong Kong at 4, her clearest memories of home then, were on the Chinese junk, the Idle Hour.

Much later, as dos Remedios' life path turned to her to winemaking, she would develop a label in honor of her grandfather, Augusto Henrique dos Remedios. His Idle Hour was sailing, hers, wine making.

Crush

Several years later, the stories of both would meet on a crush pad.

Dos Remedios was working as an independent winemaker in San Benito County when she met Payne and the two developed and bottled a wine to honor Queen.

A couple of years after that, dos Remedios relocated to the Mountain Area and had a vision to bring her winery and new label, Idle Hour, with her to the Queen's Inn.

Early two weeks ago, the Madera County Planning Commission made that a possibility and allowed the Queen's Inn to the be the site of Oakhurst's first winery, crush pad and all.

The riverside property and its naturally cool temperatures make it an unusually ideal spot to ferment barrels of wine. From crush (pressing the grapes to make juice) to fermenting and bottling, the entirety of the process is at its simplest and it now happens just down the road.

Idle Hour, once bottled, will be a full-fledged Madera County wine and is already establishing a firm place among the budding boutique wineries in the area.

"I think anytime you have the opportunity to pay attention to a single barrel you get a different quality," said dos Remedios.

Payne added that the advantages outweigh the work. "It's a labor of love, but a blast to watch the stages of the process," she said.

The wines, which are processed in what dos Remedios says is the least manipulative manner of winemaking, are hearty and, though sipped, consuming them is more like taking a bite out of the fermented fruit itself.

"They definitely have their own characteristic," said Payne as she stood in the "construction zone" of what will be the wine cellar, the recently crushed Viognier bubbling out of the barrels behind her. "They're rich."

The pair uncork the glass stoppers of the new wine Wednesday through Saturday evenings each week at their lively wine and beer garden. A small patio overlooking the river with a small bar inside -- ceiling lit by twinkle lights strung in bare branches -- play host to art shows and live music.

The regulars, a small but established community of friends, joined Payne and dos Remedios for the pressing of the grapes, a process that took 14 hours. Guests at the inn, from Bombay, joined as well.

Other friends, have helped with the remodeling, some with details like a coat hook fashioned from a wine barrel.

"We're becoming a community here and we're thankful to have a core group to rely on," dos Remedios said.

It's the way of the boutique winery: small, intentional and homegrown.

The Queen's Inn, 41139 Highway 41 (turn just before the Hoof 'n' Paw), Oakhurst. (559) 683-4354; www.queensinn.com