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This page last updated on 04/13/2017
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Directions: The Pahrump Valley Winery is located a scenic one hour drive from the Las Vegas Strip. Take Highway NV-160 west. You will take a right at the first stop light (Winery Road), then half mile to winery on the left.
Description: This estate vineyard is located here at the winery and consists of Zinfandel and Syrah. Planted in the early 1990's, this Zinfandel vineyard is also Nevada's oldest commercially producing red grape vineyard; it produced the state of Nevada's first commercial red wine in state history when it was harvested in 2005. You can imagine how delighted we were when these first 100 cases of Zinfandel, released in 2008, won 7 National Wine Awards, including a Gold! The 2006 vintage followed with another award winning year. It's easy to see that southern Nevada is becoming "Zinfandel" territory. In 2009 they added 1,200 Syrah and Zinfandel vines to their 3 acre vineyard. All the new vines were planted on drought resistant root stock and placed on a (VSP) vertical shoot position trellis system. In March of 2014 they released their first "estate" Syrah, our 2011 vintage. This wine exploded with juicy flavors and spice and it we won "GOLD" at the Tasters Guild International wine competition. It quickly became the fastest selling dry red wine in Nevada history. Both their Syrah and Zinfandel have been awarded GOLD medals in National Wine Competitions. They now partner with several other vineyards around the Silver State. In 2015 the combined efforts of these growers harvested nearly 30 tons of Nevada grown wine grapes. The combined efforts of these growers have contributed to the Pahrump Vallery Winery's 2 Double Gold, 13 Gold, 35 Silver and 20 Bronze medal winning wines! Capital challenges aside, the Loken's have renovated about 90 percent of the winery since they took it over in 2002. They gutted the restaurant and rebuild it from the ground up so it was 100 percent new. They then installed all new plant equipment, tanks, bottling, you name it. They renovated the tasting room and expanded the gift room. Last year they added a beautiful glass-in dining porch around the entire Zagot awarded restaurant and continue to renovate the surrounding grounds. Symphony's restaurant has received five Zagat ratings and is the only Pahrump establishment to have a Zagat rating.
Trip Visit Notes: Over the past several years I have visited the Pahrump Valley Winery (Fig. 01) on at least five occasions. Sometimes for a wine tasting, sometimes to have lunch in the Symphony restaurant. The first time I visited was in 2010 with my friend Jim Herring. When we got there we signed up for a tour of the grounds, the vineyards and the vine making operation inside. The lush grounds are well landscape and provide walking paths, water fountains and a gazebo (Fig 02). Today (08/05/2016), I made another visit with friends Bob Croke and Jim Herring. We started today's visit with another tours of the vineyards (Fig. 03) and always seem to come away with more information about the property. We were surprised to learn that about a 1/4 acre of vines (Fig. 04) could yield as much as a 1,000 bottles of wine. Including the grapes they import from other wineries, they produce more 100,000 bottles of wine a year (Fig. 05). (Figure 06) is a picture of the wine bottling machine. One things we learned today was that they use three different types of oak barrels (Fig. 07) for aging some of the wines. Some of these are barrels come from the US and some come from Italy and France and range in cost from $500 to more than $1,000 per barrel. And, that after being used for three harvests, they have to be thrown away. As of 2016, they have now produced more than 1 million bottles of wine. Since 2006, their NEVADA Wines have won 83 National Wine Awards; 18 Gold, 42 Silver and 23 Bronze (Fig. 08). (notes con't below)
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| (Fig. 07) |
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| (Fig. 08) |
Visit Notes Continued: While waiting for the tour, we sat in the leather couched, fire-placed lounge. One end is covered all of its award winning wines and the other end is its classed in wine storage area (Fig. 10). After the tour we enjoyed a wonderful lunch at Symphony's restaurant. This Zagot rated establishment is an up-scale casual restaurant that serves both lunch and dinner. On white linen clothed tables, in a very quiet, elegant atmosphere, the fine food is beautifully served, and is reasonably priced. Dining here is worth the trip to the winery all by itself. Since my first visit here, they have even improved the restaurant by adding more seating including an closed-in outside patio with a lovely, relaxing view (Fig. 11). The picture in (Fig. 12) shows a side view of the building and its glassed-in porch. After a very relaxing lunch, we bellied up to the wine tasting bar (Fig 09 -up) and sampled more than a half dozen different wines. Every visit we make here, we always end up buying several bottles of wine. Today some of us even bought olive oil and some jellies from the gift shop. The last picture (Fig. 14) is of an old vintage truck once used for hauling wine barrels.
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| (Fig. 10) |
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