I went from one wine tasting to another wine tasting, and both had Detroit ties, at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan.  My brain can at times run a mile a second, especially in a train-of-consciousness moment.  So, when I heard of Limerick Lane Cellars, I immediately thought of seeing the late Christopher Plummer doing his one man play “Barrymore” as he wheels out a hotel bar cart and starts with the bawdiest “there once was a man from Nantucket…”

Limerick Lane Cellars sits at the northeast corner of Sonoma County’s Russian River Valley, a microclimate that allows Zinfandel and Rhone varietals to thrive.  Limerick Lane was named after a cattle farmer who first inhabited the area, naming it after his hometown in Ireland, in 1870.  By the 1890s the region experienced an influx of Italian immigrants who began planting vineyards and making wine.  The Del Fava family plants a Zinfandel field that is now called the “1910 Block” and stays with the family until they sell to the Collins family in 1977.  The Limerick Lane winery was created in 1985 to market wines from the estate, and in 2010, Jake and Alexis Bilbro purchase the vineyard and by 2012, the were ranked #12 in the annual Top 100 Wines of the World list by Wine Spectator.  After nearly a thirty-year hiatus with time in the automotive industries of Detroit, Karen Francis DeGolia returned to the region and grasped the reins of Limerick Lane Cellars.

The first wine of the tasting was the Limerick Lane Cellars Failte Sonoma County 2025.  Failte is Gaelic for “welcome” and reflects the cheerful embrace of the winery.  The wine is a blend of sixty percent Viognier and forty percent Grenache Blanc from the Preston Vineyards and the Louvals Vineyard.  The wine was aged in a mix of neutral one-year-old French Oak and Stainless-Steel vats for four months and there were seven barrels produced of this Rhone-style blend. This soft yellow colored wine offered notes of stone fruit and citrus followed by white florals.  On the palate this medium-bodied, well-balanced wine displayed notes of apricots and peaches blending with crisp citrus and ending with a medium-count finish of fruit and flowers       

We followed up with the Limerick Lane Cellars Rosé Sonoma County 2025.  This wine is a classic Rhone blend, and is fifty-nine percent Mourvèdre, twenty-one percent Syrah and twenty percent Grenache, with the fruit coming from the Estate vineyard and Preston Vineyards, and eleven barrels were made of this wine.  The wine was aged in a mix of one-year neutral French Oak and Stainless-Steel vats.  A pale pinkish-coppery colored wine that offered notes of strawberries, white peaches, citrus and white florals.  On the palate this medium-bodied, well-balanced wine displayed tones of strawberries, raspberries and peaches blending with crisp acidity and ending with a medium-count finish of fruit, florals and limestone terroir.