Featured wines are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Meritage, all from the estate "De Cascabel" vineyard, along with an outstanding chardonnay from the Sangiacomo Vineyard in the Carneros region. Additional wines include Zinfandel, Sangiovese, Syrah and a selection of varietal Ports. Slug Gulch Red, a non-vintage, very affordable red table wine, has achieved cult status with customers who have consistently found it to be the “best mediocre red wine” in the area. Small lots of specialty wines are made each year in response to the annual variations in weather and grape crop from the twenty-four acres of estate grapes, and serve as a reward wine for visitors who make the trip up to Slug Gulch Road. Most of the wine is sold from the tasting room, with retail distribution limited to the Highway 50 corridor between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

The tasting room is surrounded by the elegant, mature estate vines, and features a tasting bar formed from a solid oak slab, with a viewing window into the barrel room that allows guests to contemplate future vintages slumbering in the barrels as they taste the current releases.  The name Oakstone was originally coined to reflect the grinding rocks on the property that were used in past centuries by Native Americans (primarily the Miwoks) to grind live oak acorns into edible meal. When the property adjoining the original vineyard was purchased to create the winery grounds, the owners discovered a black oak tree that had grown out a huge granite grinding rock, fracturing it and creating crevices large enough to walk through. It serves today as both a monument to the people who originally owned this land, and as a picturesque, shaded picnic ground. The tasting room is open from 11 am to 5 pm Wednesday through Sunday.

Our early estate vineyards included small plots of charbono, pinot grigio, malbec and petite sirah, and yield small lots of specialty wines when the year is right. Two acres of viognier have recently been grafted over to pinot grigio in the “Mother Vine Ranch,” just across the street from the winery, and half an acre of petite sirah was planted at the “Lost Arrow Ranch” of our neighbors, Sandi and Harlan Reese. In 2001, our new “Paso Vista” vineyard was planted to five acres of the “Higgins” clone of zinfandel and another acre of petite sirah. Additional vines have now been planted in adjoining vineyard land, including more charbono, alicante bouschet, dolcetto and carmenere.

John Smith, the winemaker, has a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry and spent his professional career in the design and development of scientific and medical instruments. His most recent employer was the LifeScan division of Johnson & Johnson in Milpitas, where he retired as Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer in June of 1998. He began home winemaking in 1972, a year when winemaking kits were the preferred Christmas present. After a few notable failures, the quality of his wine gradually improved, and what was just a hobby evolved into a passion and finally into a consuming obsession. Until his retirement, he held the position of Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at San Jose State, where he taught Advanced Analytical Chemistry and a course entitled "The Chemistry of Wine." John served as the winemaker for Single Leaf Winery and Vineyards from 1992 to 1996, and was president of the Fair Play Winery Association in 2001 and 2002.

Susan retired in May of 2007 from a careeer as an educator at West Valley College in Saratoga, where she taught College Reading and was Chair of the Reading Department. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in Reading.

Steve Ryan joined Oakstone in 2003, first as tasting room attendant, then as "cellar rat," and most recently as our assistant winemaker. He combines an infectious enthusiasm, a willing spirit, and an eager desire to learn with an excellent palate and intuitive insight of how wines should be guided to their best conclusion. He is an outstanding addition to the Oakstone team.

Not much was written about Fair Play and the surrounding communities during the early days of California.   It was not because there was nothing going on in the southern part of Fl Dorado County during that time, but because most of the world's attention was focused on the feverish mining activities nearer Placerville,  Coloma and Sacramento,  where  the population was larger, the roads were better, communication was easier and, of course, where the newspapers were published.

Because of this, we have only bits and pieces of information on the little, but very important towns like Fair Play. The settlement of Fair Play and the many other communities in the area was a result of the discovery of gold in and along many of the nearby streams. This occurred only a few years after the first discovery of gold in Coloma as newly arriving miners found the good claims taken and set out to search for new, undiscovered deposits of gold.  As in most other communities founded by miners, the gold soon gave out and many of the miners left to search for new deposits.  But the region around Fair Play had attributes that much of the rest of the county lacked - like large stands of timber and deep, well drained, fertile soils.   So, as time progressed the population remained fairly stable, the departing miners soon being replaced by farmers, ranchers and lumbermen.

The original settlement of Fair Play is attributed to two gentlemen, Charles Staples and N. Sisson, who arrived there around 1851. The story goes that some time after that the two apparently fell into a disagreement that grew into what must have been a not-too-gentlemanly fight.  The fight ended when some of the other newly arrived residents appealed to them for “fair-play.” Thus, we're told, the town became known as Fair Play.  Since that time the name has been shortened to one word - Fairplay - mostly for the convenience of various government agencies.  But, as you will see, the name is on its way to being returned to its original two words. In its first few years the town grew by leaps and bounds as more and more rich deposits of placer gold where found in many nearby streams and ravines.

Later, in the surrounding hills, minable veins of copper ore were located.  By 1860 the population had reached that point that a post office was established in Fair Play with George Merkindollar as the first postmaster (he also owned the hotel that housed the post office).  By that time the business section of town had grown from a few quickly erected tents to several stores, owned by Purrinton & Carr,- A. Church and J. G. Carr; the hotel owned first by Mr. Merkindollar, which was later sold to M. N. Remich and then George Washington McKee; a Saloon, butcher shop, carpenter's shop and a blacksmith. As mentioned, unlike many gold rush "boom towns", the town did not die as mining slacked as the miners left, mainly because of the quality of the soils for agriculture.

By the 1870's numerous farms and ranches dotted the nearby countryside, taking advantage of the ditch water brought in by the miners.  These provided fresh meat, produce and many bushels of grain to the local towns and communities many miles away The Fair Play School District was organized in 1890 with classes being held in private residences until a permanent school was built around 1902 on land donated by a John Barkley, the town blacksmith.   The Fair Play schoolhouse that is now a private residence, about one-half mile south of the present town, is not the same one that shows up in many early photographs of the town. The original schoolhouse was very similar to the simple, one-roomed Mt. Aukum schoolhouse that is preserved several miles away on Mt. Aukum Road.

A fire would destroy most of the town in 1944 and, as a result, the post office that had fortunately been moved to the present site of the town in 1929,  was closed are reopened in Somerset.  The store to which the post office had been moved would burn in 1956.  One or two years later, the last of the old town would burn.  The bell in the tower of the Fair Play School would ring its last call to students in 1958 when Fair Play became part of the Pioneer School District. Literally nothing remains of original Fair Play, except the cemetery.  The town was located adjacent to the cemetery, about one -half mile east of the present town,  on the south side of today's Perry Creek Road.

In the past two decades, the Fair Play area has seen a huge resurgence of agriculture, this time in the form of hundreds of acres of prime vineyards. Within the last fifteen or so years, eight wineries have been built in this area, with more planned in the very near future.  From the grapes grown in the soils of the From the grapes grown in the soils of the Fair Play area, these wineries have been continually producing world-class wines.

As mentioned, over the years the original name for the town, Fair Play, had been shortened to one word, Fairplay.  Wishing to start the process of returning the name of the town to its original spelling,  the wineries and businesses of the area,  with the assistance of the Somerset Postmaster,  Karen Mickel,  recently convinced the U. S. Postal Service to allow mail to again be addressed to Fair Play (two words), instead of Somerset. The Fair Play area of our county continues to grow as an agricultural community with not only vineyards, but also Christmas Tree and flower farms.

Located between Placerville and the Amador County line, it can be easily reached by taking Mt. Aukum Road (E-16) south from Pleasant Valley Road. Additional information was graciously provided by Joyce Smith, a resident of Fair Play since 1948 and the owner of the Fair Play hardware store.

Copyright 1998

Doug Noble
P.O. Box 313
Diamond Springs, CA 95619