| Yolo Winery’s Hours and Location |
| Wine Tastings at Yolo |
| Yolo Winery’s Event Center |
| Yolo Winery and The Three Rivers Wine Trail |
I’m not sure Yolo Winery embodies the sentiment behind the phrase “you only live once,” because it isn’t a once in a lifetime, must-experience kind of place. In fact, it’s more of a “because it was there” sort of winery.
If you’re a local, you go to Yolo because it’s literally the only place to drink in a 25 mile radius and you can ride your ATV there.
If you’re a tourist, you’re likely visiting for the first time and are unaware of what awaits. You’re probably expecting a typical Ohio winery, with a quaint or rustic tasting room, a pretty setting and friendly owners.
However, Yolo’s tasting room looks more like Sanford and Son meets Pinterest that does not meet the definition of quaint. The winery, tasting room and event center are housed in a brown, metal pole building that resembles a garage more than a winery and the parking lot is dirt, or mud, depending when you’re visiting and gravel.
Inside, the tasting room walls are covered in what appear to be deconstructed pallets. Each board is either stained blue, burned ala Pinterest style or coated in polyurethane and nailed to the walls in different patterns. The ceilings are covered with sheets of painted particle board. The tasting bar is made of scorched plywood and wood planks. While the walls and ceilings are covered with wood, there’s no wood on the floors. The floors are covered in faux wood laminate and the entire room is harshly lit with too bright, overhead fluorescent bulbs.
There are several tables in the tasting room for sitting, as well as a couch, a few comfy chairs and a gas fireplace.
The wines are mostly gimmicky, with names like “Life is Good,” and “Party on Garth,” and flavors like peanut butter and jelly or jalapeño and faddish like their hemp infused wines.
Yolo Winery’s Hours and Location
The Winery is closed January through March but opens back up in April but they do ship wine year round so if you find a wine you love, you’ll be able to order it.
Open April – December
Thursday: 12 – 7 pm
Friday: 12 – 9 pm
Saturday: 12 – 9 pm
Sunday: 12 – 5 pm
The winery is at 16286 State Route 93, Kimbolton, OH 43749.
Tastings at Yolo Winery
Tastings cost $3.00 for 4 or $8.00 for 4 and a souvenir Yolo glass. I started my tasting with their Sauvignon Blanc. I thought at first that they poured the wrong wine for me since the color was a light amber, not the usual ultra-pale yellow typical of a Sauvignon Blanc.
When I questioned the tasting host, she assured me it was the correct wine, and that the color was the result of a mistake when they made the wine- let it age too long in the barrels, causing it to carmelize. I don’t know if this is really what happened but I can’t understand why they decided to bottle it. This was the first time i’ve been offered essentially ruined wine. Not only was the color off, but the flavor was as well. It was still dry like a Sauvignon Blanc should be, but it had a slightly jammy quality, not the acidic, citrus quality of most Sauvignon Blanc.
Next, I asked to taste Yolo’s Chardonnay but was told they didn’t have any open and because it was an hour before closing, they wouldn’t open a new bottle. The reason, my tasting host explained was they were wasting too much wine, since they are only open 4 days per week. This was another first for me, since most wineries have wine preservation systems like vacuum pumps and inert gas pumps.
My alternate choice then was to move to a semi-sweet offering called Joy, a fruit wine made from raspberries, peaches and blackberries. it was more sweet than semi-sweet and tasted a little like cough syrup. They use this wine in their sangria.
My final choice was a sweet Catawba called Laugh out loud. This fruity blush wine had notes of pineapple and is a good summer wine.
Yolo’s Wine List
Yolo’s wine list has over 20 wines and there are typically small batch, seasonal offerings. While some of the names and flavors can veer to the side of kitsch, there are some pleasant wines and enough of a variety to appeal to most visitors.
Yolo’s Dry Red Wines
There are 3 dry reds on the wine list. R&B Cabernet is a full bodied, dry wine best enjoyed with food. Black Sapphire is a red blend of malbec, cabernet, shiraz and zinfandel. Tempranillo is the most popular red and is an easy drinking wine with notes of oak and plum. This wine is used in their chocolate slushies as it complements the chocolate flavor.
Yolo’s Dry White Wines
There are 3 dry white wines on Yolo’s wine list. The chardonnay, which is bright, crisp and unoaked. A Pinot Grigio which is dry and has notes of green apple and finally, the sauvignon blanc, which will hopefully be better the next time they bottle it.
Yolo’s Sweet and Semi-Sweet Wines
Life is Good is made with Niagara grapes and is classified as semi-sweet. Raindrops is another semi-sweet offering, which is a white cranberry flavored pinot grigio. One of my favorites is Heavenly Days, a semi-sweet chardonnay with peach and apricot flavors. Joy is a fruit wine made with raspberries, peaches and blackberries and is recommended for sangria. I found it to be a little too syrupy tasting.
The gimmicky wines I mentioned earlier are I Dare You, PB&J, Meltdown and Heavenly Nights. I Dare You and Meltdown are sweet wines that are infused with jalepeno peppers. PB&J is a sweet Concord-based wine that’s fermented with peanuts. The first sip tastes like grape juice and the peanut flavors develop on the finish. It has an almost creamy texture. This is an interesting wine and worth a taste. Heavenly Nights is hemp-infused wine. It’s only sold by the bottle and can’t be consumed on the premises so I don’t have a lot of info. But, I’m curious enough to go back to purchase a bottle.
Yolo’s Special Events and Event Center
Yolo hosts lots of events like wine and paint nights, craft and paint nights, wine pairings, dances and even wine and manicures and botox parties. They have a large event center that can be rented for parties that enables them to host lots of different events.
They usually have a food truck on the weekends so there is food available if you’re there at the right time.
Yolo is a country winery with a down-home, trailer trash kind of vibe. The outdoor seating area is surrounded by debris and they lose valuable table space by allowing the food trucks to park on the concrete. The deck along the front of the building has a canopy of plastic lattice, which looks like a poor attempt at improvising a shade structure.
The fledgling vines are planted in a few sad little rows on the hillside above the winery building. A black cutout of Bigfoot stands guard, while weeds encroach on the vines and a few ramshackle picnic tables offer vineyard seating.
What Yolo lacks in aesthics, sophistication and traditional winery gravitas, it makes up for by being open on Sundays, some very pleasant wines and plenty of events to keep patrons entertained.
The Three Rivers Wine Trail
Yolo is one of 7 wineries on the Three Rivers Wine Trail, which runs from Frazeysburg to New Philadelphia in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Ohio. This wine trail is unique because it also includes a brewery- Wooly Pig Farm Brewery.
Click here to read our post about the Three Rivers Wine Trail.
The wineries on the trail, other than Yolo Winery, are Stone Crest Vineyard, Indian Bear Winery, Yellow Butterfly Winery, Rainbow Hills Winery, Baltic Mill Winery and Killing Tree Winery. Yolo is a welcome addition to the trail, since it is open on Sundays. Yolo and Raven’s Glenn are the only 2 wineries with Sunday hours on the Three Rivers Wine Trail.
If you’re visiting for the weekend, save Yolo and Raven’s Glenn for Sunday.