Tracy’s Spring Wine and Cheese Stroll will be from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. May 18 in downtown Tracy. Cost is $20 for presale glasses and $25 the night of the event.

The big cheese at May 18’s Wine and Cheese Stroll in downtown Tracy will be five wines from Tracy’s trio of wineries — Ramon Rios, La Bonne Vie Cellars and Windmill Ridge. Winemakers and owners Ramon Rios, Herve Chevaillier of La Bonne Vie and Bill Prioste of Windmill Ridge will pour and discuss their accomplishments with strollers of this initial event.

Surrounding them along Central Avenue and 10th Street will be more than 50 storefronts pouring wines and offering samples of cheeses. The wines are generally from Lodi and Livermore Valley wineries, but also from other California appellations.

Rios will showcase his 2003 and 2004 Tempranillo, whose grapes were grown in his vineyards along Linne Road. Here are my notes from a late December 2006 tasting at the winery on Linne Road:

“The ’04 Tempranillo ($18 a bottle) is a Spanish blend of 90 percent tempranillo and 10 percent barbera. He (Rios) successfully used the barbera to tame the tempranillo tannins. After the crush, fermentation and press, Rios cellared his wine for 18 months in French oak barrels. The dark red wine has a red currant taste with smoke on the finish. Hints of pepper stick to the back of the tongue.

“This pepper also is evident in the 2003 Ramon Rios Vineyard

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Winery Tempranillo ($17), which spent 24 months on oak. It has an extremely long taste of plums and currants, with a lingering finish of smoke and tobacco.

“While the ’03 Tempranillo has a better bite, the ’04 is less temperamental.”

Chevaillier who released Tracy’s first bonded wine five years ago — the 1998 La Bonne Vie Merlot — still operates the winery and tasting room out of an old barn next door to his family home on Lehman Road. He is to pour the 2002 La Bonne Vie California Syrah ($14) from Jeff Brown’s Mount Oso Vineyard on neighboring Byrd Road. Chevaillier put the wine in neutral French oak for 28 months. The flavors are complex with cherries at the front along with a tongue-tickling sensation, a buttery middle after going through malolatic fermentation and a finish of overripe raspberries and chocolate followed by earthiness.

He also may have the 2004 La Bonne Vie Riesling ($14 a bottle) that spent 13 months in French oak; Chevaillier brought softness and a balance between fruitiness and dryness to this wine by fermenting and aging it in oak and stirring the lees. It’s a rounded wine that has similarities to a French sauvignon blanc.

If not, the new 2004 La Bonne Vie Villa di Spatafore Sangiovese ($14) will be showcased. It’s the third vintage of sangiovese using grapes from Charles Spatafore’s vines on the southwestern edge of Tracy.

Prioste, the newcomer in the bunch as to sales and marketing, and his wife, Stephanie, an ex-Tracy school principal, will be pouring the 2003 Windmill Ridge Zinfandel and the 2003 Windmill Ridge Souzoa, both from Amador County. Each is a medal winner in national and international judgings this year. They hope the exposure from the first wine and cheese stroll will carry over to the opening of their tasting room on Linne Road this summer.

When there are more than 2,000 visitors trying your wines, there certainly is exposure. It should be good.

n To reach Jack Eddy about his column, call 830-4233, fax 835-0655 or e-mail jwe@tracypress.com.