40 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: VISIT PLACER Old Town Auburn offers an abundance of Gold Rush history, from the rustic Joss House Museum’s Chinese artifacts to the Placer County Museum located in the 1890s courthouse. At The Pour Choice, a three-story craft coffee bar and tap room, the rosemary ham & cheese sandwiches are a gourmet treat—thinly sliced porchetta on house-made focaccia with mornay sauce and a zippy Fresno chili-spiked apple relish. Box of peaches in hand, we hit the Placer Wine Trail, chatting with Pamela and Zane Dobson, owners of PaZa Estate Winery, while sipping 2021 Cotes du Placer in their rusticchic tasting shed. At Vina Josephine has a destinationrestaurant menu but the friendly atmosphere of a neighborhood hangout. The combination is pure Gold Country. After a relaxing night at the Hotel Sierra Vista in a sleek, spacious room with a view of the majestic mountain range, we’re off to Twin Peaks Orchards’ farmstand in nearby Newcastle to talk with Camelia Enriquez Miller about the region’s rich agricultural history. She and husband Justin are the fourth generation to farm this hilly land. First cultivated in 1912, now certified organic and producing an array of heirloom fruits, Twin Peaks is among the first farms to win recognition from the global Slow Food movement. {due west}
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