Enticing Douro Cruise, May 2-9, 2025, with Gary & Karen Stewart of Four Brix Winery

2025 Portugal & Enticing Douro River Cruise

Back in 2008, Gary & Karen partnered with some dear friends and fellow home winemakers to start Four Brix Winery. Fifteen years later they still love making wine and sharing their wines with visitors, club members and first-time visitors in their Ventura Tasting Room.

Besides making wine and entertaining guests at the winery, the Stewarts love to travel. Travel has been the inspiration for many of the wines made at Four Brix Winery. Even though Italy remains their favorite destination to date, there are the trips to France, Spain, Greece, Australia that all provided amazing experiences and memories.

Their first river cruise was with AmaWaterways on the Danube region and was such a fantastic experience, Gary & Karen decided to book another river cruise on the Douro river in Portugal. There were 50 wine lovers traveling the Danube with Four Brix, enjoying wine, friendship, and amazing experiences. They hope you will join them for this next wine cruise experience!

Gary, our winemaker, first learned winemaking in his garage with friends. What was supposed to be a weekend hobby with friends, exploded into a full-blown experience in the wine industry.

Bound to make better wine he enrolled in several classes at UC Davis where he gained many contacts, including a mentor from Paso Robles. Gary started Four Brix at his mentor’s facility in Paso Robles were he honed his winemaking skills working side by side with several top-end winemakers from the Central Coast. He has learned that a light touch of the grape will produce the best wines allowing the terroir to dominate the story.

Four Brix wines are produced in Ventura, California from grapes grown in Paso Robles, Santa Ynez Valley, Ojai and Sonoma. Many of the wines are blends, inspired by their travels. Examples are: Scosso, A Super Tuscan blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot; Rhondezvous, a tribute to Rhone with Grenache, Syrah & Mourvedre. A few other varietals used in their blends and as single varietals wine are: Zinfandel, Barbera, Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir, Viognier and Grenache Blanc. The newest wine in the lineup is Verdelho- a Portuguese varietal.

The Ventura Tasting Room, fondly called “The BrixHouse”, is open to the public and welcomes guests to enjoy tastings, wine by the bottle, live music and pizzas and empanadas fresh from our kitchen.