As someone living in California who loves travel and wine, visiting wineries has quickly become my go-to weekend activities since a few years ago. It helped that my sister used to work in Napa and the company I used to work for owned large wineries in Paso Robles and Sonoma but it wasn’t always easy to pick which ones to visit out of hundreds of options. People have different preferences and standards so a quick Yelp or Google search, while helpful, wasn’t always enough.

Whether you are looking for a higher-end private tasting experience, certain varietals, affordable experience with a group, cute winery for IG (although almost all wineries have an amazing backdrop for photos), you will find a snapshot of different wineries I’ve been to so you don’t have to search multiple places to plan your trip. 

I’m not a professional sommelier by any means. Just someone who loves weekend trips to wineries hoping to make wine drinking and finding winery gems more fun for everyone!

Winery post explained:

Each winery post has a TR;DL section with information on 5 categories I consider when searching for wineries

• Cute for pictures

  • 5 = Views, grounds, it’s got everything, highly recommend for photos

  • 4 = Great for either view or grounds, recommend for photos

  • 3 = Typical winery, would still be able to get cute photos

• Quality to Price Ratio

  • 5 = ~$30 AND really good wine

  • 4 = $30-60 AND really good wine or $60+ but really good wine

  • 3 = $80+ but good wine

• Main varietals

• Tasting fee (and if they waive fee with a purchase)

• Average wine rating on CellarTracker or Vivino

Note that my personal favorites are based on preferences for 1) boutique/smaller family run wineries 2) Cab Franc, Cab Sauv, Merlot 3) Good quality to price ratio with average bottle priced between $25-80 (or those that waive tasting fees with purchase)