Sonoma and Anderson Valley

View across Goldeneye vineyards to Redwood forest on the hill

The source of which wineries to visit were British writers so it is perhaps not surprising that almost every place we visited stressed that they sought restraint and finesse in their wines unlike ‘others in the valley’. None of the wines that we tasted were the ‘typical’ over-oaked, fruit bombs that one is led to believe is a typical Californian wine. The wines were full of fruit but not too much so, had plenty of tannins and good acid; preferences were, for the most part, a matter of personal taste. We only bought wines when there was a consensus about what we preferred.

In the Google Map below you will see the names of the wineries that we visited. (Click on the icon to see our notes about the winemaker - the heart icon is our favourite.) There are many others of course. In a few places wine tasting was free; most charged between $20 and $75 depending on the tasting that you selected. In some cases the tasting fee was waived if you bought a minimum quantity of wine. All these rules are made clear upfront.