Visiting Winery Tasting Rooms

Savor the experience...Wine tasting is a take-your-time activity--not a race. It's not about how many wineries you can hit in a day! It's about relaxing visits to a few wineries and discovering new Sonoma County wines to enjoy.   We're locals and we love to go wine tasting...here's how we like to do it:

• The free Wine Road Map is your best your guide to wine tasting in the Healdsburg area. www.wineroad.com
• Visit three or four wineries in a day -- buy picnic foods at Oakville Grocery on the Plaza in Healdsburg, Jimtown Store in Alexander Valley or the Dry Creek General Store. Enjoy your picnic lunch at a winery (see the Wine Road map) where you'll buy a bottle of wine to go with lunch!
• Wineries are open daily all through the year. Should you visit wineries on event weekends or other days? If you love a fun festive time with lots of people, attend Winter Wineland, Barrel Tasting or Wine & Food Affair which are all put on by the Wine Road. On non-event weekends, wineries will be less busy. And, weekdays would be the least lively. Try a non-event visit and then attend an event--then decide, what's more fun for you? That's why they make Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc...not everyone likes the same thing!
• Visit some large well-known large wineries like Rodney Strong Vineyards and some family owned and operated wineries like Seghesio Family Vineyards  (they have a picnic area and Bocce ball courts).
• If you have several days in the Healdsburg area, why not spend a day exploring Dry Creek Wineries, another day in Alexander Valley and a day visiting Russian River Valley wineries. These three wine growing appellations and winery descriptions are shown on the Wine Road Map.
• Shipping wine can be pricey! As Healdsburg locals, when we fly to visit family we take a case of wine along. We buy a wine shipper (a foam wine bottle holder for 6 or 12 bottles inside a cardboard box) at Fitch Mountain Packaging. We fill it with 12 bottles of wine, securely tape the box shut and write our identification on the box. At the airport,  we check the box as baggage. It weighs just less than fifty pounds and cost less than other shipping methods. No broken bottles so far.
• What's a good wine? A good wine is the one you enjoy. The price or label is beside the point. It's all about finding what you enjoy. Your taste in wines may change over time ~ enjoy the process.
• The Wine Road map also shows lodgings in the wine country including our 25-acre property called Healdsburg Country Gardens Vacation Homes.  After a day of wine tasting, our lodging guests can take a walk though our estate vineyards (shown in the above photo).

Enjoy our Wine Road...

Barbara, your Healdsburg local connection

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