Pinot Gris / Grigio

Pinot Gris / Grigio

Beaulieu Vineyards

The tasting room is gorgeous. Vaulted ceilings, warm earth tones & wood accents, and a lovely welcoming atmosphere. Everyone working here is friendly and knowledgeable about the wines. The fee for a standard tasting is $15....unless you're with a club member (or are one yourself). My favorite visit here was with some friends of ours when we got to do a reserve tasting downstairs, book an appt ahead of time. Wonderful !! The reserve Chardonnay is amazing. And the Tapestry - ohhhh!

Mitchell Katz Winery

Mitchell Katz Winery has been a family affair from the beginning. With help from his wife, Alicia, production has grown to 8,000 cases a year. The winery was started in 1998 in memory of Mitchell's grandfather who passed at the age of 96. Mitchell also named one of his creations, a blended wine, after his youngest son, Wesley. Mitchell and Alicia consider their venture to be a living memorial to the man that devoted more than a half century to home winemaking.

Elke Vineyards

I really like the atmosphere of their tasting room. It is very small and intimate and you are often the only people in there. We had very generous pours for the tasting and I think we tasted 7 or 8 wines. I preferred the reds as always and lkiked their the zin. They sell a lot of fresh juices here too which is nice.

Cima Collina

Nothing was extremely stand out here, and the room is very small. However, I was intrigued by the Howlin' Good Red and the donation they give to Monterrey County SPCA, so we stopped by and gave it a whirl. Caught them right before closing and had a nice tasting session. It is a pick and choose list if I remember correctly, and the ones I picked were very good but maybe priced a little too high. The Howlin' Good Red was a very good, upper middle of the road red blend, that I enjoyed enough to get a bottle.

Montevina Winery

This is a fun place to try some of the Terra d'Oro and Montevina wines you normally wouldn't find elsewhere to purchase. For everyday drinking, I'm a fan of these wines. These folks produce a lot of wines and it is a bit hard to do everyone right when you produce so many. However, you will find a few gems and it is a lovely winery to visit.

Chateau Diana

The gentleman in the tasting room, Scott, was friendly, knowledgeable and just nice to be around making our visit even better. He told us the tasting room have been open only three weeks which was hard to believe given the fabulous design, product displays and sense of organization. Oh dog friendly too!

Etude

Although Etude is best known for their Carneros estate Pinot Noir and their Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from sourced grapes, they do have three white wines that should not be overlooked. The 2010 Etude Chardonnay at $32 sees no malolactic conversion. It has a very nice nose and is rather fruit driven with soft melon. It is more round than brisk. The 2011 Pinot Gris 9$26) is even softer with an aroma of honeysuckle and some peach on the palate. Their 2010 Pinot Blanc ($28) with a light nose, is also softer than the more acidic and sometimes austere Alsatian version. It was nice, though, with some citrus on the palate and good balance. I really like Pinot Blancs and applaud Etude for offering this interesting varietal which is not often encountered in Napa Valley.

Andretti Winery

This is a reallly pretty winery and lovely italian castle/mansion looking architecture, and really friendly staff and of course lots of cool racing pics all around and other art also.

Armida Winery

Armida Winery main location is located up in Healdsburg (Russian River wine yay!), and they carry a few of the labels in the Capitola tasting room, although Poizon is the ones that will catch your eye. Small, intimate tasting room. Friendly staff, I was grilling them on all my unanswered questions from my last Sonoma trip and they didn't mind at all, were friendly and personable and answered all my questions as far as their expertise would allow them to. They were quite knowledgeable, there was even a young girl in there who was so informed.

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