TASTEMAKERS
Anderson Valley: 30+ Tasting Rooms on One Road
From Spill
34 wineries
Planning a wine trip is usually the worst part of the wine trip. Six wineries you liked the look of, five different reservation systems, and forty minutes in the car between the two you actually cared about. Anderson Valley skips all of that. More than thirty tasting rooms sit along one highway, most of them will still see you without a reservation, and the biggest town in the valley holds about a thousand people. You drive in and stop when something looks good.
The wine is not the compromise you would expect in exchange. Failla, Littorai, Peay, Radio Coteau and WALT all buy fruit here. So do Papapietro Perry, The Withers, Whitcraft and Brogan Cellars. If you have ever spent real money on a bottle of California Pinot, there is a fair chance this valley was already in your glass. It has grown Pinot Noir among the best the state can yield since the appellation was designated in 1983, to glowing critical reception, and the same ground is world-class for Riesling, Chardonnay and the grapes that go into sparkling wine. The crowd still never followed.
Blame the drive. Boonville sits about 125 miles northwest of San Francisco, at the end of a thirty-mile stretch of Route 128 that slaloms north and west across a forested mountain pass before dropping into the valley. Locals credit that drive with keeping the population down.
Everything below is on that one road, sorted by the kind of afternoon you want rather than by town, because the towns are four minutes apart and the visits are not alike at all.
01
Just show up
The largest group in the valley, and the reason people keep saying it feels like wine country used to. No reservation needed at any of these.
Handley Cellars was bonded in 1982 and farms CCOF certified organic estate vineyards. It pours Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer, which is all three of the grapes the valley was originally planted to. The tasting room doubles as a display space for international folk art.
Baxter Winery is where Phillip T.G. Baxter turns Ferrington fruit into Pinot Noir, both under his own label and for Fathers and Daughters Cellars. He likens Ferrington's position to the spot in Burgundy where the flatlands meet the hills, and credits the older vines and their deeper roots for what ends up in the glass.
Also walk-in, running north to south down the highway, are Lula Cellars, Husch Vineyards, Greenwood Ridge Vineyards, Navarro Vineyards, Gowan’s Heirloom Ciders, Brashley Vineyards, Toulouse Vineyards, Weatherborne Wine Corp., Wentworth Vineyards, Domaine Anderson, Bee Hunter Wine, Meyer Family Cellars and SEAWOLF Wines.
02
Make it lunch
The stops that solve the middle of the day, with food on site or a picnic area to use.
Pennyroyal Farm makes wine and cheese on the same property, and has spent the last decade producing some of the valley's most famous small-batch cheeses. The tasting room opens onto a canopied patio.
Goldeneye, at 9200 Highway 128, is owned by Dan and Margaret Duckhorn. The estate tasting is poured with a cheese and charcuterie pairing, and there is a Brut Rose alongside the Pinot Noir.
Scharffenberger Cellars, Long Meadow Ranch Winery, The Madrones and Lichen Estate round out the group, each with food or a picnic area on the property.
03
Bring everyone
Dogs and kids are welcome at these three, which matters on a road trip where the next stop is twenty minutes away.
Disco Ranch is a wine bar and specialty market at 14025 Highway 128, run by Wendy Lamer, pouring Mendocino and European bottles alongside tapas.
Foursight Wines belongs to the Charles family, who planted Charles Vineyard in 2001 on former pastureland at 380 feet, about as far inland as Anderson Valley gets. The ground has little visible slope, and the soil is rocky, not especially fertile, and in places full of cobblestones.
Drew Wines has leased and managed Valenti Vineyard since 2013. Valenti clings to a steep mountain slope at 1,200 feet, exposed to whatever comes in off the Pacific six miles west. Two appellation boundaries overlap there, so it sits in both Anderson Valley and Mendocino Ridge and bottles can carry either name. Jason Drew divides the property into three levels reaching 1,400 feet and says the wine changes in hundred-foot increments.
04
Book ahead
Small enough that someone has to be there to pour for you. Worth the message.
Roederer Estate makes sparkling wine here, which is the other thing this ground does well.
Thomas T. Thomas Vineyards, Fathers + Daughters Cellars, Breggo Cellars, Black Oak Ridge, Maggy Hawk Vineyard, Yorkville Cellars and Le Vin Winery & Vineyards all take visits by appointment.
05
The vineyards behind the labels
Here the famous names are vineyards rather than brands, and several of them pour at their source.
Ferrington is the oldest and biggest of the leading independent sites, established in 1969, 74 acres at 397 feet in the southeast end near Boonville. Charles Vineyard, planted in 2001, is Foursight's home ground, and Papapietro Perry and The Withers buy from it too. Savoy, where Richard Savoy pioneered close vine spacing and a mix of Dijon and California clones, has been owned by FEL since 2011.
Morning Dew Ranch came later. Burt Williams planted it in 1999, thirteen acres at 600 feet, after he and Ed Selyem sold Williams Selyem to John Dyson in 1998. He then sold fruit back to his former winery, and Whitcraft, Brogan Cellars and Drew Wines have all bought from it since.
Fog is why any of this varies. It forms between 600 and 800 feet, so where a vineyard sits against that line decides what it can ripen. Savoy sits low, 200 to 320 feet at the cooler northwest end. Ferrington sits at 397 feet. Valenti sits at 1,200, above the fog entirely, in raw wind. One valley, about an hour from Santa Rosa, and the wine changes from one end of it to the other.
Still pouring on this road, with less published about them, are Claudia Springs Winery, Witching Stick Wines, Balo Vineyards, Bink Wines, Philo Ridge Vineyards and Artezin Wines.
