TASTEMAKERS
Tasting Rooms People Still Remember
From Spill
18 wineries
A good tasting room stays with you longer than the wine does. That is slightly unfair to the wine, and completely true.
We asked which room people still remember. The answers had a pattern, and it was not price.
01
What people actually named
Duckhorn came up for the porch. Trefethen came up specifically as it was before the post-earthquake remodel, which tells you the memory attached to a building that no longer exists in that form. That is the whole phenomenon in one reply.
Round Pond, Patrimony, Judd's Hill, Handwritten and Bacio Divino fill out the rest, along with a dozen more the data surfaced as consistently well described.
02
The common thread
Nobody mentioned a scoring number. Nobody mentioned a vintage. They mentioned where they were sitting, who poured, what the light was doing and whether anybody rushed them.
Rooms that get remembered tend to share a few unglamorous things. Somewhere to sit down. A person who talks to you rather than at you. Enough space that you are not overhearing three other tables. Time.
03
Using the list
These are spread across Napa, Sonoma and Paso Robles, so this is not a single afternoon. Treat it as a set of anchors to build a day around rather than a route.
Hours, seating and tasting formats are on each winery's Spill page. The rooms are the reason to go, so give yourself longer than you think at whichever one you pick.
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