TASTEMAKERS
Wine Towns You Can Do on Foot
From Spill
189 wineries
Planning a wine day usually ends with someone volunteering to drink less. That is the real problem with wine country. The good stops are spread across a valley, and whoever is holding the keys tastes half of what everyone else does.
These twelve towns solve it with geography. In each one the tasting rooms sit within a few blocks of each other, on actual sidewalks, with lunch somewhere in the middle. You park once in the morning, or you never park at all.
01
What is not on this list, and why
Napa Valley is not here. Neither is St Helena, Calistoga, Oakville, or most of Sonoma County. Wineries strung along Highway 29 or Westside Road can sit half a mile apart on a map and still have no shoulder to walk on. Density is not walkability, and getting that wrong strands you somewhere with no way to reach the next glass.
Downtown Napa is on this list. Napa Valley is not. Those are two different places and only one of them has sidewalks.
02
The two you can reach without a car at all
Paso Robles and Santa Barbara both sit on Amtrak. The Coast Starlight stops at Paso Robles station, a couple of blocks from the downtown park that the tasting rooms ring. The Pacific Surfliner stops in Santa Barbara close enough to the Funk Zone that you can walk to your first pour with a bag still on your shoulder. Downtown Napa is the third option if you are coming from San Francisco: the Vallejo ferry plus the Vine bus gets you there without driving. Check current schedules before you plan around them.
03
California
### Healdsburg Plaza The best version of this idea in California. Tasting rooms ring a single square, and the ones that are not on the square are a block off it. Marine Layer, Portalupi, Idlewild, Siduri and Thumbprint are all within a few minutes of each other, and the square itself has the restaurants.
### Sonoma Plaza Larger and greener than Healdsburg, with the same shape. Walt has a room right on the square, Three Sticks is in an adobe just off it, and Bedrock pours a short walk away. The plaza is eight acres, so the far corner is a real walk, but it is still a walk.
### Downtown Napa The part of Napa that works without a car. First Street and the blocks around it hold a stack of tasting rooms from producers whose vineyards are half an hour away: Gentleman Farmer, Benevolent Neglect, Mario Bazan, John Anthony and Robert Craig all pour downtown. It is the highest concentration on this list and it is nothing like the valley above it.
### Los Olivos Two streets, roughly thirty tasting rooms, and almost no reason to get in a car once you have arrived. Dragonette, Story of Soil, Carucci and Diatom are all inside a four block grid. If you only do one town on this list, this is the one that feels purpose-built.
### Solvang Smaller, and stranger, because it is a Danish theme town with real wine in it. Crawford Family, Sevtap, Lucas and Lewellen and Alma Rosa all have rooms in the walkable centre.
### Paso Robles downtown A city park with tasting rooms on every side of it. Serial, Dracaena, Bushong, Forlorn Hope and Cordant are all downtown, which is a completely different day from the westside estates people usually picture when they hear Paso.
### Santa Barbara Funk Zone A few blocks of former warehouses between the train station and the beach. Margerum, J. Wilkes, Santa Barbara Winery and Orgullo are all in it. The smallest district here, and the easiest to reach without a car.
### Carmel-by-the-Sea The Carmel wine walk is a genuine thing: a dozen rooms scattered through a village that bans street addresses. De Tierra, Scheid, Albatross Ridge, Galante and Dawn's Dream are all inside the grid, and the walk between them is the nicest one on this list.
04
Oregon
### McMinnville Third Street is the whole trip. Goodfellow, R. Stuart, Pike Road, Chris James and Brittan pour within a few blocks, with the restaurants in between.
### Carlton Tiny, and that is the point. Ken Wright, Lavinea, K and M and Barking Frog sit in a town you can cross in ten minutes.
05
Washington
### Walla Walla The downtown district is one of the densest in the country. Rasa, Lagana, Latta, Spring Valley and Vital all pour within walking distance of the main square, and the hotels are in the middle of it.
### Woodinville Hollywood District The one on this list that is not a historic town centre. It is a cluster of tasting rooms in and around a small district north of Seattle, tight enough to walk between and stocked with serious Washington producers: Avennia, WT Vintners, Page Cellars, Ambassador and Warr-King. Note that Woodinville's other cluster, the warehouse district, is a separate walk a few miles south.
06
More in this guide
Good to know
What days are they open?
No single day has all of them open. Saturday have the most, with 167 of 169. 49 of them are closed Monday and Tuesday.
Do I need a reservation?
Of the 133 with a posted policy, 61 take walk-ins and the rest ask you to book ahead.
How much is a tasting?
Posted tastings run $10 to $250, with GrapeSeed Wines at the low end.
What regions does this list cover?
Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley, VA, Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley, and more.