THE TOUR GUIDE
Napa Valley Wineries With Vineyard Tours
From Spill
193 wineries
Explore all Napa Valley wineries →A tasting shows you the wine. A tour shows you why it tastes that way, and in Napa the distance between the two is a short walk through a cellar door. The wineries below all run a real tour, a vineyard walk, a cellar tour, or a proper trail through the property, not a longer pour at the same bar. They are grouped by where they sit in the valley, with a plain note on what each walk actually covers. Most tours want a reservation, so book the walk first and let the rest of the day arrange itself around it.
01
The town of Napa
Closest to town, two family properties keep the walks personal. O'Brien Estate is family-owned in the truest sense, with the same hands tending vines and pouring the result. W Cab Wines sits on a heritage estate on the valley floor that has grown Cabernet Sauvignon for generations, with a picnic area and food on site once the walking is done.
02
Stags Leap District
03
Spring Mountain District
04
Los Carneros
05
Calistoga
The top of the valley has the most to walk through. Castello di Amorosa is a 171-acre Diamond Mountain property built as a full medieval castle over 15 years, and the tour is the only way to see most of it, dungeons and all. Clos Pegase pairs its caves with art and architecture worth the walk on their own. Girard Winery runs its tastings out of a solar-powered Calistoga home base with tour options that stay reasonably priced for the valley. Davis Estates rebuilt a 1900s winery that burned to the ground, and the property tour tells that story better than the tasting room can.
06
St. Helena and Rutherford
V. Sattui Winery has run its 1885 Italian legacy as an open, walkable property since the 1970s, with picnic grounds and food on site for afterward. Beringer Vineyards has been here since 1876 and still takes visitors through its hand-dug caves, which is as close as Napa gets to time travel. Down the road in Rutherford, Cakebread Cellars walks visitors through a working family winery known as much for its kitchen as its Cabernet.
07
Oakville and the Oak Knoll District
Far Niente is an 1880 Oakville estate where the gardens and cellar get equal billing on the tour, and both earn it. Trefethen Family Vineyards has farmed the same 400 acres in Oak Knoll since 1968, and its tour is the clearest picture on this list of what sustainable farming actually looks like in practice.
08
Oak Knoll District
09
Howell Mountain
10
Yountville
11
Chiles Valley
12
Coombsville
13
Diamond Mountain District
14
Mt. Veeder
15
Elsewhere in Napa Valley
One tour a day is the right number. Book it for the morning while the light is good and attention spans are intact, then spend the afternoon at the tasting bars with a much better idea of what is in the glass.