The California Directory of Fine Wineries: Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino

by Marty Olmstead

A comprehensive full-color guide to Northern California's wine country. This guide provides a breathtaking photographic tour through the wine country's vineyards and winding roads: from Napa Valley's world-famous cellars through Sonoma's rolling pastures and Mendocino's rustic tasting rooms. Each entry represents a special destination winery that is open to the public and offers visitors something extraordinary beyond terrific wine, such as spectacular...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972499342
• ISBN13: 9780972499347
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Wine House Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.5" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Plenty to enjoy and nitpick about

In this new Third Edition of The California Directory of Fine Wineries, there is both plenty to enjoy, and to nitpick about. It is a very well produced hardcover guide to wineries in the Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties, with helpful maps, information on the wineries profiled, and some excellent photography from Robert Holmes. For oenophiles interested in touring Napa and Sonoma, this could be the only guide you need. Olmstead has picked an interesting selection of both major wineries (Beaulieu Vineyard--1.5 million cases annually) and minors (Cardinale Estate--700-900 cases annually), but with any limited selection like this (only 61 wineries profiled) the question is just what the selection criteria consisted of for inclusion. There are 35 Napa wineries, 21 Sonoma, and five from Mendocino profiled. It probably would have been better to skip the shout-out to Mendocino and just include a couple more from Sonoma, and, if you were doing this as a series, include Mendocino in a directory with wineries from Lake, Humbolt and Trinity counties. But that is the nitpicking part of the review. This is an excellent volume when you consider it as a personal "Top Ten" style list. None of the wineries selected will probably disappoint, and the maps included for each county have many more wineries on them (not like it isn't hard to just drive up highway 29 looking for signs). This is an excellently packaged book, the photography is excellent, and the information on location, tastings and tours (hours and costs) and special notes about each winery will make a visit to Napa or Sonoma easy and fun to plan. While not a must have, it is an excellent book for the price.

A good book, although the information is rather limited

I picked up this book during a recent trip to Napa Valley and enjoyed reading it very much. It's an excellent souvenir from my trip and contains a lot of great photos and other information about some of California's most spectacular wineries. I only wish that more wineries were included in the guide and that the descriptions were a bit more detailed and not limited to only two pages. Still, the book gives a great overview of the area and will come in handy during my next trip to wine country.

Wine Country

The California Directory of Fine Wineries is a spectacular summary of the finest wineries in the world. It gives a fine discription of the wineries and maps to find them. Anyone planning to go to wine country must read this book and use it as a guide on their trip.

A Toast To The Finest Winery Book Around!

This book has beautiful photography with clear, concise information and descriptions of California's very best wineries. These are the wineries that are not only known for the high quality of their wines but for their beautiful gardens, architecture, tours, tastings, and art exhibits. The format is easy to follow. It features the counties of Napa, Sonoma, and the undiscovered but notable wine country of Mendocino, showing each winery alphabetically. Additional sidebars give phone numbers, driving directions, web sites, hours of operation, and a quick-reference of each facility's wine varieties and specialties. The mix of wineries makes for a unique wine country holiday. Small family-owned cellars are listed as well as the familiar national brands. It's the best book of its kind that I've seen and the only such book found in hardcover. Travel guides don't get much better than this.

Review of the California Directory of Fine Wineries

We recently visited the lovely Napa and Sonoma valleys in NorthernCalifornia to do some wine tasting. With limited time to spend at each winery, we turned to this new hardcover guide to plan an itinerary. The book's images of each winery by master photographer Robert Holmes are striking; the information and maps are extremely helpful and accurate. Each winery is profiled within a two page spread and includes a convenient sidebar of facts about their specialty wines, tasting fees, tour and special event information, driving directions, and nearby attractions, Armed with winery phone numbers and websites we were able to call ahead to arrange for private, behind-the-scene tours. The book reads like an insiders' guide to this spectacular region. It not only lists the big "must see" destination wineries like Robert Mondavi, Beringer and Chateau St. Jean Winery but also directs readers to numerous little-known and charming family operations-like Raymond Burr Vineyards and Benziger Family Winery-that are well worth a visit. The unifying theme here is that all of the wineries profiled in this book are both recognized for making some of the world's finest wines and for being exceptional visitor destinations. Whether you're planning a trip to Northern California's wine country, as we did, or you just have a love for colorful and unique travel guides, I highly recommend this book. Even after returning home, we continue to use it as a reference of our wonderful trip to the Golden State.