Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit Napa Valley and Sonoma, California with some friends and had such a great time that I thought I’d share our experience. All of us on our trip work in the same industry and had a few days free before we had a work conference in Sacramento, CA, so we decided to meet in San Francisco and take a two day road trip to wine country.

We flew into San Francisco and had about 6 hours to explore the city- we ate some great tacos for lunch, saw some of the touristy places, grabbed dinner and then were on our way to Sonoma. In case you didn’t already know, Sonoma is only a little over an hour from San Francisco, so if you’re ever in the area, be sure to make a quick trip out to wine country if you can. We got an Airbnb near downtown Sonoma, which ended up being in a perfect location.

The next morning we had a day planned with a local company called Platypus Wine Tours. www.platypustours.com I can’t say enough good things about our experience with Platypus and highly recommend using them if you’re in the area! They picked us up at our Airbnb and we had our group, plus about 8 other people for the day’s adventure. The bus driver determined what our day was going to look like and planned for us to go to 4 wineries throughout Sonoma. He even fixed us a delicious lunch at one of the wineries. The wineries he chose were all different in their own way and allowed us to really experience the individuality of each winery, which we loved. Because some of the wineries we went to were smaller in size, we got to meet the owners and hear their stories & experiences.

Platypus dropped us back off at our Airbnb when the day was over, which is especially helpful because we could be safe after drinking all day and not have to worry about driving home- a HUGE benefit of using their service.

The next morning we planned to go to Napa Valley for the day, which is just on the other side of the mountain from Sonoma. We lucked out and the owner of the Airbnb we were using, offered to drive us for the day (for a fee)…we gladly took him up on his offer so we would be safe again. Because we experienced the smaller wineries the day before, we knew we wanted to try some of the larger wineries when we were in Napa, so we started our day at Silver Oak. It was good to experience some of the large wineries as well, so that we could get a feel for everything that wine country had to offer. One of the coolest experiences was going to the Del Dotto wine caves. We ended up visiting two caves during our trip and they are nothing like the other wineries, so if you come across that opportunity, don’t pass it up.

After we rested for a bit, we grabbed a nice dinner in downtown Sonoma. There are a lot of wonderful restaurants to choose from and I can’t wait to go back and try some others- you can’t go wrong with any restaurant in Sonoma. Oh and of course we went out after dinner to get even more wine…when in Rome, I mean Sonoma!

Wineries we visited:

Petroni- petronivineyards.com
Loxton Cellars- www.loxtonwines.com
La Rochelle- www.lrwine.com
Little Vineyards- www.littlevinevineyards.com
Silver Oak Cellars- silveroak.com
Del Dotto- www.deldottovineyards.com
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars- www.stagsleapwinecellars.com
Mumm Napa- www.mummnapa.com

Visiting Wine Country- Napa Valley & Sonoma