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Sights Overview

It's little wonder that so many visitors to San Francisco take a day or two -- or five or six -- to unwind in the Napa and Sonoma valleys. They join the locals in the tasting rooms, from serious wine collectors making their annual pilgrimages to wine newbies who don't know the difference between a merlot and mourvèdre but are eager to learn.

The state's wine industry is booming, and the Napa and Sonoma valleys have long led the field. For instance, in 1975 Napa Valley had no more than 20 wineries; today there are more than 250. A recent up-and-comer is the Carneros region, which overlaps Napa and Sonoma counties at the head of the San Francisco Bay. (As it turns out, chardonnay and pinot noir grapes thrive on its cool, windy slopes.)

Napa Valley

Napa Valley rules the roost of American wine production. With more than 250 wineries and many of the biggest brands in the business, there are more high-profile places here than anywhere else in the state. Vastly diverse soils and microclimates give Napa vintners the chance to make a tremendous variety of wines. But what's the area like beyond the glossy advertising and bold-face names?

Most communities here are small, quirky towns with restored, gingerbread-frilled Victorian buildings. Napa itself, at the bottom of the valley, has been sprucing up its historic downtown. Compact Yountville, in the lower Napa Valley, is a culinary boomtown, while St. Helena, in the middle of the valley, takes the high-falutin' road with elegant shops and restaurants. Calistoga, near the north border of Napa County, feels a bit like an Old West frontier town, with wooden-plank storefronts and a more casual feel than many other Wine Country towns.

Sonoma Valley

Although the Sonoma Valley may not have quite the cachet of the neighboring Napa Valley, wineries here entice with their unpretentious attitude and smaller crowds. The Napa-style glitzy tasting rooms with enormous gift shops and high tasting fees are the exception here. Sonoma's landscape seduces, too, its roads gently climbing and descending on their way to wineries hidden from the road by trees.

The scenic valley, bounded by the Mayacamas Mountains on the east and Sonoma Mountain on the west, extends north from San Pablo Bay nearly 20 mi to the eastern outskirts of Santa Rosa. The varied terrain, soils, and climate (cooler in the south because of the bay influence and hotter toward the north) allow grape growers to raise cool-weather varietals such as chardonnay and pinot noir as well as merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and other heat-seeking vines. The valley is home to dozens of wineries, many of them on or near Route 12, a California Scenic Highway that runs the length of the valley.

Russian River Valley

The Russian River flows all the way from Mendocino to the Pacific Ocean, but in terms of wine making, the Russian River Valley is centered on a triangle with points at Healdsburg, Guerneville, and Sebastopol. Tall redwoods shade many of the two-lane roads that access this scenic area, where, thanks to the cooling marine influence, pinot noir and chardonnay are the king and queen of grapes.

Dry Creek and Alexander Valleys

On the west side of U.S. 101, Dry Creek Valley remains one of the least-developed appellations in Sonoma. Zinfandel grapes flourish on the benchlands, whereas the gravelly, well-drained soil of the valley floor is better known for chardonnay and, in the north, sauvignon blanc. The wineries in this region tend to be smaller, which makes them a good bet on summer weekends, when larger spots and those along the main thoroughfares tend to be filled to the gills with tourists.

The Alexander Valley, which lies east of Healdsburg, is similarly rustic, and you can see as many folks cycling along Highway 28 here as you can behind the wheel of a car. The largely family-owned wineries often produce zinfandel and chardonnay, which grow particularly well here.