Click a Napa Valley Wine Tour image to see the
tour details or scroll down to see short descriptions:
Wine
Country One-Day Tours by Bus. Our Wine
Country By Bus Tour starts at 9:00 AM and brings you to Sonoma County,
the birthplace of California’s Wine Industry back in the 1850’s.
Located in the Carneros Region, the first winery is modeled
after a Tuscan villa, and specializes in wines of Italy.
Your next stop, also in the Carneros, famous for Chardonnay
and Pinot Noir grapes, is an amazing facility that makes
sparkling wines from those grapes. You will continue
on to the world famous Napa Valley, where you will stop
for lunch at a winery landmark which has been converted
into a mall, and also has a wine tasting bar. After lunch,
you will visit a third winery, and then complete the
circuit and return by crossing the 7-mile long Oakland-San
Francisco Bay Bridge, with views of San Francisco’s
downtown and Embarcadero.
Wine
Lover’s
Tour. The Wine Lover's Tour is a semi-private tour, which
means a smaller group, so you’ll have a little
room in the vehicle and a little freedom in choosing where
to go. The group can decide to go to both Sonoma and
Napa Valleys, or concentrate on just one “neighborhood”.
This usually means visiting from four to six boutique
wineries. This trip will provide the opportunity to sample
wines from various Napa regions such as Los Carneros,
Rutherford, Oakville, St. Helena, Yountville and Stags
Leap, and the Sonoma Valley region. And we’ll squeeze
some lunch in between the tastings! Some wineries may
offer complimentary tastings, but most charge a fee ranging
from $5 to $10 (even $25+),and winery hosted tours usually
cost extra. But that is up to the group - we can adjust
the route, within reason, to make it a treat for everyone.
Wine
Country Charters. Extranomical Adventures also offers
wine country tours that are customizable - we’ll work with you
to create a private charter to fit your group’s
needs. These charters are ideal for families, private
parties or business groups. There are over 650 wineries
in Sonoma and Napa, and you have a vast range of options
that can include lunch and/or dinner, a combo trip including
Muir Woods with the Wine Country tour and even overnight
packages. Please call 1-866-231-3752 for further information.
Napa
Valley
Wine Tour Special Offers. Extranomical
Adventures is pleased to offer special discounted Napa wine tours,
luxury Napa Valley Wine tours, and combination Napa wine country
tours.
Winery Tour Stops
California’s
Wine Country covers most of the state, and many good wines
are produced beyond the distance that we can reach in a
one day tour. No two tours are exactly alike, and special
events, winery hours, and other considerations force the
driver to choose from a list of candidates for every trip.
We have come up with a list of wineries that
are within a reasonable distance, do a good presentation,
are nice and friendly, and have other amenities, such as
nice scenery, interesting history, or good food. Am I forgetting
something? Oh, and good wine! We are always updating our
list, as we new ones open, or , choke, others close. After
thousands of trips, here are the likely candidates for
upcoming California
Wine Country Tours. We won’t
come close to stopping at all of them on one tour, but
they give you an idea of where we might go next time.
View a List of California
Wineries that are
possible stops on our various tours.
The Golden Gate
Bridge
During our Wine Country Tours we cross one of the most
beautiful bridges in the world, the Golden
Gate Bridge.
On some of our tours, we go up into the headlands to get
one of the most spectacular views of the Golden
Gate Bridge and the City of San Francisco that makes for great photos.
Napa Valley
Napa Valley was a few years behind its neighbor Sonoma
Valley (see Sonoma history) in the 1850’s and when
the tourists started coming into the Wine Country in
large numbers, they were in Sonoma, largely ignoring
Napa Valley, which was just a place with a lot of vines.
Both valleys became quiet and relatively empty from 1906
until the 1970’s. The roles became reversed and
Napa Valley became a household name (in households where
they read Wine Spectator, anyway) after a 1976 Bicentennial
Contest between California and French wines, where the
upstart Americans shocked everyone by winning 2 First
Place ribbons – both from Napa Valley - and 14
out of the top 20 places. That notoriety jump-started
a successful promotional campaign that soon overshadowed
all other “neighborhoods” in the American
wine business, and now the word “Napa” is
synonymous with “Wine” in many people’s
minds. It’s not that it is NOT true, but it is
most certainly not the whole truth about wine in America,
or specifically California. Some of the facts are that
it is farther away from San Francisco and time spent
on the road is time NOT spent tasting wine, the average
price of a bottle or a tasting flight is higher, and
the average nose behind the counter is also pointed a
little higher, if you get my drift. Some of the most
famous names in American Wine have their home addresses
in the towns along the Napa Valley Highway, and it’s
still a great place to go, but there are very few complimentary
tasting rooms in Napa Valley, and when pressed for time,
Sonoma is closer to San Francisco, and has lots of great
wine to taste.
