Visiting the wineries definitely makes one appreciate the work and skill required to make a good bottle of wine. These people don’t try and BS you crap that sounds good on a label.

For anyone thinking they would like to do this, I would highly recommend that you pick one of the smaller wineries where you get to meet the owners, or at least the general manager. Ask them about the tour and if it’s a private tour or a scheduled tour with a group. The smaller wineries will take the time to walk you through the entire process and give you that personal experience you don’t get with a crowd. Some of the larger wineries offer tours, but it just isn’t the same. What you have is someone who has some knowledge of the process, but it’s highly unlikely that they’ve ever had their hands dirty. If you visit Arroyo and shake his hand, you’ll notice that his hands are blue from working with grapes the past thirty years. Each time I visit a winery I learn more and become more appreciative of the stuff that’s in the bottle. At one of the wineries we visited, they had two barrels of the same grape, same harvest, same times in fermentation…but they tasted vastly different. The only difference between the two was that one was from a row of vines with a southern exposure and the other was from vines with a northern exposure. They both have the same amount of sun, but one gets morning sun and other gets afternoon sun. I wouldn’t have believed this if I hadn’t have tasted it. Another thing I learned is that grapes from hillside vines have a unique taste, smell and body than valley floor vines. Hillside vine wines tend to be a bit more robust with a heavier body and more nose to them. The reason being; is that the grapes tend to be smaller with thicker skins, but their growing time is the same as valley wines. This gives the pulp more flavor. It’s also why the cost of these bottles is more expensive; they don’t produce as much wine.