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Napa Valley and Sonoma County Winery Map

Napa Valley and Sonoma County Winery Map

Plan your wine country trip with IntoWine's interactive map of California's wine country. Includes winery profiles and pictures as well as articles listing the best wineries for picnics, tours, beautiful views, wedding receptions, and more.

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Willamette Valley: Oregon's Pinot Noir Capital

by Nancy Parode

For many wine lovers, Oregon's Willamette Valley is synonymous with pinot noir, and only pinot noir.  The climate of the mountain-shielded valley is perfect for this famous grape from Burgundy.  Pinot noir not only gave the Willamette Valley its start, it catapulted the region to stardom when a pinot noir from The Eyrie Vineyards took first place in Gault-Millau's 1979 Paris wine tasting.  And, as they say, the rest was history – or is history, for the Willamette Valley is still evolving as a wine region.

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Benjamin Spencer

Benjamin Spencer is a diploma student with the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. He writes for IntoWine about wine from a winemaker's perspective.

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Recent Articles for Wine Regions

Q&A with Richard Sanford, Owner and Winemaker at Alma Rosa

by Michael Cervin

Santa Barbara wine pioneer Richard Sanford is among the inductees into the 2012 Vintners Hall of Fame. Sanford started one of the first modern wineries south of the San Francisco Bay Area in 1982 and for several decades, his Sanford Winery and Vineyards was the lone outpost in the now-sizzling Santa Rita Hills area of Santa Barbara County. He was the first winemaker to prove the potential for Pinot Noir in the Santa Rita Hills and spent the next 20 years making some of the best regarded Pinots from the region including bottlings from arguably his best vineyard, Rinconada. Sanford left his namesake winery in 2005 and founded Alma Rosa Winery & Vineyards in Lompoc.

What prompted you to pursue winemaking as a career? If not winemaking, what path would you have chosen?

Upon returning from military service in Vietnam in 1968 I wanted to pursue an activity more connected with the land. During my tenure in the Navy I had been introduced to a wonderful Volnay by a fellow naval officer. That became my inspiration to pursue a career in agriculture and I chose winegrowing to attempt to duplicate the quality of that wine. After 40 years as a winegrower I cannot imagine any other path.

Wines to Go Buy This Week: "Comfort Wines" - A Zinfandel by Glenn Hawk and Tulip Hill's Cabepulciano (yeah you read that right)

by Brad Prescott

I live in San Francisco and January weather here means 50 degrees and rain. Constant bone-chilling rain, or so it seems. And before the rest of America emails to remind me how good I have it and how freaking cold it is in New York or Ohio or whatever other frozen tundra they call home, I'm just gonna say that when you are cold, you are cold, and comfort food -and comfort wine- goes a long way towards warming your heart when Old Man Winter starts to have his way with you. So with this in mind, I bring you two comfort wines you should go buy this week.   

Glenn Hawk Zinfandel - I typically don't gravitate to Zinfandel. I associate Zins with "cocktail wines", that is, wines that are delicious for a few sips of a single glass but can be a bit too fruity and overwhelming for those of us who tend towards enjoying multiple glasses. So I don't recommend many Zinfandels simply because I don't drink many of them. Every once in a while I stumble back down the Zinfandel path and am reminded of how good the varietal can be. I recently tried the 2009 Glenn Hawk Zinfandel from Livermore Valley (just south of Napa in the shadow of Mt. Diablo).

Q&A with Wes Hagen, Winemaker at Clos Pepe Vineyards in the Santa Rita Hills

by Michael Cervin

Wes Hagen assumed control of Clos Pepe Vineyards in Santa Barbara’s Santa Rita Hills in 1998, though it was first planted in 1994. This former English teacher brings an analytical and thoughtful approach to winemaking, specifically Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. He received his viticultural and winemaking training from the University of California at Davis extension program. His small lot production and strict allocation program have helped earn him 90+ point scores from Wine Spectator, Robert Parker and Decanter Magazine.

What prompted you to pursue winemaking as a career? If not winemaking, would you still be teaching English?

I was teaching college in Minnesota and it was very cold. I got a call from California that my Mom and Steve Pepe had purchased a horse ranch near Lompoc. I came back for Christmas, fell in love with the place, and left Minnesota immediately for the Pinot Promised Land.

Q&A with Nicolas Mahler-Besse, CEO of Seguin-Moreau Cooperage, France

by Michael Cervin

Seguin-Moreau is one of the premier cooperages in the world. Started as two different cooperages in the 1800s, they merged in 1972 to become a barrel powerhouse. Nicolas Mahler-Besse assumed the position of CEO of Seguin Moreau in 2011 and had worked for the last 14 years in the cooperage business for Radoux. Seguin-Moreau currently has more that 4,500 clients in 35 countries, making their domination of the cooperage business clearly evident

With three cooperages in Bordeaux, Burgundy and Napa, do you foresee the need for other cooperages in emerging wine regions, and where might those be?

For the moment there is no plan to build new cooperages as we are already in the main wine locations, we’ll see how we grow then determine business in other areas.

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