Of course we couldn’t go to San Francisco and not head up to Sonoma and Napa Valley! The weather wasn’t cooperating, but the countryside is so beautiful there. In any case, we had our minds set on drinking wine! Years ago when I was living in Marin County, a friend and I use to head up the valley every weekend stopping at all the vineyards along the way. We never made it past the 8th or 9th winery because by that time we’d be really tipsy, but we’d always come home with bottles of wine.
Well times have changed and the laws are not only stricter on the roads with drunk drivers, but most of the wineries no longer give free samples of their fine wines. A pity really, because now it’s next to impossible to taste more than three or four wines without getting drunk.
Wine tasting use to be just a little sip of wine so you could do just that - taste the wine! Now the vineyards want you to pay for tasting. Robert Mondavi charges $15 per person to taste 3 glasses of their wines, but those three glasses are full size wine glasses. When you finish drinking that, believe me, you’re not going to go to another winery and buy another 3 glasses of wine! (Talk about being tipsy, you’d be downright drunk!)
I can’t imagine this policy not hurting business, but then again, if it had I’m sure they would have very quickly gone back to free wine tasting; not to mention, this eliminates a lot of drunk drivers! (Hmm, or does it?) Business nowadays is done mostly through wine tasting tours and it seems that more and more Americans are drinking wine.
(Mom came barging in. “Okay, now where’s the wine?!”)
Maya Muses: One owner told me that they started charging years ago, because most wineries noticed that people were coming not to buy, but just to drink as much free wine as they could. Too bad, as I told the owner, because being able to taste many different wines allows you that opportunity of discovering a new wine that you don’t know, but you find you really like and will then want to buy. Their new system no longer makes that possible.
Photo Credits: Personal Photos and Flickr
4 responses so far ↓
1 Deena // Feb 27, 2010 at 10:31 am
Awww! That’s where all the fun was! Now why bother going? LOL
2 Cid // Feb 27, 2010 at 11:58 am
I agree, we had a terrific time tasting (free) wine when we were there, but then again this was years ago. We probably hit six or seven wineries, this method you would be lucky to make two.
3 Lynn // Feb 27, 2010 at 9:13 pm
I know! Believe me we were sad. We tasted a few wines and that was it!
4 Harriet // Mar 3, 2010 at 11:13 pm
So where are you now???
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