Help, pls! Planning special trip to Napa.
 

Help, please! I am planning a special trip to Napa during harvest. My friend and I really enjoy adventure, great food and wine. We are thinking Carneros Inn, bike tour (any suggestions - are all tours created equal), balloon ride (again, any suggestions), Botega, Morimoto, etoile and FARM for dinner, and the vineyards. Ahhhh, the vineyards. Here is the problem, I have narrowed down the list to about 17 vineyards. I am really not sure how many vineyards one can really visit in a day. We are staying 3.5 days.

Any suggestions/thoughts on the following vineyards to help narrow the list are most appreciated! Also, what am I missing? Thank you, thank you, thank you. Cheers!

Stag's Leap Winery - a must
Chimney Rock
Turnbull
BV
Peju
St Supery
Sequoia Grove
Caymus
Rubicon Estate
Grgich Hills
Chappellet
Tudal
Girard
Larkmead
Coppola
Rombauer
Hall

Carneros Inn is great, and you can get extra freebies (like free breakfast for two daily, spa credit, free wine tasting passes at The Vintners Collective) through Virtuoso. Just find a Virtuoso travel consultant who doesn't charge booking fees.

Thanks much for the update! I will do.

I think you've got a great plan there. Excellent place to stay, wonderful restaurants, and a good list of wineries. I have my own biases on some, but I think you should just start with your list and see how it goes. Allow for a little serendipity. You'll find that each one provides a different experience. Some wineries also refund your tasting fee if you buy a bottle of wine.

Add Silver Oak to your winery list. Great wine, pretty winery and off the busy tourist road. Our groups favorite stop!

IMHO. I'd add Silver Oak and Artesa (very near the Carneros Inn. Maybe Domaine Carneros, also nearby.
If I was going to scratch anyone from your list it would be St. Supery, Larkmead and Rubicon Estate which DW and I found to be overprice and underwhelming.

I would take Coppola off the list. Nice grounds, movie stuff inside to see, but honestly, we thought the entire tasting was awful.

We were in both Sonoma and Napa, and overall, about 3 wineries a day was enough, w/o feeling like you were racing everywhere.

Have fun.

Recently revisited the area, and noticed Peju had a nicer tasting area upstairs than the smaller area downstairs that we remembered from a few years ago... check it out if you go there. We really enjoyed the tasting and the wines at St Supery, so maybe think twice about knocking it off the list. (maybe because it included chocolate! :)) It was also interesting to see their displays on wine production around the world. I think we visited about 5 wineries one day, and 3 or so the next. We spent more time at some, and made a quick visit at others.

We've found over the years of wine country wine tasting, that it's hard to hit more than 4-5 wineries in a day. You don't really want to start very early, you need to stop to eat some lunch, even if it's a picnic at one of the wineries, and depending where you want to go, it may involve a bit of driving as well as potential slow traffic. Also, you will get buzzed after just a couple stops, so make sure you have a designated driver.

Coppola is in Geyserville. You don't have any other Sonoma wineries on your list. Are you going over there?

Stags' Leap Winery or Stag's Leap Wine Cellars? There's a big difference.

Girard is a tasting room in Yountville. If you go, visit Jessup across the street.

Hall has two locations - St. Helena and Rutherford. Rutherford is probably the most impressive.

Turnbull, BV, Peju, St Supery - If you run out of time and cut these stops, you will not miss much.