I haven’t been to Napa for 8 years and we are going for 2 days the first week of June. We enjoy drinking wine, but are not collectors. Can you please recommend beautiful, historical, interesting wineries that don’t have such expensive tasting rooms? I have been to Hess, Beringer, Opus, Mondavi, Domaine Chandon, Sterling, Clog Pegas, Rubicon, Viansa, St. Supry, BV, V.Sattui, and others. Del Dotto looks beautiful but I can’t justify the $50 fee.

I enjoyed the tour at Schramsburg. It is a sparkling wine tour, so a little different than still wines. Their wine was used at numerous state dinners and by Nixon when he opened relations with China, so they have interesting photos/menus on display.

Last September we drove along the Silverado Trail, without a specific winery in mind. We were very happy with the Silverado winery
http://www.silveradovineyards.com/ht...ting_room.html

It's a beautiful location, with a lovely stone patio for tasting, which overlooks a gorgeous view of the rolling hills. Their wine-tastings were more reasonably priced than the other two places we'd stopped. I forget what we paid per person, but it was only about $15 or $20 apiece.

The people there were very friendly and helpful. The place we stopped at prior to that were quite snobby at the tasting bar.
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I couldn't resist answering my own question, about the Silverado:

"Daily Tasting Room Flights

Our Estate flight offers a selection of our current release wines for $10.
Our Premier flight includes limited production wines for $20.
Groups of 6 to 14 require 48 hour advance notice and will be based on availability.
Groups of 15 to 25 will be booked for a private tasting.
We are open daily from 10:00 to 4:30.


Public Tour and Tasting

This tour and tasting is approximately one hour in length and is limited to 10 guests.
Our tours are scheduled by appointment at 10:30 and 2:30 daily and are $15 per person.
The tour begins with the history and philosophy of Silverado Vineyards. The walk through the winery includes wine making education and specifics of Silverado’s process.
The tour concludes in our visitor center for a tasting of our Estate wine flight."
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We live in Sonoma County. We visit Napa Valley once a year camping in our travel trailer at the Bothe-Napa State Park. We were there just two weekends ago and decided to visit the Valley's newest "attraction." We were amazed to find as authentic a Tuscan castle as could be built outside of Italy. This castle houses the Castle Winery, tasting is $10/person, cost of tasting is taken off a case of wine. The wines were good for the moderate prices charged. Here's the website:

http://www.castellodiamorosa.com/

i swear by chateau montelana, and chalk hill. grgich has a nice glass of wine too. enjoy!

Check out Pride and Barnett up on Spring Mountain Road in St. Helena. They are near each other and have beautiful views of the valley. You will need to make a reservation at both places. Also, you can often split a tasting (we did that at Del Dotto several years ago). BTW, I can't believe DD is up to $50 - I recall it might have been $10 when we were there last time.

Check out Nicholson Ranch and Artesa in Napa. We enjoyed tasting in Sonoma in March at Imagery, Ledson, Bartholomew Park and Ravenswood. Domaine Carneros in Napa is also a favorite of ours, very nice Pinots here. ***kim***

Regusci + they do Olive oil as well.

we recently spent a week in Sonoma County, but did manage to cross over to the Silverado Trail. All three wineries we visited were good.

Rombauer - beautiful grounds, uphill a bit. Good Chardonnay.

Dutch Henry - very informal, small, quirky little winery.

Frank Family - this one was really good, very casual, they serve sparkling first and then you sample still wines. Nearly all were very good.

The owner at Zahtila gave us a map of small wineries and it made our (3rd) Napa visit. We avoid Hwy 29. From this list, please don't miss William Harrison and all the history. Baldacci was good and their Cab was better than many more $$ in the same region. Also liked Regusci and Steltzner.

www.silveradotrail.com

Thank you everyone for such great suggestions!

We can't wait to go!