This Sunday we were out showing my 81 year old Mom the valley and thought we would take her to Neibaum-Copolla to do a tasting and check out the museum. Unfortunately we were to find out they have changed their name to Rubicon and they now charge a $25.00 fee just to step out of your car. There are additional fees of from $15.00 to $25.00 to have a winery tour and a tasting. A bit pricey for the average visitor, guess that's who they don't want visiting them anymore.

wow- I just checked that out and am surprised. We paid a bit extra last year to do the reserve tasting, which was poured by the knowledgable daughter of Peju Provence, btw. However, lots of places in napa are following that trend. Sonoma still has a lot of charm and many free tastings. Ditto for Anderson and Alexander Valleys, not to mention Amador, Santa Barbera, parts of Oregon and Washington,k etc. Lodi has some great places, too. Napa is like Disney- overblown, overcrowded, and overpriced. You really have to know what you're looking for there, else you waste a lot of $$$ and a lot of time sitting in traffic.

Coppola has expanded to Sonoma County. His company purchased Chateau Souverain
in Geyserville. The name has offically changed to Francis Coppola Winery.

The Chateau Soverain folks will move up the road to Asti and continue wine-making.

As I have stated before, the trend in Sonoma County is to charge for tastings. Some will charge $5-10,
and some apply that toward a purchase
if you make one.

Now that Coppola is here it will be interesting to see if the "charge for tasting" trend speeds up.

R5

beepee, I am so glad I spent so much time in Napa Valley before it became so crowded and so expensive.

I hadn't heard about Copolla's being renamed Rubicon. And R5, hadn't hear about their coming into the Sonoma County either. Sure didn't see anything in the less than wonderful SF Chronical, LOL.

I have been meaning to get over to Lodi as my grandfather had vineyards in Lodi. But he only made wine for the family's personal use, sold the rest of the grapes to wineries.

Thanks for the information..good to know, even if it is not happy news!

The Chronicle has an article about this general trend in today's paper, online at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG3SHQOCV1.DTL

It starts "Welcome to the Napa Valley. Not you, Bubba."

Hi sequoia, I saw this thread again and was going to post the same article from the SF Chron that you did. It is IMO so sad what has happened to Napa Valley and guess Sonoma Valley will eventually end up the same way.

Likewise, I read the article in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning. I have been wine tasting in the Napa area for many years, at least 25, and after reading this article I choose not to return. The Anderson Valley, Paso Robles area, Monterey, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Placerville, Walla Walla, WA, all have a lot to offer, great wines, welcoming service, etc., so I will spend my money there.

We just returned from a 7 day trip to the S. F. area. A must for me was a day trip to Napa. I make my own wine and this was like my "Hajj"

V. Sattui was great. Pleasant people and no charge for tasting (their cab. sav. was very good), . There were approx. 8 or 9 wines to choose from. You could taste them all, if you wanted. The deli was well stocked.

Schramsberg had a great tour (recommended). St. Supery and Franciscan were also good.

The WORLDS WORST was Niebaum-Copolla. The attitude of the help was absolutely horrible. They were pretentious and arrogant. Not to mention $25 per person, incl. non-drinkers and children. You could only taste the four wines they were pushing and they did not even provide water to rinse out your glass between different types of wine. Besides all of this, the wines were HORRIBLE.

If you must go to Napa, avoid this place like the plague.

I was just over in Mendocino this weekend - that one glorious day of sunshine (remember?)

Wasn't going for wine-tasting, but came in from the coast via 128 and got to Scharffenberger Vineyard just before 5pm. had to stop as I'm addictedto Scharffenberger chocolate!

They gave me tasting of four wines for free. All four were good and one wine I liked enough to buy a couple of bottles. We take wine tasting fairly seriously and do travel around to buy half a case to a case of any particular wine we like. So, we're definitely going back to Anderson Valley for more (serious in-depth) winetasting later this year!

Late last year I was down in the San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles area and tasted some of their wines. Some are really good. We especially liked the '03 chardonnay from Windemere and got a case of that.

California has over 1000 vineyards producing a great variety of wines. Most of this wine is very very good. Don't let the Hollywood hard sell of Coppola spoil what would be a wonderful adventure for you.

Right now I'm drinking a Mondavi Fume Blanc. Really hard to decide whether it should be this Fume Blanc or V. Sattui's Muscat that would go well with Laura Chenel's heavenly chevre (goat cheese).

Discover your own favorite wines. The world is full is this elixir of the gods! We are so blessed! Enjoy!

Wlfmann:
Thanks for the tip re Niebaum-Copolla.

thanks for the info. i was sad to read this article as my hubby and i have loved napa since our honeymoon in 1999... well make sure not to make it to this winery and stick to the silverado trail and the dry creek region of sonoma outside of healdsburg when we go in 3 weeks.

Just returned from 10 days in wine country and working on my report. People in Napa are all upset at this, and I hear that they are losing lots of wine club members. Napa is such a zoo- I avoid like the plague VSattui, Clos Pegase, Sutter Home, etc etc. Limos, buses, drunken bachelorette parties all weekend....however, we drove way off the Silverado trail and to some places around Calistoga that were really quaint and fun. Winery dogs, tasting in garages, etc. More to come....there is still some hidden charm in Napa Valley!

LLindaC:
Looking forward to your report.

LLindaC-- i am looking forward as well as my sweetie and i leave on april 27th.. id love some advice on some great napa wineries out of the way. i have a few picked out already-- but would love to hear more!

There are still a ton of great wineries that will give you free tastings. Imho, most of these are the very best that the valleys (both Napa and Sonoma) have to offer and don't cater much to the regular tourist crowd. In most cases, they require that one call in or email for appointment a few days to a couple of weeks in advance.

Some are small family operations, hence the requirement for appointments. Most are always very welcoming, are genuinely interested in sharing their knowledge, very generous with their pours and have products that are always much, much better than those with the organized yet stiff built-for-the-masses circus-like tasting-room.

Unfortunately, one will not find these in the regular Napa Visitors guides but can easily be researched online.

My trip report is on here. I will top for you. We found several wineries which had no visitors at all! Those people in small places are passionate about their product and love to tell you local stories. One good way to find what you like is to ask people in small wineries where to go. Tell them which styles of wine you like. We've had times when someone will call from a winery to another one and they welcome us right away!