Why?
Wine is one of my passions and several years ago I started outsourcing phone calls for my Internet company which freed up a lot of my time to explore in greater detail things I love to do, and turn these passions into financially self sustaining businesses yet at the same time benefit others. I strive to incorporate my passions into my day to day and professional life comprising what Michael Polenske of Napa's own Blackbird Vineyards eloquently calls, "the business of leisure", or more simply put - invest in what you love.

To the best of my knowledge a project of this magnitude has never been conducted in Napa. I am aware of the authors of A Moveable Thirst who visited 141 mostly walk-in Napa wineries, blogger Carolyn Tillie who has visited at least 130 Napa wineries, several websites that list Napa winery provided information, select tour guides, and probably a number of select wine tasters and wine writers who have tasted a large number of Napa wines. But, no one who on this scale, has personally taken the time to meet with representatives from each winery, visit the winery if there is one, include photos if applicable, taste the wine and then compile all this information into individual winery reviews.

Corrections/Updates?
If you have corrections or updates to make to any of the winery listings on this site, please either email dave@pon.net (include the winery name and the type of correction or update) or use the Post Comments link next to every winery review on this site. We greatly appreciate any updates. Because of scope of this project and the rapidly changing wine industry, updating is a major part of our work on this site. Things change so fast in regards to wineries in the Napa Valley that it is often hard to keep up. We make our best effort to discover changes: revisiting wineries, subscribing to winery mailing lists, attending trade, educational & wine tasting events including select release and harvest parties, talking to people in the industry, reviewing many related blogs & websites, watching wine related videos, reviewing restaurant wine lists both online and in person, as well as spending considerable time in the Napa Valley (this is where the osmosis kicks in).

Advertising
We have never and will never take advertising from wineries. We do offer advertising opportunities for non winery businesses on a limited basis. If interested in more details and pricing, email dave@pon.net

Have you broken any wine glasses on this project?
The answer is 2. We are averaging one broken glass per every 346 visits (including revisits). Our apologies to Quixote and Toquade.

How to Link a review to my own website?
You can link individual reviews to your own website. Go to this page and click on any of the links - the URL that shows in your address bar is the direct link to any review listed on this site.

How do you publicize this site?
We want to make it worthwhile for the wineries listed on this site. I have several local and national media contacts from my travel site, Dave's Travel Corner and and several recent interviews have also helped promote the site. There are a plethora of a wine community sites which we use to publicize this project. I have experience with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and continue to work on this aspect of the project. Any printed material will cross promote this site including color printed postcards (selectively being distributed in the valley).

How do you handle reviews of collectives?
We have written individual reviews of all collectives currently open in the Napa Valley. Collectives taste wines from multiple vintners. We do not just show up and taste through each wineries wine at the collective and then do the review based on this - rather we contact each vintner directly for a private tasting - then we write a separate review for that particular winery. As an absolute last resort, if we are unable to taste with a representative from the winery, we will taste and conduct our review in the physical collective facility.

How about tastings?
We attend a variety of trade and consumer tastings. We tried doing several initial reviews of wineries at these tastings however tastings are definitely not conducive to this purpose. As a result, we soon learned to exclusively use tastings to follow up with previously visited wineries and to make new connections. Most people who go to tastings try labels they are familiar with. Not us, when we attend tastings we seek out new labels and or wines we have never tried. Over time we are revisiting on a one on one basis the very few producers who we initially wrote our review based on public or private tasting events.

How do you contact wineries?
We call the winery directly to discuss our project and then setup an appointment for a meeting and tasting. If we are unable to contact the winery via phone, we will send an email or personal postal letter. As a result, all businesses in Napa Valley producing wine commercially will have been contacted by us.

Is your Napa winery not yet listed?
We are continuously looking for Napa wineries to interview who are not listed on this site. Please email dave@pon.net to setup a mutual time where we can meet and taste. The more information you can offer during our meeting, the more detailed and resourceful the review will be. Their are two requirements for any review on this website; 1. I meet a representative from the winery in person and 2. I taste the wines. Meetings usually take place at the physical winery, the owner or winemakers home, winery office or in the vineyards. A typical meeting takes about an hour.

How many commercial wine producers are there in Napa?
We have identified over 880 unique commercial wine producers in Napa County. We know there are more that we are not even yet aware of! Note that several hundred of these are "virtual" producers and do not have a Type 02 license. We have personally visited and tasted with 650+ commercial wine producers to date. More information and the entire very often updated database of total commercial Napa wine producers is found the bottom of our Project Notes Page.