Project Notes We began research for 'The Napa Wine Project' in 2006. This project involves personally tasting at all Napa Valley commercial wine producers as well as any Napa area businesses providing tasting experiences, (Collectives, Wine shops, Wine Bars). Two requirements; we personally visit with a winery representative, and taste the wines. To date, we have personally visited and tasted with 500+ commercial Napa wine producers, plus another 15 locations that offer tasting experiences but do not make their own wine and have been tasting at Napa wineries several times a week with a number of international travel breaks built in to our schedule. We expect the entire initial project to take 6-8 years. Any wineries that we have not yet visited with out of the 770+ (and growing!) Napa based commercial wine producers in our database (see   bottom of this page for complete database), will be contacted via phone, email, postal letter (or all three) to request a tasting.  Private Wineries We include all Private wineries we taste with, but these wineries generally do not receive visitors at all so we have not highlighted the actual 'tasting experience', rather we focus on their history, the wine/tasting notes, information about the winery and where you can find their wines. Our reviews of private wineries are exclusively posted on this website. Addresses are left out of our private winery reviews and phone numbers may also be left out upon request. Updating This is a major time intensive process which we continue to do on an almost daily basis. We subscribe to a number of mailing lists for individual Napa wineries, we attend trade tastings and educational events and in addition we revisit a number of wineries for updates. Thank You We want to thank all Napa Wineries who have been so gracious with providing tasting and winery information. Sometimes the Napa area gets a bad rap for being overly pretentious and high-class, but in our experience the vast majority of the wineries (especially the smaller ones) are not like this at all. Oh, and when we first started this project we just walked into a tasting room like a normal tourist would have and made no mention about this project (we have since revisited 100+ walk in wineries in the valley). Frequently Asked Questions For additional information please visit our Frequently Asked Question section (FAQ).

Winery Visits - In regards to visits, wineries fall into three categories:
Open to the Public - simply walk in during normal business hours;   Open by Appointment - there is a huge range in this category. Some wineries are setup to take larger     groups and may have tours, some are so small the tastings may be at their house and they do not     encourage visitors unless you are a serious wine enthusiast. You may taste with a group of people     outside of your party or taste with just your party (depends on wineries' policy);   Private - the winery is not open to the public and they typically do not receive visitors. We leave out     addresses for private wineries unless they have P.O. boxes. We clearly label the "private wineries" in our reviews. When reviewing our winery descriptions under our "Quick Info" section (see example to the right), we note whether the winery is a walk-in, appointment only or private - if additional visit details are needed, these will also be provided in this section.

Our initial visits were to walk-in wineries and our descriptions for these tend to be more experiential in nature. For any walk-in wineries with short descriptions we are conducting revisits for additional content. Some of the appointment only wineries are only setup to receive very small numbers of serious wine enthusiasts - the tastings may be at the owners home, the winemaker is the owner/only employee & their time is limited.

Winery Lists & Database There are numerous printed and online Napa winery lists floating around. The best printed one we have seen to date is the Preiser Key which is available for free at select Napa wineries and in the local Chamber of Commerce offices. Appellation America has the best updated online list of Napa Wineries - as well as all USA based wineries. Also take a look at the intriguing and often humorous A Moveable Thirst, a book by two men who visit 141 open to the public tasting rooms in Napa Valley. You can think of our project as "Moveable Thirst on Steroids". TWCC has good information about the history & ownership of many Napa Wineries. Napa Links has about 165 Napa Wineries listed each containing a short description provided by the actual winery. It is extremely difficult to come up with an exact number of "wineries" in the Napa Valley. First you have to define what qualifies as a "winery". Visit the TTB's winery definition page for more information. Consider the following types of wineries:

  Physically Bonded (an actual winery facility - may even be a house/garage winery). One winery may have multiple bonded locations.
  Alternating Proprietors - winery/custom crush facility has a bond that allows participating custom crush clients to have their own
    "bonded winery" within the main winery
  Custom Crush wineries - these "virtual" wineries do not have their own winery, rather they rent space from an actual winery. Tastings
    may be given at the actual custom crush winery or at a physical site apart from the custom crush facility (i.e., a collective, home, etc)

Napa Winery List Notes
We have compiled a spread sheet of 770+ commercial wine producers (with contact information & other details) in Napa Valley. Note: many of these listings don't actually have their own physical winery and are "virtual" wineries. This extensive list is based on hours and hours of research and monthly multiple updates. Our database includes the top 3 bulleted items in the above list plus a separate section for collectives. This lengthy list stays updated by referencing 30+ already printed & online winery lists including the TTB and ABC. Furthermore, from time to time we physically visit all wine shops in Napa county with pen and paper and jot down any unfamiliar labels. The highlight of this wine shop visiting is always JV Warehouse in Napa with their huge by Napa standards, ever changing selection! We also visit each one of the winery websites (if available) - if no website is available we call the winery to make sure they are in business. Wine forums are also an excellent resource for new releases and new Napa wineries. Lastly we attend select public and trade only tastings.

One winery may have several different "labels", especially the larger wineries and a label may be from a vintner who does not have an actual winery. If one winery produces multiple labels we have not listed them twice, rather we have listed their labels under the parent winery listing. Napa wineries who taste at area collectives or tasting bars have been listed with their parent collective as well as having there own listing.

The master winery list below contains wineries who must make & bottle their wine in Napa County and in addition, must use grapes from the Napa Appellation for at least one of their wines. Any winery that sources fruit almost exclusively from Napa, but makes their wine outside of Napa county is noted in the database in the "notes" column by this red # symbol. Out of 770+ wineries on our list, we estimate about 40% are walk-in or appointment only and the other 60% are private and generally do not see visitors. 

Note: A number of the commercial wine producers reviewed on this site are private and absolutely do not see visitors.

 
simply a few of the pioneers behind this great valley and its wine industry