Napa and Sonoma Wine Tours: 60 Listings Compared

For a first visit the choice is smaller than the search results make it sound, because most group tours do both. It matters when you book a private car, a Sonoma format such as the trolley or the bikes, or a tasting on your own, and it matters for what you pay at the door.

Napa Valley is a strip about 30 miles long and a few miles wide. Napa Valley Vintners says it grows 4% of California's grapes and that 95% of its wineries are family owned. Its AVA, approved on 28 January 1981, was the first in California. The wine is Cabernet Sauvignon first, and the tasting rooms work by appointment: Charles Krug lists every tasting as by appointment only, prepaid, with 24 to 48 hours to cancel.

Sonoma is a county, not a valley: about 60,000 acres, more than 425 wineries and 19 AVAs, by the county tourism board's count. Its door is looser. Cline Family Cellars charges 25 USD at the bar and takes walk-ins there, and Gundlach Bundschu takes walk-ins on weekdays.

With a coach or a van you taste both and the question goes away. With a car of your own, Sonoma is the easier first day and Napa the one that needs planning.

Everything on the map sits north of San Francisco. Napa city, the usual gate to the valley, is about 50 miles away, and Visit Napa Valley puts the drive at one to two hours depending on traffic. From the airports the distance to Napa is 45 miles from Sonoma's Charles M. Schulz airport, 51 from Oakland, 58 from San Francisco and 63 from Sacramento. Up the valley come Yountville, then Oakville and Rutherford, St. Helena and Calistoga at the top. Carneros sits between the two counties, and Madonna Estate, one of the Gray Line stops, is there.

Sonoma works from two bases. The valley side is the town of Sonoma, where the open-air trolley meets at the Town Hall on the Plaza. The county's other centre is Healdsburg, which five of the Sonoma listings name in the title, and two more start from Santa Rosa.

Visit Napa Valley puts the typical basic tasting near 40 USD, with a range from about 20 to more than 200. Now add it up three ways. The Gray Line full-day coach costs 139 EUR with tasting fees at three wineries included, which the operator values at 120 USD, so the day is finished once you have added lunch and a tip. The Sonoma trolley costs 130 EUR with lunch, but its tastings are extra: three or four stops at 30 to 40 USD comes to 90 to 160 USD. A private car at the catalogue median of 605 EUR is 151 EUR a head for four people, before three tastings at the 40 USD average.

None of this makes the coach the winner. It tells you which bill you are reading. Always look for the words tasting fees in the not-included list before comparing two prices.

The chart shows the spread inside each format. The middle half of the day trips runs from 126 to 280 EUR, the Sonoma tours from 135 to 228 EUR, and the private cars from 403 to 739 EUR. Sonoma is the tightest, with seventeen operators and formats as different as a 3.5-hour Segway ride and a seven-hour van, which keeps the price in a narrow band. The private cars are the widest, because the size of the vehicle drives the price: a stretch limousine for eight costs more than an SUV for six.

A fast way to choose. If you start in San Francisco and have no car, take the day trips. If you are already in the valley and want something other than a bus, the Sonoma tours are the variety: bikes, a trolley, a Segway, a sidecar. If there are four to eight of you, or you want the car to wait, look at the private tours and divide the price by the guests.

Read across the table and the pattern is plain. Group operators fix the day and protect themselves against the tasting room changing, while private operators sell hours and charge for distance. Neither is wrong; they are different products sold under the same word, tour.

In Napa the appointment is the rule more than the exception. Visit Napa Valley says some of the most requested places fill weeks ahead, and Charles Krug takes no tasting without a reservation. In Sonoma it is easier to drop in, but a seated tasting is still better booked. A tour that includes the stops spares you that work and is worth part of its price. With the private cars, the three listings we read say the driver helps plan the day; none says the tastings are reserved for you, so ask before you rely on it.

The California limit for a driver is 0.08% blood alcohol. Tastings are for people aged 21 and over. Gratuities are listed under not included in every listing we opened except the two Gray Line ones, which do not mention them. Plan for a tip as a separate line.