Top 5 Winery Visits of 2013

If you drink a lot of bottles of wine during the year, it is easy to put together a list of your top five (or ten) favorite wines from the year.  Then I realized that I visited 30 different wineries during 2013 and figured I should pick my favorites from that list.  This turned out to be nearly as difficult as selecting just five favorite wines from the year.  I narrowed the list down to my favorite nine wineries, and then had to start dropping off some notable wineries.  The five left standing are truly a remarkable list.  Four are located in Napa Valley, while the fifth is perched above the Russian River.

Larkmead, March 25, 2013
St. Clement Vineyards, March 1, 2013
Gary Farrell Winery, July 5, 2013
Hess Collection Winery, August 14, 2013
Ehler's Estate, May 14, 2013

Though this last winery did not make the list, it was the best of those that did not and is worthy of mentioning here for its intimate setting (underground in a working cellar) and scale.


Anomaly Vineyards, March 25, 2013