My friends and I had the pleasure of having a private Napa Valley Wine Tour from San Francisco with Extranomical Tours. 12 of us enjoyed a Saturday full of vineyard tours, fabulous wine and fall/autumn colors.
Extranomical Tours organized a fabulous stress free private tour for us after asking a few simple questions about the size of the party, preferences for wineries, tastings, locations and lunch. It was one of my friend’s birthdays and I also had a friend visiting from Ireland. It was the perfect way to visit wine country from San Francisco as the tour was fully customizable with a dedicated driver and lots of options. I wanted to visit 3 wineries as we wanted time at each winery to explore and relax. I also wanted to revisit one winery that I had absolutely loved the last time I visited - Castello di Amorosa. Extranomical tours built this into the tour along with the two pick up and drop off locations that I wanted. They also picked two other great wineries to visit which were both so enjoyable.
Our tour started at 9am with 2 pick-ups in San Francisco to suit our group. We had a touristy moment and stopped off at Golden Gate Bridge to enjoy a Kodak moment. Our driver offered the perfect amount of information on wine tasting and wine country as we whisked along the colorful country roads leading to the vineyards. We chatted and listed to music the rest of the time as most of us had been to Napa before.
Our first stop was Kieu Hoang Winery where the views and the wrap around porch were quite the treat to admire while sipping wine. We arrived at the winery quite early so had the winery to ourselves. The staff there were incredibly knowledgeable and generous with the tastings. We started on the front porch and ended the tour and tastings amount the vines in the sunshine.
Next up was lunch at V.Sattui Winery. Here there was a large area to picnic in the sun and lots to choose from in the deli market. Sandwiches, cheeses, salads, snacks, hummus, chips, fresh fruit & more could all be purchased for a picnic outside. We stopped here around 12.30pm so it was quite busy and took a few moments to find a free picnic table for our large group. After we finished with lunch, we went to the wine bar where we tasted 7 delicious wines. We ran out of time here as it was a busy location so allow lots of time here. The grounds were so so pretty – definitely recommend for a stop. There were also so many wines to choose from for the tastings.
Our final winery of the day was Castello di Amorosa, the only authentic medieval (13th-century) Italian Tuscan castle and winery built in America, which opened in April 2007. I loved this castle and all the beautiful twists and turns in the castle. The wine here was delicious and we tasted about 5 as part of the tasting. You can also incorporate a tour of the castle as part of your package if you wish. This was a really beautiful stop and well worth taking into consideration if building your tour.
We drove back to San Francisco with lots of bottles of purchased wine, smiles on our faces and memories of a fabulous day of adventures. I highly recommend booking your private wine country tour from San Francisco with Extranomical Tours. As we didn’t have lots of specific needs, they designed two suggested tours for us, I picked a couple of days before and then we were on our merry way. It was very hassle free and enjoyable to organize for friends. If you want to book a wine country tour for you and a friend, or you alone, Extranomical tour run daily tours to wine country that you can hop on instead of a private tour. I hopped on one of their daily tours last year when my dad came to visit. You can read about this HERE.
Extranomical tours also run tours to Muir Woods, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Monterrey, Alcatraz & more. See all of their tour details HERE. Overall, such a wonderful experience and a day to remember. The private tours are completely customizable with lots of recommendations provided from Extranomical Tours so you are bound to SIP back and have a GRAPE time.
Thank you to Extranomical tours for sponsoring this blogpost.
