What’s your favorite California wine area?

Since my daughter lives in California, I’ve been fortunate to go wine tasting several times.

Sonoma County is my favorite county for wine tasting. My daughter Lisa had been wine tasting in Napa County. She said it was expensive, so we tried Sonoma County instead. It was a big hit.

Able to get a deal through a bed and breakfast for free or money off at wineries, we had a fun two days of wine tasting.

I’ve also done wine tasting in Riverside, El Dorado, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, and Amador counties.

California is famous for its wines, but which counties produce the most award-winning reds and whites, host the most wine tours, and are most popular and affordable for wine lovers to visit?

LawnStarter did a study, “2023’s Best California Wine Counties,” to comparing all 58 counties.

Here are the top 10 counties from the study:

Top 10 California Wine Counties   County Overall  Score Access  Quality  Accolades  Entertain-ment  Accom-modations  1 Napa 72.27 2 2 2 4 20 2 Sonoma 65.86 1 10 3 1 9 3 San Luis Obispo 52.37 3 3 4 5 2 4 Santa Barbara 42.85 4 12 15 6 3 5 San Diego 41.67 6 6 12 2 5 6 Stanislaus 36.86 26 42 1 34 51 7 Riverside 34.07 19 7 9 9 1 8 Mendocino 32.22 8 18 6 15 15 9 Los Angeles 31.39 5 38 11 3 40 10 Monterey 30.34 7 33 25 11 7

If possible, plan at least a three-day tour of clustered counties, and make sure your itinerary includes counties that balance high-quality wine and visitor-friendliness, two items examined in the study.

Of course, Washington state where I live also has exceptional wine regions, Yakima, Walla Walla, and Chelan counties among them.