1-Day Wine Excursion from Monterey/Carmel

Few people come to Carmel or Monterey specifically for the wine, but visiting the wineries and wine-tasting rooms along Carmel Valley Road makes for a fun day's excursion. In fact, you'll need more than a day to do all of them, but one is enough for now. You don't really want to drive, and there are two very attractive options. One is the Grapevine Express bus, run hourly by Monterey Salinas Transit. Check it out at: http://www.mst.org/routes/24/004454_MSTGrapevine_Broch_0815_Hi_1.pdf....read more

Few people come to Carmel or Monterey specifically for the wine, but visiting the wineries and wine-tasting rooms along Carmel Valley Road makes for a fun day’s excursion. In fact, you’ll need more than a day to do all of them, but one is enough for now. You don’t really want to drive, and there are two very attractive options. One is the Grapevine Express bus, run hourly by Monterey Salinas Transit. Check it out at: http://www.mst.org/routes/24/004454_MSTGrapevine_Broch_0815_Hi_1.pdf. It is much less expensive than the guided tour (below), and has later return times. The other option is a guided tour on the Wine Trolley (http://www.toursmonterey.com/WTPages/WTHome.html), operated by ToursMonterey.com. The tour is a lot more fun than the bus, since you’ll usually have fellow tipplers on the trolley, and the conductor/guide is attentive to his guests. He’ll help you with your lunch sandwich order, too. Also the Wine Trolley takes you to Ventana Wines, which is a good place to start. The trip takes 5 hours (11 – 4), and you get some modest discounts on tastings and wine purchases (10-15%). Either way, the most impressive winery buildings on Carmel Valley Road are Chateau Julien and Bernardus Vineyards. Lots of wines to like at the tasting rooms, but favorites tend to be Heller Estate, Bernardus, and Talbott. Plenty of tasty whites and reds at Joullian and Parsonage, too. If you have a little more appetite for wine on your return, in Carmel you can visit Galante Vineyards’ tasting room on Dolores between Ocean and Seventh, which is open to 6pm. For something a little different, Southern Latitude Wines on Lincoln Street (between Ocean and 6th), www.solawines.com, is open til 7pm, and has a daily tasting program. As their name indicates, they focus on wines from the Southern Hemisphere, primarily Australia and Argentina. And let’s face it: there are some lovely wines, and great wine values, coming from the bottom half of this sphere. After a mini-siesta, you can reward your hard day’s work with food from numerous high-quality sources. And if you want to continue the Monterey County wine theme, Fandango in Pacific Grove has not only excellent coastal cuisine, but also an extensive wine list, with a broad assortment of Monterey County chardonnays and pinot noirs. After that, a modest walk before bed would do one good....  hide