About OUr Wine Tours
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Booking a Tour
If you would like information about availability or how to book a tour, there is a FORM on the Home page so you can give us a few details to help us prepare a custom tour just for you. We hope to meet you soon in Wine Country!
Touring with Amicis Tours
A wine tour with a professional guide & driver is a carefully choreographed sequence of wineries that offers variety in the wines and experiences with a nice lunch in the middle. By balancing the wine with sufficient food and water we maintain the guests’ level of inebriation at a pleasant glow, because we want our guests to remember where they went the next day. Contact us througn the FORM at the bottom of the Home Page
Fortunately, the wineries didn’t close during the pandemic because wine is the original health drink, relaxing, antiseptic, antioxidant and a helpful digestive. What better to drink during a global pandemic? But the quarantine did change Wine Country, hospitality moved outside and the quick stop tasting bars disappeared in favor of ninety-minute seated appointments, with less staff and higher tasting fees. Today Napa per person fees average from $50 to $75, with some at $125 and a few at $250. Other wineries require instead a purchase of a set number of bottles. Sonoma County, as always, continues to be more reasonable.
Most of the 800 Napa and 600 Sonoma wineries are small and private. Less than half can legally see visitors, but every one of them pours wine for guests. We don’t know them all personally, but in 17 years of touring while researching 8 or 9 books we’ve gotten know a bunch and we understand what they do. That’s why we can normally match the wine and experience to our guests’ interests and desires.
Some clients bring their own itineraries, and others want suggestions, and often it is combination. There are things that we want to know about a client; their generation, because palates change with age, their grape varietal preferences, we all have our favorites, their reason for visiting, while it is a wonderful place for a honeymoon, even business trips should include a bit of educational fun! We are always interested in a client’s ideas, and we will give them our honest opinion of any place from our experiences and the impressions of previous clients.
There are wineries that aren’t necessarily our favorites but that our guests consistently enjoy. That’s why being an active tour guide has been such a great help for being a travel writer, our clients impressions and opinions inform our writing and make it more useful to our readers.
If you would like to tour with us, please contact Lahni to schedule a tour through the FORM at the bottom of the home page, where you will find our rates, or call her during regular office hours on the West Coast at 707-235-2648 and probably leave a message. Between touring and publishing we don’t pick up the phone very much. Once your tour is confirmed, you will have a direct cell and text number for Ralph, since he drives the tours.
Wine Tasting Tips from Ralph Parts 1 & 2
based on the many tastings he has attended with the world's best wine educators.
