Beer, Wine & Spirits in Clearlake

For over 50 years, Windsor Vineyards has been producing award-winning wines for every occasion. In keeping with its tradition of personally hand-writing custom labels on their wines, today, customers are invited to add their own special message or greeting. Wine clubs grant customers a vine-sourced passport to a world of varietals, shipping bottles throughout the year.

Located in Napa Valley, Honig Vineyard & Winery produces flavorsome sauvignon blancs and cabernet sauvignons that can be found on restaurant wine lists across the country. Visitors to the winery’s fancy tasting room have the chance to sample five of Honig’s delicious wines. Sommeliers and thirsty Langoliers can sniff, taste, and carefully dissect the potable properties of the Rutherford sauvignon blanc, a 2008 vintage that starts fruity and ends with a crisp, minerally finish, as well as the 2006 Honig cabernet sauvignon, which features blackberry, cherry, and plum flavors developed over 18 months in an American oak barrel, just like old-timey cowboy hobos. The remaining three samples include the 2008 Honig Late Harvest sauvignon blanc—a refreshing dessert wine aged in new French oak barrels with lemony and grapefruity hints—Honig’s single vineyard cab, and a library selection.

Kaz Winery has reflected the independent spirit of Richard Kasmier since 1994, when the advertising photographer gave up his career for the love of the organically grown grapes. Kasmier had dabbled in winemaking for eight years at that point, winning awards for the fruits of his labor on the 2-acre former walnut grove. According to treehugger.com, he cultivated his first batch with organic practices in 1986 and has only improved on his method.

Twenty-eight solar panels harvest enough rays from atop the tasting room to completely power the winery's day-to-day operations, as well as the adjacent Kasmier family home and large hadron collider. In the fields, clusters grow heavy through two trellising methods, and stay pesticide-free with the help of strawberries and zucchini planted among the vines to attract helpful bugs. When it's time for fermentation, the winemakers use wild yeast when possible and add little to no sulfates. Current production sits at about 1,000 barrels a year and includes complex reds, ports, and rare varietals such as lenoir and aglianico.

The Kasmiers refer to the tasting room as the Barn, though in 2005 a Wall Street Journal reporter categorized it as "more party than tasting room." The place reveals Richard's sense of humor through wry, pun-filled posters. Richard is never far away, pouring vintages at the Barn several times a week, broadcasting thoughts on viticulture via his radio show, and appearing vicariously in old photos, which guests can use to label wines they have blended themselves.

Since its humble beginnings in 1980, Cosentino Winery has evolved into a fruitful producer of plump Napa Valley grapes, complex vintages, and Meritage-style wines. Within the sprawling, vine-cloaked winery, a host of red blends, merlots, and chardonnays await to be sampled in the tasting room during drop-in sessions, private candlelight sessions, or special events. Knowledgeable staffers also helm exclusive barrel tastings to allow guests to savor the beverages straight from the cask in a more refined way than Benjamin Franklin's keg-stand method.

Stationed along the Sonoma Coast, Gourmet au Bay pairs small-batch, award-winning wines with breezy waterfront views from its bayside deck. The business keeps its wine collection stocked with premium products thanks to a set of strict criteria—every bottle boasts a gold medal, fewer than 1,000 cases of its kind in production, a flawless criminal record, or a score of 90 points or better. Every day, visitors may stop in for glasses of wine, as well as bottled beer and cheese-and-crackers platters. Gourmet au Bay also specializes in what it calls wine surfing, which presents three wines selected from the daily menu atop a specially designed surfboard.

Long visited by dreamy visions of starting their own tour company, Jewels Wine Tours owners and Napa Valley residents Julia Young and Ryan Raes utilize their regional intimacy to construct guided tours to the finest wineries, distilleries, and restaurants the area has to offer. The team takes great joy in customizing packages to their guests’ preferences, whether customers are looking to taste-test a certain hard-to-find vintage, or just want to be driven around by someone other than the family dog. A dedicated driver handles navigation for the duration of each tour, allowing the grape gurus to focus on enriching the tour experience by answering in-depth questions and providing insights into Napa and Sonoma Valley history.