5 Killer Wine Sips on Monterey Bay Food Tours
Visiting wine country? Or perhaps A Central Coast local looking to expand your wine knowledge? Check out these wineries in Monterey!
If you know anything about us at the Monterey Bay Food Tours, you’ll know we love wine! And hey, when you live in wine country, who can blame you? Whether you’re a Monterey local or visiting the area, check out these local wineries. We promise you won’t regret it!
Comanche Cellars
Featured on our Old Monterey Food Tour, Comanche Cellars never disappoints. We’re particularly big fans of their Dog & Pony label, which you can hear all about on our tour. Their wine room, located in Downtown Monterey on Alvarado Street, just celebrated a year of business, and we couldn’t be more proud of them! We also had the fortune of helping them bottle one of their new wines, La Niña, and let us tell you — bottling wine is no joke! We garnered a new respect for all wineries after that experience, and the owner and wine maker, Michael Simons, was more than gracious in letting us be apart of the fun.
Cima Collina
You may be familiar with the Cima Collina tasting room out in Carmel Valley, but we also urge you to check out the new one that just opened in Marina! With a calm, laid-back setting, paired with some phenomenal wine, we never have a bad time in their tasting rooms. Art fans will also enjoy the artwork painted on the walls, too. Cima Collina produces artisan wines from the Monterey area, meaning they partner with other growers and produce the wine on a barrel-by-barrel basis. Their wine is also featured on our Something Wild Mindful Food Tour.
Scheid Vineyards
Scheid Vineyards has four different regions where they grow their grapes and produce their wine, but we recommend checking out their tasting room just on the other side of the Carmel Plaza off San Carlos and 7th at Carmel-by-the-Sea. They’re big proponents of a great wine starting in a great vineyard, and they know the importance of location when it comes to the grapes harvested for their products. Their wine is proof that the Salinas Valley has just as much of a claim to stellar wines as Napa or Paso Robles, and they have twelve estate vineyards you can check out if the tasting room isn’t quite enough for you.
Puma Road
Apart from Puma Road’s somewhat new wine tasting room on Alvarado Street in Downtown Monterey, you can also check out the vineyard itself out in Soledad. The winemaker, Ray Franscioni, is a third-generation Monterey farmer, and his long list of family history in the region shines through the finished product. Their grapes, which they grow and harvest for themselves, come from Monterey, the Santa Lucia Highlands, and Paicines just outside of San Benito County. Fans of white wines will love all the ones produced in Monterey, especially their 2014 Gewürztraminer.
The Wine Experience
Interested in creating your own wine? Well, apart from that being an option on our Private and Custom Tours, that’s also something The Wine Experience offers on a regular basis! They even let you create your own custom label for the bottles produced, which we thinks adds a completely special touch. Although they don’t have their own vineyard per se, the majority of the wines served in their tasting room on Cannery Row come from the Central Coast, so it’s a great way to familiarize yourself with other options in the area outside of these listed.
