Call Uncorked Wine Tours for a San Luis Obispo wine tour (805) 459-4500
If you’re looking for a memorable San Luis Obispo wine tour, you’ve come to the right place. Uncorked Wine Tours is a great choice for a wine tour in San Luis Obispo wine country. Enjoy the company of a local wine tour guide at the wheel of a luxurious vehicle. Then sit back, relax and enjoy the ride and the wines.
Owner Katie Hayward and her team of knowledgeable guides offer the best wine tours in San Luis Obispo with custom itineraries and personalized service. In addition to providing wine tasting tours, Uncorked Wine Tours also offers shuttle services to events and small weddings. Read more about Uncorked Wine Tours here. Check out what Wine Spectator has to say about SLO County wine tasting.
Here’s a map of the some of the best places to visit on a San Luis Obispo wine tour.
Take a San Luis Obispo wine tour
Edna Valley is a charming coastal valley located just south of the city of San Luis Obispo and north of Arroyo Grande that boasts dozens of vineyards and wineries.
With its gentle sunshine, cool maritime fog and rich oceanic and volcanic soils, the Edna Valley appellation boasts California’s longest growing season. This extended growing season allows for more time to coax layered and complex flavors from the grapes.
Uncorked Wine Tours offers first class travel for you next wine tasting experience. Call (805) 459-4500 for details.
Driving the back roads of San Luis Obispo County’s picturesque Edna Valley is spectacular any time of the year with its rolling hills and vineyards, panoramic views, and historic school houses and barns.
The region saw its first grapes planted in the days of the California missions, but by the 1970’s, grapes had all but disappeared. Today, a handful of dedicated winemakers have ignited significant wine culture, making Edna Valley a must-taste wine destination.
Here are some of the best places to visit on your next tour of San Luis Obispo wine country:
Taste wines in a historic schoolhouse
Traveling down Orcutt Road from San Luis Obispo, the Baileyana-Tangent-True Myth tasting room is the first you will encounter as you enter the Edna Valley. Open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. year-round, the tasting room is housed in a quaint schoolhouse built by the local farming community in 1909. When in operation, the schoolhouse served students ranging from kindergarten through twelfth grade who hailed from the surrounding farmland areas.
For over four decades and three generations, the Niven family has farmed their historic Paragon Vineyard, the largest family owned and operated vineyard in the Edna Valley. It spans more than 1,100 acres, producing extraordinary grapes that are used to craft the many wine styles expressed within the family’s different brand projects.
The wine tasting experience is designed to accommodate all visitors’ individual needs, according to Karl Boone, the Winery’s Direct to Consumer Manager. “We realize each person who visits us has unique needs and we tailor their experience accordingly, whether the guest is a first-time wine taster or a wine expert,” says Boone. The tasting room staff is friendly and welcoming, and provides a memorable and fun wine tasting experience for every guest.
The Baileyana-Tangent-True Myth tasting room is located at 5828 Orcutt Road, San Luis Obispo. It is open from 10 a.m.- 5 p.m. daily. Group reservations are required for eight or more people. For more information visit www.nivenfamilywines.com/tasting-room or call (805) 269-8200.
Sustainability championed at Laetitia
The Laetitia Estate Vineyards were first planted to grapes in 1982 when French viticulturists found ideal growing conditions in the Arroyo Grande Valley for producing wines of similar character to those of their homeland in Epernay, France. Nineteen years later, the property would be acquired by Selim Zilkha, founder of a successful wind power development company and champion of environmental sustainability.
The winery has employed creative methods such as cover-cropping and goat grazing, which preclude the need for harmful pesticides and herbicides or tractors that run on fossil fuels. President and Head Winemaker Eric Hickey has been instrumental in completing and championing the Vineyard Team’s progressive Sustainability In Practice (SIP) certification process, of which Laetitia is a founding participant.
Other pursuits in the ways of sustainability on the ranch include a complete analysis/retrofit of their irrigation system to ensure that they are accommodating the needs of the different soil types on the ranch, as well as more mechanization (to assist in the labor shortage) and employing bio control strategies, such as raptors and falcons to hunt and feed on animals which attack the grapes.
The Laetitia Vineyard and Winery tasting room is located at 453 Laetitia Vineyard Drive in Arroro Grande. They are open daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call (805) 481-1722 or visit www.laetitiawine.com.
Check out newly renovated Claiborne and Churchill
Claiborne & Churchill, still run by original owners Claiborne Thompson and Fredericka Churchill Thompson, has been producing Alsatian-style “alternative whites” in San Luis Obispo since 1983. In 1995, Clay and Fredericka built their pioneering, eco-friendly strawbale-constructed winery and opened their tasting room in the Edna Valley, and over the years they have expanded their picturesque garden area to accommodate more guests and larger parties for tastings and seasonal events.
Now, upscale indoor renovations to the winery’s welcoming tasting room, (which is, to the delight of visitors, right in the barrel room!) allow the popular producer to accommodate more visitors comfortably. Updates to the interior include a new feature wall and a rolling barn door reclaimed from an old dairy barn on the property, attractive lighting, and a custom stone-topped bar with an expanded serving area and hooks to hang bags.
For guests who are interested in holding their own private parties at the winery, Claiborne & Churchill will be taking reservations for small, special events such as birthday, anniversary, and graduation parties.
Also recently finished is a guest cottage, perfect for couples hitting the road for a weekend, for parents visiting students at Cal Poly, or for anyone just looking for a relaxing “getaway.” The unit is now available for vacation rental through the VRBO/Homeaway website, or by emailing elizabeth@claibornechurchill.com.
Centrally located in SLO Wine Country, Claiborne & Churchill’s vacation property is only a ten minute drive from Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo, or Arroyo Grande, and a fifteen-minute drive to Cal Poly. Claiborne & Churchill Cellar Club members will be offered a special, discounted price on their stays.
Visit the tasting room at 2649 Carpenter Canyon Rd., in San Luis Obispo’s Edna Valley, open every day from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (except major holidays). For more information, go to www.claibornechurchill.com, or call (805) 544-4066.
See where it all began at Edna Valley Vineyard
The region known as Edna Valley has been producing grapes for hundreds of years.
In the 1800s, it was believed that the grapes in the Edna Valley region were of the highest quality. By the 1970s vines in the area had all but disappeared, until pioneering vineyard developer Jack Niven began to plant his own grapes on what is now known as Edna Valley Vineyard.
Today, their winemaker brings a passion for the Central Coast and the extraordinary expressions of flavor that come from this unsung region to offer balanced, elegant wines.
Edna Valley Vineyard is centrally located on 2585 Biddle Ranch Road in
San Luis Obispo, offering daily wine tastings, picnics and special events at their picturesque estate surrounded by the towering Nine Sisters volcanoes.
Visit the tasting room at 2585 Biddle Ranch Road in San Luis Obispo. They are pouring Monday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information call 805-544-5855 or visit ednavalleyvineyard.com.
