Elin McCoy

‘The boom in tasting rooms far outstrips the number of new wineries’

SITTING ON A plushy couch and listening to slow jazz while sipping a delicious reserve Zinfandel at the oh-so-cool Brown Estate tasting room in downtown Napa, I couldn’t help recalling the days when a California winery tasting room was an upturned barrel with open bottles sitting on it, and sips, poured by the winemaker, were free.

Then came the era of crowded tasting bars with plastic spit buckets that no one used. to refresh your memory, just watch the 2004 wine buddy film Sideways.

In the past five years, the tasting room has morphed yet again, this time into elegant living rooms and slickly designed lounges with cosy seating, food pairing menus, sit-down guided tastings, idyllic vineyard views, and the promise of an ‘experience’. naturally the price to participate has gone way, way up.

The tasting room concept is fairly recent, popularised in new World regions. You’d be hard-pressed to find one, for example, in Burgundy or Bordeaux. in California, it was originally a low-key place to sample a winery’s products before you bought, open to the public for a certain number of hours a day.