free wine tasting in Russian River?

[wearybashful]

Maps and websites don't seem to say what tasting fees are at Russian River area wineries, or if anybody is still free.

Does anybody know, or know of a directory that includes that information?

[Joel]

A number of wineries have tasting rooms within the city of Healdsburg -- all walkable from the main square "downtown."
Many of them offer complimentary tastes -- or at least they did so as of last summer.
Here's a PDF map:
http://www.healdsburg.org/PDFs/Map%20...

[SonomaCountry]

HI all:

Full disclosure: I work for the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau, so your post caught my eye (I was looking for SF restaurants...)

Here's some good info:

The Map Store in Windsor has a cool interactive wine map. I don't know if it shows if tastings are free or not: http://www.themapstore.com/thewinemap/

Barrel Tasting is all of March, and a lot of the fun is in the Russian River area:
http://scbarreltasting.com/

A few freebies in the RR area (on or near Westside Road) are:

Korbel Champagne Cellars
Porter Creek Vineyards
Davis Bynum Winery
Arista Winery
Hop Kiln Winery

As a general note, Sonoma County has many free tasting rooms, or rooms that will apply a small tasting fee to the purchase of their wine.

And, shameless plug, if you want more info about things to see and do up here, please check out our website: www.sonomacounty.com.

Now, I need to find some places to go eat in the City....

[wearybashful]

SFeater, I usually go during events like that, so I haven't learned what it's like during regular times, but I need to play tour guide for some people coming during the week. I agree that the wine road events are really fun.

[sfeater]

the first two weekends in March are the barrel tasting event where it is just $10 to taste at all RRV wineries all weekend

[Bryan Gros]

Actually, a lot of Sonoma County is free. Maybe not Sonoma Valley, but I haven't been through there in a while.

Alderbrook, at the north end of RRV, charges, as does J Wine (but at least you get food there). Westside Road is mostly free I believe. Rochioli may be charging. South of River Road, I think Lynmar charges, but not sure who else.

[answerman]

Rochioli doesn't charge.

[HungryMojo]

SFGate.com's Wine section (web version of SF Chronicle Wine section) has a "Wine Country Guide" search section near the top of the front page (right side): www.sfgate.com/wine

This "Wine Country Guide" allows you to narrow your search by selecting "Special Features" from a drop-down list, one of which is "Complimentary Tastings." The other drop-down list is for "Locations," but unfortunately Russian River is not among the specific areas on that list. I guess it would be under "Other Sonoma County."

Note that the search results give very brief descriptions for each winery, but click on the wineries' names for more details.

[quoiagirl]

I can not find the "Wine County Guide"- "special features" or
"Complimentary tasting" maybe the site has been changed...do you know?