Driving winery to winery is a great family activity - really! We had six adults and a 13-year-old. The wineries all have alternate beverages served in nice glasses for underagers. First, we went to the Domaine-Chandon Winery. They specialize in Sparkling wine (otherwise known as champagne). Here, you pay $5 and get to taste four wines, and then you keep your glass as a souvenir. Now, I'm not much of a champagne drinker, so I wasn't really very into this winery. However, it has very beautiful scenery, including a little rock garden fashioned into mushrooms.
Next, we went to the Robert Mondavi Winery (much more my style!). My fiance and I tried a 1996 reserve Cabernet, and it was wonderful! Here, you have to pay $5 a taste, and you don't get any glass to keep. It's still cool to see, though, because it is a more popular wine which you can buy in most of the U.S. We were hungry by this time, so we went to the one little grocery store/cafe on this Napa Valley strip. They had awesome sandwiches!
After eating, we went to the winery that became my favorite: Grgich Hills (pronounced Ger-gitch). This winery had a different feel to it. It was much smaller - all it consisted of was the tasting room, which had the wine barrels inside it! We paid $5 each and tasted FIVE wines. They even had little pretzels for you to clean your palate. They pulled out their 1996 cabernet for us after we talked to them a bit. I also think it helped that we had a Frenchman with us (the boyfriend of my fiance's mom is French but speaks with an English accent!). Oh, yeah, we also got to keep the Grgich Hills glasses, which were huge!
Our final stop on our little wine tour was Sterling. They are also a pretty popular winery across the U.S. They had a 4th of July special. You paid $20 and rode to the top of a mountain on a chair lift to taste four wines, one of which was a 1975 Reserve Cabernet! Despite my enthusiasm, it really wasn't that good, and they didn't even let us keep the wine glasses. One thing Grgich hills did was give you a nice helping. Sterling, however, barely gives you a sip! Oh, well! Expect to spend A LOT of money if you go to Napa Valley! You will have a nice buzz afterward, though!