Off the Property

Beyond the valley

Temecula is the subject of this guide and always will be. But fifteen doors outside it have earned pages of their own — in three directions, for three kinds of day.

Every guide has a home turf, and ours is fifty-some wineries on three Temecula roads. Still, California is long, and sometimes the road leaves the valley. When it does, this is the shortlist we vouch for, kept in three drawers: Southern California — the legends within a day trip, from the Malibu coast to San Diego’s backcountry; the Central Coast — Rhône country and the Santa Barbara hills, a long weekend’s reach; and the North — the pilgrimage through Sonoma and Napa, where California wine keeps its origins and its trophies.

Within a Day Trip

Southern California

  • Rosenthal — The Malibu Estate Malibu · the coast day

    Malibu’s first vineyard, planted in 1987 in a canyon with its own one-winery appellation — and a tasting room down on the Pacific Coast Highway, just off the beach.

  • San Antonio Winery Los Angeles · the city cellar

    Los Angeles’s last historic winery — on Lamar Street since 1917, four generations of the Riboli family, and the unlikely modern home of Stella Rosa.

  • Galleano Winery Cucamonga Valley · the old vines

    The living memory of a vanished vineyard empire — est. 1927, still family-run at the original National Register ranch, pouring old-vine Zinfandel planted the year it opened.

  • Bernardo Winery San Diego · the elder, since 1889

    The oldest continuously operating winery in Southern California — a village of weathered buildings under the pepper trees, the Rizzo family’s since 1927.

  • Orfila Vineyards & Winery Escondido · the flagship south

    San Diego’s flagship — seventy hillside acres of Rhône-leaning wines in the San Pasqual Valley, with more than 1,300 medals on the shelf.

  • Deer Park Winery & Auto Museum Escondido · wine & chrome

    A backcountry winery sharing its floor with what it calls the world’s largest collection of vintage convertibles — San Diego’s answer to Doffo’s motorcycles.

A Long Weekend’s Reach

The Central Coast

  • Tablas Creek Vineyard Paso Robles · the Rhône embassy

    Founded by the Perrins of Château de Beaucastel and the Haas family in 1989 — the house whose imported cuttings seeded California’s Rhône movement, and the world’s first Regenerative Organic Certified vineyard.

  • Firestone Vineyard Santa Ynez Valley · the county’s first

    Santa Barbara County’s first estate winery — founded 1972 by the Firestone family (yes, that one), still anchoring the Foxen Canyon trail.

  • Fess Parker Winery & Vineyard Foxen Canyon · the frontiersman’s estate

    Davy Crockett’s second act: the actor’s family estate on Foxen Canyon Road, pouring Rhône and Burgundian wines from a grand ranch lodge since 1989.

The Pilgrimage

The North

  • Buena Vista Winery Sonoma · California’s founder, 1857

    The state’s first premium winery, founded by “Count” Agoston Haraszthy — the 1857 stone cellars still stand, and still pour.

  • Beringer Vineyards Napa · the elder, 1876

    Napa’s oldest continuously operating winery — every vintage since 1876, the stained-glass Rhine House, and the first public tastings after Prohibition.

  • Chateau Montelena Calistoga · the Judgment white

    The stone château whose 1973 Chardonnay beat Burgundy’s best at the 1976 Judgment of Paris — a bottle of it rests in the Smithsonian.

  • Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Napa · the Judgment red

    The other half of 1976: Warren Winiarski’s 1973 Cabernet outscored Bordeaux’s first growths beneath the Stags Leap palisades.

  • Inglenook Rutherford · the captain’s château

    Captain Niebaum’s 1879 estate, scattered by the decades and reunited piece by piece over fifty years by Francis Ford Coppola.

  • Optima Winery Healdsburg · the small-house pilgrimage

    A Dry Creek Valley house where winemaker Mike Duffy’s forty-plus years go into limited lots — picnic grounds, a bocce court, and no hurry at all.

Why the list stays short The valley is the guide’s subject; nothing lands on this page for being merely famous. Every entry has to be worth leaving Temecula for — and worth the drive back.

Back to the valley’s wineries   Plan a Temecula day

The Screening Room

The houses worth the longer drive — Malibu to Rutherford, gathered from all fifteen Beyond the Valley pages.