My husband and I wanted to get a feel of Wine Country and knew nothing about wine. We were impressed with the bus companies communication and the driver, Sophia. We got a great tour of Napa and Sonoma plus the city! We went to big name and very small wineries; felt like we had a 'taste' of everything.
Awesome tour! Frank was an amazing tour guide and brought us to really great wineries. We stayed in Napa which allowed us to visit more wineries. I have absolutely no complaints about the tour, but be prepared to spend $ 20.00 at each winery for a tasting. It can get very expensive.
Keep your travel plans flexible, or ask ahead of time if other people are scheduled on the same day as you so as to guarantee your tour date will not be moved. Our tour date was moved and it caused a lot of headache and stress to move our other activities around. Extranomical tours seemed less than happy to try and accommodate us.
I would absolutely do this tour again. Even with the scheduling issue.
Buy the "wine skins" that some of the wineries sell if you plan on checking wine to bring home. We used them and they worked GREAT. We bought ours at Mondavi and they were only $2, which is actually cheaper than amazon has them.
The bus was very loud and uncomfortable. The AC did not work it was more like a circulation of the air outside which was HOT. The loudness came from the rattling of the handicap lift.
Our tour guide was great (Mark). He told us some history about San Francisco and Napa. We even played a trivia game. Lots of fun.
Dress for hot weather (we were there in early July)
Plan for a LONG day. Our tour lasted 8:45 am to about 7 pm.
Bring water and snacks.
I'd also like to note for those of you who are not familiar with wine tasting- there was still a tasting fee of anywhere from $15-30 ($30 included a tour) at each winery, so plan for an expensive day. So worth it, though!