9 Best Sights in Napa and Sonoma, California

Heirloom-corn bourbon and the flagship malted rye are the big sellers at the distillery that Michael and Lorraine Barber and the couple’s partner Aaron Lee started in 2017. The spirits are mashed, fermented, produced, distilled, and aged from "grain to glass" inside the company's 1910 redbrick storefront using traditional methods and uncomputerized equipment. White rum, aged rum, Gravenstein apple brandy, grappa, lambanóg (a traditional Filipino spirit distilled from palm sugar), absinthe blanche, and other spirits are handcrafted in smaller batches. Amid the aromatic barrels, guests sample flights, Lorraine's finely honed cocktails, wine (the Barbers own a winery), or craft beers.

The Hanson family makes grape-based organic vodkas, one traditional, the rest infused with cucumbers, ginger, mandarin oranges, Meyer lemons, or habanero and other chili peppers. A surprise to many visitors, the Hansons make a blended white wine before distilling it into vodka. The family pours its vodkas and a Japanese-style single-malt whisky in an industrial-looking tasting room heavy on the steel, with wood reclaimed from Deep South smokehouses adding a rustic note. In good weather, some sessions take place on a small pond's landscaped shore.

Krystle and Jason Jorgensen make small-batch rye, single-malt whiskey, gin, peach liqueur, apple brandy, and candy-cap bitters in an industrial park distillery 2 miles north of Healdsburg Plaza. The rye derives its overlapping flavors from its "mash bill" of rye and malted barley aged in heavily charred American oak barrels that add further layers of spice and complexity. The Jorgensens pride themselves on crafting their spirits entirely on-site, from grain milling through bottling, a process they describe enthusiastically at their apothecarylike tasting room.

French-born vintner Jean-Charles Boisset's love affair with Napa Valley history climaxed in 2024 with the debut of a glossy high-ceilinged showcase for his hand-distilled small-batch bourbons, ryes, gin, and brandies. The spirits and the burnt-orange The First Millionaire's Saloon, inside a restored Pullman railcar, acknowledge the legacy of town founder Sam Brannan, who established a distillery here in 1860, eight years before his railroad arrived. In 2023, Boisset launched Casa Obsidiana Tequila with the Beckmann Gonzalez family of Mexico (Jose Cuervo). The joint-venture's premium tequilas age in French oak barrels previously used to make wine. Distilling towers and other equipment provide the backdrop, but all the spirits are made elsewhere.

A claw-foot tub overflowing with Old Hollywood Ginn bottles recalls the era of speakeasies and bootleg hooch at the storefront tasting room of Napa's first distillery since Prohibition. Engaging staffers maintain a partylike mood, dispensing boozy tidbits—like why gin is spelled "ginn"—along with cocktails and flights of fruit-based spirits. The distillery's products include rum, whiskeys, the flagship grape-based vodka, brandies, and bottled cocktails. The whiskeys and rum aren't poured here, but you can taste them down the street at the same-owned The ArBaretum cocktail bar or, when it reopens following renovations, at the distillery itself.

London-style gin got the ball rolling for Michael and Jenny Griffo’s industrial-park distillery, which also produces vodka, whiskey, brandy, liqueurs, and bottled cocktails. Michael, who handles the distilling, has a PhD in physics research, but the spirits satisfy as much for their creativity as the scientific rigor. Case in point: the single-malt whiskey Michael developed with the brewmaster at neighboring Lagunitas Brewing using barley mash from one of the latter's beers. A small bar near the entrance serves single tastes, flights, and cocktails. The barrel room and adjacent patio host live music and other events, often with food trucks.

Entertaining educators keep the proceedings light and lively at Napa's first distillery since Prohibition. The distillery makes rum, whiskeys, ginn (ask about the odd spelling), a flagship grape-based vodka, brandies, and bottled cocktails. The speakeasy-like Hollywood Room upstairs hosts many tastings, at which such subjects as "booze yoga" and "proper spirits sipping" are taught.   If you just want to sample the wares, the distillery also operates an Oxbow Public Market tasting bar (minus the whiskey and rum) as well as the the downtown cocktail bar The ArBaretum, both open daily.

Zesty limoncello was the first claim to fame of this distillery, whose nearly three dozen artisanal offerings also include other cellos (try the fig if it's being poured), gins, brandies, liqueurs, and bottled cocktails. You can sample six at the tasting room, down an alley due east of Sonoma Plaza. In addition to the alcoholic beverages, the shop sells bar paraphernalia, cocktail-related books, snacks, and coffee aged in bourbon barrels.

The husband-and-wife team behind this artisanal distillery produces small-batch vodka, gin, bourbon, and absinthe. A few blocks northwest of Healdsburg Plaza, the two and their crew serve flights and cocktails in a high-ceilinged space whose loungelike decor—dark walls, padded-leather and plush-velvet furniture, and cowskin rugs—perks up the industrial-park setting.