Cakebread Cellars, Rutherford

We came here for the Reserve tasting. Our guide was a lovely Scottish woman who was very knowledgeable about wine. We had a brief tour of the grounds before moving on to the tasting. We really enjoyed the wines we tasted and we ended up buying a couple of bottles to take home. Cakebread also make delicious olive oil, which was a nice surprise for us. We also bought a bottle of that too.

This was a pretty unusual and great wine tasting experience. They took us on a mini-tour of the nearby vineyard where we tasted the wines from the flight, listened to stories about Cakebread itself, its vinyards, and wine making process, and — most impressive of all — picked and tasted the actual Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes straight off the vines (!), as well as cherry tomatoes in a tiny garden next to the vineyard. The wines themselves were no less impressively than the tour, especially the 2014 Merlot, which was unexpected given that Cakebread is generally considered a Chardonnay and other whites shop.

My wife and I chose to visit Cakebread for the first tasting of the day and it was a wonderful experience. We chose to do the white wine tasting and it ended up being a private tasting with just the two of us. Even though we were just doing the white tasting we were still offered some reds if we wanted to try them. Exceptional experience and beautiful property!

Barrett, thanks for being a wonderful host! Fantastic property and family friendly tour. My 4 year old had so much fun. The Merlot and the Pino were the pick of the lot. Also, thanks to the front desk person who was kind enough to accommodate us last min. We appreciate the hospitality very much. Will certainly be back.

Awesome tour with even better wines. Loved having Bill as our guide. We were able to get a reservation last minute and had Bill all to ourselves. We walked around the vineyard and were able to sit on the patio and taste the delicious wines.