Buy Wines and Wineries of California's Central Coast: A Complete Guide from Monterey to Santa Barbara

This book provides basic information about a large number of Central Coast wineries, including short histories and descriptions of most of them. I found these to be well done, and even learned a few facts about wineries I was quite familiar with.

I was less impressed with the author's ratings (on a one to five scale) of the wineries. Many (although certainly not all) of the wineries I am familiar with I would have rated differently. There are several potential reasons for this difference of opinion. One is simply that taste in wine varies, and the author and I may like different styles of wine. Another is that smaller wineries will have different wine lists available at different times, and what you think of them will depend on when you visit. Finally, some wineries are improving with time, and others are declining. This book was published mid 2008, but reading between the lines I suspect many of the tastings were two to three years earlier.

As with any such guide, you should use it to identify wineries or tasting rooms that might be interesting to visit, not to tell you if you will like someone's wine. This book provides URLs for wineries with websites, and it is always a good idea to check before a trip to see if they have changed their hours, and if the wines they currently have in release are varietals you might be interested in trying. With most wineries charging for tasting it is entirely reasonable to look at the tasting menu before committing to a tasting, and if it's not interesting just being honest and going elsewhere. You can only do a good tasting at a few wineries in a day, and it's a buyer's market with so many wineries competing for a shot at your business. So read up on options ahead of time, have some alternates available, and don't feel compelled to taste if the menu isn't of interest to you. (By the way, if you're with a friend or loved one, you don't need to choose the same wines. When the menu is something like five of eight you can use a couple of glasses to try the whole list. Or, if only a few appeal to you, buy one glass and taste only the few you care about. Wine tasting isn't about getting plastered on wines you don't really like ...) This book is a useful source for planning tastings in the Central Coast, but not a definitive guide to the area's wine.Get more detail about Wines and Wineries of California's Central Coast: A Complete Guide from Monterey to Santa Barbara.