Best New Wine Tasting Room 2025 – San Francisco Chronicle
THE BEST NEW WINE TASTING ROOMS OF 2025 WERE ALMOST ALL IN ONE CITY, AND IT’S NOT NAPA. By Jess Lander
The most exciting wine tasting room openings of 2025 have two notable themes: location and longevity.
Five of the seven openings on this list are in Healdsburg, which is closing the gap on its yearslong campaign to dethrone Napa as the top destination in Wine Country. The wine industry is desperate to attract millennials and Generation Z, and Healdsburg is poised to become their home base as more traditional brands are replaced by smaller, vanguard wineries beloved by the under-45 set.
The most beautifully designed new winery of 2025 was, indisputedly, Auteur.This hilltop estate in California’s famed Russian River Valley boasts panoramic vineyard and forest views through a 50-foot-long wall of windows. Winemaker Kenneth Juhasz started Auteur more than 20 years ago as a side project with his wife, Laura. The brand slowly amassed a cult-like following for its elegant coastal Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays, eventually opening a tasting room inside a bungalow on the Sonoma Plaza in 2012. That space remains open, but the drive out to the new estate is worth it for the views alone. The modular building blends into the surrounding nature; the interior, featuring natural woods, a charred redwood fireplace and cozy tasting nooks, feels especially warm on one of the Russian River’s signature foggy days. When the sun’s out, the terrace is where to be.
