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Video: See our Winery Filter, Profiles, and Trip Log in action!

No iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? Start your wine adventure on this Website now!

This Website - The Only Wine Travel Site With:

Our iPhone App Winery Quest Pro:

Compare Calif. Wine Travel Apps

Explore Hundreds of Exciting California Wineries in 20 Wine Regions - Easily

  • Customize your trip to YOUR interests!

    Use the Winery Profile Filter to discover wineries that meet your interests in wines and winery features, add the wineries to the Trip Log, then easily create a custom map for your trip.
  • Why Winery Quest Pro?

    Winery Quest Pro is the fastest, easiest, and most convenient tool for California wine travel. It also works great as a reference when shopping for wine in a wine store or in wine discussions. Be informed - fast, with the most extensive winery profiles available. Our profiles have information not available on most winery Websites such as tasting fees. 100% accurate locations!
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Features and Benefits

  • 20 Wine Region Maps - Over 900 Winery Profiles! - No other app compares. Winery tasting rooms accurately hand-mapped. We include only tasting rooms that are regularly open to the public and ready for your visit. We include exciting wineries that are not on the free maps because they chose not to join an association or pay for placement on those maps. We are constantly adding new tasting rooms and deleting dead ones. Winery Quest home screen
  • Full Winery Profiles - The most extensive winery data available - updated almost daily by wineries directly or by the Wine Questers crew. No other app compares in depth, breath, or data freshness. Find wine varietals, tasting fees, family or dog friendly, picnic areas, great ambiance, architecture, landscaping and much more.
  • Trip Log and Custom Map - The trip log is a powerful tool that makes wine travel a breeze. This is NOT a fluff feature for marketing the app. Our trip log and custom map will save you time and energy when used with our unique Winery Profile Filter.
  • Select Wineries for Your Preferences - 4 ways to select wineries to visit! Tap your favorite selection tool, tap to add the wineries to your trip log, tap to map, and hit the road!

    • Winery Profile Filter - Tap buttons to select options that interest you then map or list the results. Filter and customize your trip with 47 options. See the video above or the screen shot below.
    • Region Maps - View a region map and select wineries in an area you want to explore. If you are already in the region see the wineries located near you.
    • Spin-the-Bottle - Shake your iPhone to spin the bottle. It will select a winery for you. Fun roulette game.
    • Photo Select - Flip through winery profile photos and add the prettiest wineries to your trip log.
  • Our Recommended Wineries by Region - Online access to our extensive wine region information and winery recommendations from inside the app and Safari. (Internet connection required.) Check the Wineries by Region section of this site for the same information. Our wine travel blog with information about wines and wineries is also available on these pages in the app and the Website.
  • Simple GPS navigation - Navigate in Google Maps with the blue location marker if you have a device with GPS. We can not offer driving directions yet because Google's iPhone map software can't handle the accuracy of our hand-mapped markers. So use your favorite navigation app and refer to Winery Quest when you get near your destination.
  • Trip support - almost live - The only California wine travel app with personal advice available. Email support from the app or use the WineQuesters.com forums and Jim will often respond in minutes. How many other people do you know with 40 years of California wine travel experience and visits to over 1,000 wineries?
  • Data caching - Cache 4 regions at a time for offline use for the best combination of updated data and accessibility. Download your selected wine regions with a WiFi or cell connection. To cache the map tiles scroll around that region's map so you can see / download all the tiles you will need. Then if you close the app or turn off your device our app will remember the data and map. Use this feature if you have a device with only WiFi or traveling in a remote area with poor cell service.

    We do not use built-in data like many apps because we assume you want the most current information. We are adding or updating winery data almost every day. Winery Quest is a "hybrid" app. It is mostly a native app to the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad but we integrate data and our mobile Website so you have the latest info that we have available.
  • Other features - Shop-the-Maps for tasting room specials (beta) and Favorites.
  • Winery Filter - Simply tap buttons to filter wineries with dozens of options including prices and varietals. Quickly narrow your selection of wineries to visit. The filter has two screens, one for features and one for wines. Scroll down the screen for even more options. Far more options than any other app. See the video above.

  • Winery Filters


  • Winery Quest has 100% accurate locations in 20 California wine regions. We do not use "geo-coded" lists of mailing addresses. They are cheap but often very inaccurate. The software guesses where the location may be and in rural areas the map markers can be far from the actual tasting room location.

    Besides, many maps use mailing addresses and many tasting rooms aren't located at the business mailing address. (See our example below.) We drive to each tasting room and hand-place the map markers, saving you time and frustration.

  • Do you really want to navigate with the map mess on the right from another app?
  • We give you more info than other options and it is live data. Our winery profiles data is constantly being updated and we are actively adding wineries that have tasting rooms open to the public. Updates from wineries, tasters, and our field trips helps to keep the data current. Wineries can directly update their info . No other wine travel app has this power and reliability level. Never perfect of course, but improving daily. We have a lot more information and our ratings and reviews to add to the profiles. Your trip is better with better information.
  • Color coded map markers with labels make your trip much easier.

Plus there is a bonus with our live data. Wineries can post special tasting room discounts and you can see them in our Web or iPhone maps in almost real time! Nowhere else can you Shop-the-Maps™ (beta) ! Start saving money now!

Support and Feedback is available at Winery Quest iPhone app forum, by email from inside the app, by email at: questers at winequesters dot com, or the form on this page. We often respond in a few minutes if not traveling.

Screen shots and discussion

  • Trip Log Select wineries in any of the four selection tools and create a trip log.
  • Winery profiles. Profile information for almost every California winery that is open to the public regularly in 20 regions. These screen shots don't show all the profile info. Also included are wines and more.
  • Select wineries. Two of the winery selection tools are Spin-the-Bottle and Photo Selector.
  • Shop-the-Maps™! (beta) Find those great case specials in tasting rooms! Tap on the star map markers to see what treat they have for you. This is a new feature and many wineries are not yet aware of it. We are working to increase participation. Please bug the wineries into posting their specials.
  • Cache Data | More Info. Cache winery profile data for off-line use. Up to four regions can be cached with a WiFi or cell connection. The latest updates of our wine region information and recommended wineries on WineQuesters.com is available from the app.
  • More Features. Connect easily from inside the app to our app and travel support forums. The California map shows the locations of each of the wine regions included in the app. Still missing are the Northern Sierra Foothills (Auburn to Nevada City) and Lake County.
  • The forums in the app are the same as on this Website. They are monitored by Jim Preston and you have access to his knowledge from decades of California wine travel. Ask questions during your trip and you could have answers minutes later on most days.

FAQ's

  • WARNING about App Store reviews: Our app's ratings and reviews are less than 1% of the sold apps. Everyone we meet on the wine trails loves Winery Quest. The ratings don't reflect the huge number of users who find the app useful. None of the users who rated the app poorly has ever contacted us. We could have easily explained that they missed existing features or that a feature is in the development schedule. Be aware that some bad reviews could be from competitors. Same problem as on Yelp. Some app owners are hiring workers cheap on sites like Amazon's Mechanical Turk to rate and review their apps - and competitors. Apple informed us that some people consider 1 star to be the highest rating. That doesn't help matters.
  • Are all California wineries included? Wine Questers data and maps do not include every winery in California and never will. We only cover major wine regions. It is very difficult to keep up with the changes in the regions we cover! We intend to add the tasting rooms in Lake, Placer, and Nevada counties and in Clarksburg.

    As we state everywhere - we only include wineries that are open to the public on a regular basis. Some by-appointment-only wineries meet that criteria but not all. We don't want to clutter the maps and database with wineries that few tasters will ever visit. Rarely open wineries increase the complexity of deciding which wineries to visit, increase download times, and decrease mobile app performance. Every imaginable tasting room experience and wine is available in our database - and a lifetime of adventures for every wine traveler.

    There are over 1,000 wineries in California that do not use the tasting room model for distributing their wines. You will find their wines on store shelves or in restaurants and wine bars. Some only sell to their wine clubs. Those wineries are often included on winery association maps and maps that use mailing lists to populate them.
  • What is the difference between Pro and Lite versions? Lite has only the maps and profiles. Pro has important and very useful additional features and we are continuing development of Pro. Lite will get no more significant features. We're not sure why anyone would want Lite but it is available for those who do.
  • Why isn't our app free or 99 cents? Simple - we want to get paid for our work. Jim works on this full time almost every day and we have 3 paid freelancers helping. Gathering and maintaining all this information is very expensive for us. Programming and Website costs add up fast. We assume you want the finest data and maps available and this objective takes a lot more work than the hobby sites.
  • Can winery data be downloaded to your iPhone everywhere? Our app downloads live data from our online database. The big advantage is you get the latest winery data that we have and we update daily. Cell connections can be a problem in mountainous regions so just cache the data by cell connection or WiFi before heading into the hills. With Winery Quest Pro you can cache up to four regions' data and map tiles.

    Going to more than 4 regions? There are plenty of free WiFi hotspots available in most of the wine regions and you can cache other regions by WiFi. There is no need for cell service with Winery Quest Pro but you will have the most current data if you download the region data frequently.

    We can often download the data to our iPhones on the older Edge network even with no bars for reception. This can take a minute but you have the latest data.

    In some places the AT&T network is congested due to iPhone use and other issues. Signal strength is not the same as Internet connectivity "backhaul". Congestion can block Internet access even with five bars signal strength. iPhone and now iPad users are sucking up 10 times the bandwidth of other smart phone users and overloading the network. AT&T is spending $18 billion and adding 2,100 towers to fix this problem. We've been able to use our app in all of the California wine regions that we cover with only a few connectivity problems in the more remote areas.
  • Is Winery Quest like WineQuesters.com? Please do not expect smart phone applications to have all the features of a full Website. The processors are way under the power of a desktop or notebook computer and the browsers don't have the functionality of computer browsers. Yes, it is amazing the power that is in your hands but it is quite limited. Developers are pushing the limits but we need to stay inside the technological boundaries and not ruin your experience.
  • Navigation but without driving directions? If you can read a map then navigation with our maps is easy enough. Or use your favorite navigation app to get close to the wineries and then refer to Winery Quest in the final few miles. We are exploring navigation options such as exporting the latitude and longitude of our map markers to a 3D navigation app. So far we aren't able to use driving directions with Google Maps because they don't give us a method (api in programming terms) to do that. We're hoping that changes soon. There is an option that requires you to subscribe to a service but we doubt most users want another navigation subscription. Open Street Maps, a volunteer effort, now has a method for calculating driving directions but we've heard complaints about accuracy.
  • No results in the filter! You selected options but the filter shows zero results. That could be for two reasons. 1) There are no wineries that meet your criteria or we don't have all the data for those wineries yet. Please remove options until you have only the most important for you and results are displayed. 2) You do not have an adequate Internet connection and the data didn't download. Please test your Internet connection which is not the same as your cell connection. Try loading a new Web page in Safari. Sometimes rebooting your phone will establish a better connection.

About this project

We developed WineQuesters.com and Winery Quest to solve problems that all wine tasting road trippers experience. We've interviewed hundreds of wine tasters, vintners, and tasting room staff throughout California wine regions to develop the features and information that most tasters will want. We continue to work on the site, iPhone app, data, and now videos almost every day with a staff of 4.

We are building this extensive database by hand and drove tens of thousands of miles in California wine regions. App sales help support this project, which is not at all cheap for us to develop and maintain.

Jim started wine tasting in Napa and Gilroy in the late 1960's (under age, but no one cared). We bring you over 40 years of California wine travel experience and insight.

Katya and I use Winery Quest Pro to navigate California wine regions and it works fantastic, especially on the iPad! I finally have the winery navigation device I've needed for over 40 years of wine tasting road trips and it is now available for you.

- Jim Preston

California Wine Travel Planner