There is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ visit for the reasons you’ve laid out. That said, many places have defaulted to the ‘wine educator led, sit down’ variety - and for this, they feel justified in charging what they do.
Ideally, tasting rooms should offer choices - or have more flexibility - and from what I see, that is lacking in more and more places.
Cheers.
From what I can see/hear from my network here in Napa.
Visitation is down, folks that are most dependant upon their tasting rooms are off somewhat significantly. The reasons I hear have mostly been covered upthread (poor weather, overall expense (flights, hotels, recession,etc), however I also feel in the Napa-centric world in which I live the lack of new wines is a significant headwind.
2020 seems like a lifetime ago, but those are the wines that either are, or should be, in the marketplace right now. Dare I say most folks didn’t make 2020’s and those that did, typically made far fewer bottlings than usual. For guests that make the effort, spend the money to travel to the area want to see & buy the current releases, not try the 2018/2019’s again (how many of us see a movie more than once in a theatre?).
For me, the high costs of tasting room visits have reduced my visitations pretty substantially. Over time, when I was in the area of Napa or Sonoma visiting - not necessarily just for wine purposes - we would fill in some of our free time popping into this one or the other one to taste some wines that we hadn’t tasted before, or perhaps hadn’t tasted in a while. Fun way to spend time and was how we would pick up bottles for the trip. The process also left -excuse the pun- a good taste in my mouth about the wineries I popped into, as well as the wine business in general. There was something wonderful about the process.
Now, the high price of tasting has reduced my visits to only those specific times and places where I am willing to invest the time and money on the ‘experience’, and has made my relationship with the wineries and the area more of a transactional business experience. It has lost most of its charm, to me.
This is a tough issue, for me.
I miss the days when it was easy to spontaneously say, “Hey, let’s hit the valley!” and then go have an enjoyable Napa/Sonoma visit. (It’s not a matter of wanting free day drinking, I like supporting wineries, as well, it’s just a difference over time.)
Now, it takes planning and coordination and ‘pre-effort,’ which is fine, but it has dropped my tasting trips by 90%+. (Not meant as a complaint to remedy, just a little nostalgia.) Perhaps it’s the limits tasting rooms face on numbers, as well.
I don’t mind paying, but some prices are now so outlandish, that’s another factor to decrease my enthusiasm.
I think waving the fee with a certain purchase amount is a real turn on because I typically plan at least a few courtesy buys, anyway.
All I want in a tasting room is a pleasant enough tasting area with a friendly pourer who can chat me up a bit on what they are pouring and that’s plenty enough. I love tasting my way through a winery’s line up across whatever they make; it helps me form a better mental relationship with that winery.
It used to be that visiting the area in question was a good way to stumble across new gems - that was the true thrill of the days of spontaneous tasting. Now, it’s work to set up and align appointments, and the price of exploration can be quite steep: many places don’t exactly exude a vibe that they want to turn me on to their wines, it’s more like visiting temples of self-congratulation.
So, planning is tougher, the vibe is not as celebratory as it used to be, and I do admit to a fall in my own perception of value for many experiences, so I do it less.
I feel like 15-20 year ago, this was pretty common at larger tasting rooms. You could just visit the counter and try a few wines at a lower cost, or you could book one or more longer tour/experience/library tastings at higher costs.
I think this is still the case at many larger wineries in Napa and Sonoma. Agreed, it’s fewer than in the past, and they may turn you away when they’re really busy, but a lot of larger places have drop-in available. It may also be a bit of selection bias for those on this board (not a criticism - just a fact).
I have plenty of time and plenty of cash to go, but I would never pay what is being asked for tastings these days. It’s a complete joke.
I would say I’m pretty unaware of what other wineries do for TR fees up in these parts. I know there are several places doing full on meals, massive tastings with tours and some have “customer reward points.” It sounds like a lot. Again, we made about $20,000 in tasting fees last year. That would be a total of 400 people paying it but, again, the lion’s share of that were 3-4 events where some group was buying out the whole space. I would bet less than half of that number is actual tasting fees charged. We DO and are going to offer some other stuff; Kubota drive of the vineyard, lunch, then there’s the whole whiskey tasting thing (still figuring that out) but these are all opt in self-selected stuff. You can basically still come and taste wine for free at our place and have someone who knows their shit talk to you as much as you would like to be engaged.
Vineyard visits and detailed discussions are the kind of things I would enjoy. I don’t want to be “experienced.” 
There’s a similar discussion in this thread from last year, if anyone missed it and is looking for more data points:
As for me, I used to really enjoy going out tasting for an afternoon - stopping at an old favorite or two plus a couple of new places to (hopefully) chat with someone knowledgeable and learn what they’re about, stylistically.
At $25+ per tasting per person now in a lot of places (much less the fees you see in Napa etc.), it just adds up too quickly. My wife and I go out much less frequently than we used to, and almost entirely to the couple of places where we’re already on a list. Our friends who used to go out tasting more frequently, likewise, have cut way back in recent years.
These days, if I’m trying something new and local, it’s most likely through a BTG pour or tasting at a local shop/wine bar/restaurant or, rarely, because we’re spending time with a friend who’s a member somewhere else. Really, when it’s much less expensive to try new wines by tasting or buying bottles at a shop, I’ll do that…and related to that, my exploration of wine has become even less locally-oriented than it was before.
This. A trip to Paso last year revealed a new normal of $40+ tasting fees, often for only 4 or 5 small pours. Appointment-only now very commonplace, too. Lodging accommodations are now expensive-across-the-board there, too. And the final kick in the nuts: outrageous bottle prices.
Tablas Creek is a huge exception, and is generally a breath of fresh air in so many ways — they pretty much do everything right, imo.
Tablas is supposedly working on shipping to Connecticut. If I want to try the wines it is way cheaper to get a mixed case shipped to me than to fly there. And JH has a great blog with everything I want to know!
I think Tablas Creek also started doing a lot of Zoom tastings with tasting sets over the pandemic (like a lot of other wineries). They need to be able to ship, though.
Between some lighter crops the past couple years and (I’m guessing) more customers, most of their varietal wines have been quickly selling out. Good for them, but I miss the days when I could order on the spur of the moment.
-Al
For the normal (read non-WB) consumer that goes to Napa I think the main point would be, waive the tasting fee for a purchase of $XX….fill in the amount. The average buyer, and I base this on work colleagues that frequent wine country, is content to pay a fee if they don’t buy but not if they do. And frankly, I agree. But from my small circle of Houston based data…those that went to wine country before still are, and are still buying.
The other main point - don’t make the ‘barrier to entry’ so high….
Lots of interesting points to be made in this thread. I think its finally happened…Napa has priced themselves out of reality for most folks. When its $800/night for a room, $300 for lunch and $150/bottle for overoaked sweet Cabernet its time to look elsewhere.
Starting to make the drive up to Mendo look pretty reasonable.
A few years ago, Napa had somewhere between 3.5M and 3.8M visitors. Suppose tastings were free or $10 per person, how many more do you suppose might want to visit? They would be overrun. Of course, they could still do reservations and restrict numbers and charge $10, then it would be like Taylor Swift concert tickets if they were $10. So, they charge a lot and then try to justify it by the whole “experience” thing. The other viable model is private mailing list / wine club, and mostly hosting existing customers or likely customers.
I don’t go tasting in Napa, so frankly I don’t care what they charge. But, it’s simply not realistic to expect that they can charge modest and refundable fees and host everyone who wants to visit. They were successful at branding the appellation and they have evolved to fill a certain niche and clientele.
-Al
This is a good point. Plus, having a tasting room/hospitality destination is really expensive, so the higher price helps defray that cost in order to acquire wine club members.
I don’t have handy data, but from what I understand, hospitality programs are not material money makers for many wineries.
My solution has been simple. Stick with the several places where we are members and tastings are complimentary, skip the others.
We know the wines are good and we then can tailor our club orders based on what we taste and like.
If tasting fees come down to a reasonable level ($15 +/- $5 seems fair), I am open to exploring other producers again.
If 20 wineries can succeed with a high-end TR pricing structure, why can’t 60? Or 200? Economics is a myth, right? Look at what people are saying in this thread. Many have paid that price and then changed to reducing or ceasing their visits. So, maybe simply copying someone else’s business model is ignoring important metrics, like demand. Maybe prognosticating on potentially illusory metrics is folly. Peripheral costs (hotels, restaurants, etc.) are out of a winery’s control, but also a concern. What’s sustainable and what’s a bubble?
In the older thread I think I noted this is a realm where some regions can step up and compete. For the SF Bay Area, that certainly includes Lodi. Different consumers want different sorts of experiences.
As for wineries, one label working out of a friend’s facility has their tasting room out of state. They’re doing well. I’ve seen but not read a couple articles in the last couple weeks of other wineries doing that. (We’ve seen wineries in other states ship in grapes from CA or buy bulk or custom crush, but this seems to up quality control and allows for optimal wine quality, since any winery could do this.)