I would +1000 on that. What a lovely place with great wine and food. 
We did this last summer. Had too much of a good time. Purchased 5 cases of wine.
Mosel Valley in Germany would be a good choice. Lots of great Riesling, quaint towns, riverboat tours, great hiking, and castles.
But he is talking about late September, not late August. I would think at that time you would want to go somewhere like Bordeaux or Champagne where you can visit larger estates with established tasting programs and not places like Burgundy, Alsace, Barolo, etc., where family farmers won’t have time for you.
Jim,
He is going when he is going - we cannot always make our trips at perfect times for wine visits. But, as I said in my prior post, and as you say here, he need to take into consideration when he is going when he is figuring out WHERE to visit.
Well, you said September and I said early September… However my point was that I do believe indeed just like you that September as a whole might be a difficult time to score visits with certainty to small producers given the possibility of harvest.
Don’t forget the Grosser Ring auction, which if I recall correctly is held in September
For Yosemite, you’d be looking at spending time in Livermore and maybe Amador/Lodi to some extent. Yosemite itself, if it’s your first time, should be at least a 3-day visit—only New Zealand rivals it for natural beauty in all the traveling I have done.
Any cultural to be mixed in? I was thinking of Vienna, Salzburg and the Wachau and other wine regions of Austria–plus you could drop down into Sudtirol and northern Italy that way…Vienna itself should be a 3-4 day visit as well…
New Zealand is amazing and 2 weeks (if you can give yourselves an extra 3 days to compensate for the flighttimes that would help) is just about enough time to get a good look around.
this is true to an extent, but when I visited Tuscany and Piedmont during harvest I just made it clear that I’m extremely passionate about the wines and learning more about the regions. I was able to get into almost everywhere except for a very small few that didn’t have the people on hand to take care of a visit. I’m sure if Jeff does the same he won’t have a problem getting into a lot of places.
Okay, my girlfriend and I compromised on a partial European wine vacation. London, Paris and CHAMPAGNE!!!. 
Plane tickets purchased (the easy part). Now I have to do some research and make some arrangements. Will search the forum for information about visiting the Champagne region. If anyone is willing to share their experiences and make recommendations, please post here or PM me.
Search the travel forum.
Western Australia and South Africa are two of my favorites. Trying Tasmania this year. Would appreciate any suggestions on Tasmania.
Two trips down there for me and I never did get to Tazzie. Cap D’Estaing is still the flag-bearer there, and pretty good wine. Josef Chromy is OK (I think both Chard and PN IIRC). Those are the only two that come to mind just now, but I know there are other wineries—maybe PM Jeremy Holmes or Kent Comley?
Few threads with ideas here…
http://forum.auswine.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16191
Dave, thanks for the threads.