Wine Lover’s Time Sucker
I like toys and I like games. It's a vice, I admit. I love the Xbox. I love computer games. I don't get to use them as often as I like, but I do love them. I love maps too. Hence my fascination with GoogleEarth, perhaps the greatest time-sucker I've come across on the web.
So, it's no surprise that I love The Wine Map.
I'm not sure how long it has been in existence, but I'm pretty bummed I haven't come across it yet.
The wine map is primarily focused on Sonoma County, with some utility for Oregon wine lovers. What you have essentially is a topo/satellite/road map that is overlaid with a filter that shows vineyards and wineries. Now, winery maps are pretty common. So, it's the vineyard map components of this little amazing tool that I most love.
It essentially allows you to fly over Sonoma County, grazing through the vineyards that are carefully outlined and named. When you see an interesting one, click on it and often times you get variety and soil info as well as contact info.
One of the truly cool aspects of The Wine Map is the ability to use it while search for particular types of grapes if you are a home or professional winemaker. One does this via the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission's "Marketplace" feature. For example, suppose I'm looking for Russian River Valley Zinfandel grapes. I can do a search for just that at the Marketplace, discover that that there are 40 tons available form the Bacigalupi Vineyard, then click on the vineyard name and it takes me to The Wine Map's presentation fo the Bacigalupi Vineyard where I can discover any number of interesting things, such as the rootstock and the clones of the vines in question that will be yielding 40 tons of Zinfandel.
The Wine Map is a wine geek's toy. But so what? Grand Theft Auto is a Road Rage Geek's toy. There needs to be toys for all sorts of geeks. If you are a wine and map geek, you need to be prepared to seek lots of time sucked out of your life.
Apparently, according o this site, there are no vineyards in California south of Novato……
Dude, where have you been? 🙂 I love this wine map! I believe they created it early ’08, about the same time we built Google Maps for wineries of the Willamette Valley, Finger Lakes, and parts of Australia, New Zealand, and France. We don’t do the vineyard stuff but the maps are still pretty cool Google maps with options to turn on various layers of mapping information such as nearby restaurants and lodging, shopping and services, geographic features, 3D buildings, sightseeing, etc. Good for enophile travelers.
If you want to suck more time out of your life check these out:
WV Google Map: http://enobytes.org/wine_blog/2008/02/04/wine-regions-of-the-world-oregon-willamette-valley/
Finger Lakes article & maps: http://enobytes.org/wine_blog/2008/03/03/wine-regions-of-the-world-new-york-finger-lakes/
…and a few more http://enobytes.org/wine_blog/2008/02/01/wine-regions-of-the-world/
Last time I looked, ASCS still has let the Sonoma County soil survey remain out of print, and that study from the 80s is not available from ASCS; other northcoast CA counties’ surveys are available, most being on CD. Thnx for the map and marketplace coordinates. Some of the wineries themselves have aggregated bloc specific soil profiles on their public websites; I suspect many wineries’ grower relations execs have private databases with yet further specifics, now that terroir is of interest.
Check out in3d.com, too–many wineries in Napa are using this service.
Thanks for the tip on this website. It is a great site for people to use when visiting however it is sad that there are no Paso vineyards listed. http://www.blog.onxwine.com
Jenny you are in luck!
Check out a far more complete and intuitive interactive map for Paso Robles at http://www.pasowine.com/ava-map/ . You can search for either wines poured at tasting rooms or varietals grown in the vineyards and get driving directions to them. There are even block maps with clones/rootstocks etc. in some of the individual vineyard profiles – such as Hope Family wines.
Hi Pasowine,
I kept scrolling and hoping someone had included the Paso version of this map at http://www.pasowine.com. You mentioned that some Vineyards have in-depth block details. As a Paso Robles winery/nerd we jumped on this feature so Alta Colina Vineyard and Winery has all of our Vineyard deets available. Tom–check it out!
thanks for this tip. it will make my wine-shopping a bit easier.
Cheers,
Paul