Master Sommelier Andrea Robinson on the Future of Sonoma Wine Tasting

On New Year’s Eve in Midtown Manhattan, the kind of old money dining room that still believes in jackets and ceremony served a foie gras terrine with pumpernickel and the quiet confidence of an institution that has survived its own reinventions. The restaurant sits in the Seagram Building, in the footprint of what was once the Four Seasons, a temple of classical hospitality, as Andrea Robinson described it. A place that hangs a Picasso near the entry and makes you feel, for one evening, improbably grown up.

Robinson, a Master Sommelier and longtime wine educator, knows that lineage intimately. She came up through restaurant culture when wine by the glass still meant house red or house white. She watched as American drinkers learned, in real time, to speak a new vocabulary: Grüner Veltliner, Sancerre, pét-nat, skin contact. At the same time, she watched California, and particularly Sonoma and Napa, teach the world how to welcome people into wine.

“What’s unusual,” Robinson said, “is that in one generation, that became the standard.”

Her observation is not nostalgia. It is diagnosis.

Today, Sonoma wine tasting is entering a new phase. The old model of formal tasting rooms acting as velvet ropes for prestige bottles is colliding with a more practical reality. The next generation of wine travelers has less discretionary income, different social habits, and a sharper sense that experience cannot be separated from how that experience is produced.

Robinson is also working on a documentary examining the transformation set in motion by the 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting, timed to coincide with America’s 250th anniversary. The film explores how food, wine, tourism, sustainability, and what she calls an expanded definition of terroir have evolved over the past fifty years. If it debuts as planned, it will arrive during a summer when Americans once again try to explain themselves through what they eat, where they go, and what they choose to drink.

In the meantime, Robinson’s view of Sonoma wine tourism is grounded and unsentimental. The future, she believes, will be shaped less by rare bottles than by everyday pressures.

Directions from Napa to Sonoma

Rise of Experiential Sonoma Wine Tasting

Asked what feels most different about wine tourism now, Robinson focused on the tasting room itself.

“More experiential,” she said, describing Sonoma wine tasting rooms that are loosening the stiffness that once defined tasting room culture. Some wineries now offer hike driven experiences, while others lean toward a more casual atmosphere. Games on tables, humor, less script, and more permission to be human.

Non alcoholic options are increasingly part of the Sonoma tasting room experience as well. Robinson flagged this quickly, not as a trend but as a signal. Sonoma wine tasting rooms are no longer designed solely for visitors who intend to leave with a case of wine. They are being rebuilt for mixed groups: locals, families across generations, corporate offsites, and travelers who did not come to wine country specifically for wine but want a meaningful detour.

She has also noticed a shift in who shows up. Robinson sees a more diverse clientele in Napa and Sonoma than when she arrived nearly two decades ago. She also sees more adult children traveling with parents, wine becoming a shared family language rather than a private indulgence.

The region’s hospitality culture remains its defining export. California, especially Napa and Sonoma, taught the rest of the world how to open winery doors.

“Come see what we do,” Robinson said. “Here are our barrels. Here’s where we squish the grapes. Here are our vines.”

Future of Sonoma Wine Tasting

If tasting room culture is changing, Robinson believes the next decade will force an even deeper shift: price.

“I think we’ll be at a place where the offerings will be less expensive,” she said. “They’ll have to be.”

Her reasoning is economic, not ideological. Younger consumers spend a far greater share of their income on housing, healthcare, and education than previous generations. Robinson offered a personal example. Her son, who works in Manhattan, spends roughly forty percent of his take home pay on rent. For her parents, it was closer to thirteen percent.

That gap shapes what feels reasonable and what feels absurd.

The wine industry, she suggested, continues to behave as though old spending patterns are permanent, treating prestige pricing as a one way ratchet. The real risk is not just fewer sales. It is a broken pipeline.

“The real big payoff of figuring out the price piece,” Robinson said, “is cultivating that next customer.”

In Napa, she noted, pricing has climbed into surreal territory. The average Napa Cabernet is often quoted around one hundred ten dollars, though that number hides a wider reality. Many brands release entry level Cabernet at two hundred dollars or more, targeting consumers with full cellars and long buying histories.

Sonoma’s advantage is that it still offers a softer landing. Not inexpensive, but plausible. She pointed to tasting rooms that operate at capacity in part because pricing has not reached stratospheric levels.

When asked what wineries hesitate to do but should, Robinson did not simply say lower prices. She proposed a model with historical precedent: second labels.

By declassifying certain barrels into a second wine, wineries can create an entry point without diluting the flagship. The second label often drinks earlier, while the primary wine retains its cellar worthiness. It is a consumer strategy that also preserves integrity.

Climate Change Is Reshaping Sonoma Wine Tasting

Climate change shapes Sonoma wine tasting even when visitors do not name it. Not only in vineyards, but across the hospitality ecosystem.

Robinson described hotels and restaurants adopting composting, water management, renewable energy, and drought conscious landscaping. Wineries are making visible changes as well. Lightweight glass bottles, recycled content shipping materials, and reduced packaging are becoming part of the Sonoma wine tasting story.

“You can reduce your carbon footprint by lightweighting your bottle,” she said. A four hundred gram bottle versus a twelve hundred gram bottle changes shipping emissions, costs, and environmental impact.

Some changes reflect health concerns as much as climate ones. Robinson has seen fewer plastic water bottles and more glass or aluminum alternatives, driven by concerns about microplastics as well as sustainability.

For visitors, Sonoma wine tasting increasingly doubles as an ethics exercise. People vote with their wallets, and wineries know they are being evaluated not just on taste but on choices.

Sonoma Wine Tasting Offers Diversity, With Distance as the Tradeoff

Sonoma, Robinson said, excels at diversity. Diversity of grape varieties, microclimates, styles, and food experiences. Within a short drive, visitors can move from cold climate Pinot Noir to mountainside Alexander Valley Cabernet. Sonoma wines would feel at home in wine bars in Brooklyn, Paris, or Singapore.

The challenge is geography. Sonoma is far flung. Trying to visit Carneros and Dry Creek in a single day can turn into an exhausting logistical exercise.

Robinson predicts the region may evolve toward more collective tasting rooms or clustered experiences near population centers. The goal is not convenience for its own sake, but access to range without sacrificing time to driving.

How to Get More Out of a Sonoma Wine Tasting

When Robinson shifts from systems to sensory advice, her guidance becomes disarmingly simple.

“It’s all in the smell,” she said.

Taste, she reminded, is limited to sweet, sour, bitter, salt, umami, temperature, and texture. Flavor comes from aroma. Blackberry, citrus blossom, graphite are perceived through the nose.

This insight matters for moderation as much as enjoyment. Focusing on aroma allows visitors to extract nuance without consuming volume. Beyond moderation, she noted, nuance disappears.

So how many Sonoma wine tastings in a day if understanding is the goal?

“One before lunch and one after,” she said.

Spend time at each winery. Take a vineyard tour. See how the wine is made, whether in barrels, concrete, amphora, or glass. Eat lunch. Drink water. Let your palate reset before the second tasting.

Preparation matters. Eat beforehand. Hydrate. Skip fragrance entirely.

“Don’t wear scent,” Robinson said. If aroma is the point, perfume interferes.

For memory, she recommends modern tools. Photograph labels. Take notes. Record educators with permission. Review recordings on the drive back or the flight home and reconnect with why you bought what you bought.

Meaningful Sonoma Wine Tasting Is Not a Formula

When asked how to identify a meaningful tasting early, Robinson resisted the premise. Meaning is subjective. What feels deep to one person feels overwhelming to another.

Instead, she offered posture.

Go in open. If something grates, pause and remember there is a human across from you. Try to connect.

“Why not?” she said. “Could be my last breath. Let’s make it connected.”

She also believes the burden is on producers not to pressure. If a tasting room treats visitors like a transaction, do not reward it.

“Vote with your wallet,” she said.

When asking for recommendations, be candid. Acknowledge that commissions exist. Then state what you want: education, authenticity, diversity, pleasure.

A First Sonoma Wine Tasting Trip, Done With Intention

Asked how someone should plan their first Sonoma wine tasting trip with sustainability, education, and pleasure in mind, Robinson was direct.

“Give Sonoma diversity a run for its money,” she said.

Visit a Pinot Noir focused winery. Visit a Cabernet Sauvignon producer. Then choose something entirely different: aromatic whites, sparkling wine, Chenin Blanc, chillable reds.

She also offered two Sonoma specific directives. Seek out centenarian producers, wineries that have remained in the same family for a century. And taste old vine wines.

Vines, like people, can get better with age.

Finally, leverage the local food system. Taste Sonoma cheeses. Ask where the Dungeness crab was caught. Let food and wine tell the same regional story.

And what not to do?

“Don’t sell short your planning horizon,” she said.

Because the best Sonoma wine tasting experiences are not crawls. They are curated encounters with place, people, and choices that add up to a way of living.

Sonoma, in Robinson’s telling, is not simply a destination. It is an argument that pleasure and responsibility do not have to be enemies, and that the future of Sonoma wine tasting belongs to places that can make that feel true at every price point.