Santa Monica Mountain Vineyards and Wine Tasting

The Santa Monica Mountains have quite a few vineyards. Most are on a small scale and many are hobbies to their owners. The Santa Monica Mountains have dry summers and mild to cool winters not exactly the perfect place to grow wine. Acreage is scarce, the climate’s tricky and getting enough water is a challenge. Most local vineyards do not make wine commercially only to share with family and friends. Those that do produce enough wine to sell commercially do so through thier web sites or local outlets. Most of the Santa Monica Mountains vineyards produce wine using a custom crush winery. The custom crush winery takes care of grape-crushing, fermentation, aging, bottling and labeling freeing up the local growers to tend to their vineyards. Cornell Winery and Tasting Room on Mulholland Hwy is the only place where you can sample wines from the more than 50 independent vineyards in the Santa Monica Mountains. Several of the larger vineyards do have their own tasting rooms including Rosenthal Estate and Malibu Family Wines.