Zayante Vineyards

We had the pleasure of visiting Zayante Vineyards recently during the Vintners’ Festival. Great family run vineyard. Very personable and welcoming. The wines were wonderful and affordable… I think we walked away with a few bottles :)

Love Zayante. Family-​owned, very reasonably priced, hand crafted wines. Beautiful secluded setting in the Santa Cruz mountains, winemaker Greg Nolton makes an astonishing array of estate-​grown wines. We tasted ten this weekend at their annual open event. Had a delicious Bordeaux blend «Z-​Cuvee» with our picnic afterward, and went home with 11 assorted bottles including a great 2010 Pinot, some cab, syrah, a rose and a chardonnay.
Yes it’s remote, but well worth the trip!

I have always passed this winery on the way to my parents house and I’m so happy my sister and I got to stop in today. All the wine here is estate wine– very impressive. I believe they have something like 78 acres on site. Very beautiful location and winery. The small tasting room is very inviting with some hand craft goods– cork necklaces and such very cute. The owners the Noltons were pouring and I’m enjoyed all 8 of the tastings. My favorites were the 2009 Clos Du Z and the Cab. Cannot wait to return and purchase much more wine. Great wine and amazing friendly service :)

Zayante is the only wine we go out of our way for, and have for years. Their cabernet is absolutely perfect and is the wine we bring out when we host dinner parties or other gatherings.
The winery is rarely open to the public, only on «passport weekends» where you can visit a handful of Bay Area wineries that are closed to the public. The vines are so lush and hearty – you can tell there is so much love in them! There are a few picnic tables and some smart people brought some food to go with their newly purchased bottles.
We thoroughly enjoyed every wine that was poured and bought a few bottles. The merlot, syrah and chardonnay stood out for us besides our fav, the cab. We can’t wait to come back for the next passport weekend with a picnic basket in tow!

This was our second stop for our January Passport weekend.
This is W… A…Y… out there. At least they were smart and posted signs along the way to give you hope that you were actually going the correct direction. Once you got there though, it was beautiful. They’re on top of a hill were it is flat. Green grass all around, beautiful and regal oak trees, and the nice warm sun shining down made this a perfect picture and picnic oppurtunity.
They poured a Chardonnay, a Clos de Z, Merlot (which I quickly dumped), a Syrah, Cabernet Sauvingnon (which was very tasty and only $ 20 a bottle), and a Petite Syrah.

July 19, 2008 Santa Cruz wine passport weekend (just before I was pregnant) we stopped by here and tasted the ’06 Santa Cruz Mountain Estate Chardonnay, ’06 Santa Cruz Mountain Estate Zinfandel (lots of grapefruit), ’06 Santa Cruz Mountain Estate Clos de Z blend (Grenache, Pettite Sirah, and Syrah = spicy), ’05 Santa Cruz Mountain Estate Syrah, and the ’04 Santa Cruz Mountain Estate Cabernet Sauvingnon which was a bit musty unfortunately.