Founded by Catherine Niven and operated by subsequent generations of the family, Baileyana Winery has begun producing a nice range of Pinot Noir offerings, many reaching into the 90 point range far outstripping the quality of their other offerings. The house style is restrained, even dramatically restrained when compared to nearby wineries which makes sense when considering the winemaker Christian Roguenant is French and worked for quite some time in the Champagne region. The winery started with a few acres of plantings on the family horse property and that vineyard named Firepeak still offers the highest quality wine made on the estate. Long a favorite choice for many a cheap wine club Baileyana Winery is showing increasing quality with an eye toward better scores and therefore better consumer sentiment in the future. Total production has also increased of late and now reaches approximately twenty five thousand cases of wine per year.

Guenoc otherwise known as Langtry Estate and Vineyards has perhaps the most interesting name in all of California wine for a good reason. Originally opened by British actress Lillie Langtry (who was also the other women of Queen Victoria's son) bought land in Lake County in 1888. From 1900 to 1906 the winery was among the most successful in North America and has been a perfect choice for the best wine club ever since. A dispute over ownership was followed by Prohbition, which kept the winery in a significant state of desprair until the early 1960's at which time it was named Guenoc, after the valley in which most of the grapes were grown. Total production sits at around one hundred fifty thousand cases of wine per year, the largest in Lake County and at one time the only producer in the Guenoc AVA. Top offerings are both fruit forward and balanced.

Napa Valley California. Few names conjure as many images within America as the most famous wine region in the new world. A perfect place to find wine gifts for your friends and family, Napa Valley can be an intimidating place to visit and choose gifts not only because of it's vast size, but also because of the astronomical prices you can sometimes find there. At wineries such as Opus One and Screaming Eagle you'll be expected to pay well over $100 per bottle of wine, if their wines are even available for purchase since they sell out so quickly once they're released (some wineries like Screaming Eagle actually have waiting lists which can take years to surpass). Other than visiting wineries, there are also a range of outstanding wine stores in the area which isn't surprising. Many of these stores can help you select the perfect gift in what many people think is a less pressurized atmosphere.

I joined a wine club a few months ago. I had always been rather a bore when it comes to drinking wine - going for whatever was the "in" thing - whatever my friends were drinking was fine for me. But then I watched a programme on the telly that showed me that there was a lot more to wine that just pulling the cork and slurping it down. I didn't know what to choose from the vast array at the supermarket, so I decided to give myself a treat and join a wine club. Now, each month, I get a selection of wines to try, along with information about where they're from, what grapes they're made of and the kind of flavours I should be able to taste. I'd say that my palate is far more refined, now. I'm the person selecting the wine when I go out with a group of friends!