If you read through our Favorites By Wine Region pages, you may be thinking “but what about” if you see that your favorite winery or restaurant wasn’t included as one of ours.  There are four primary reasons for that:

It’s On Our List – We only recommend things we’ve actually experienced, so no matter how good a reputation a place may have, if we haven’t been there we won’t write about it.  For example, we still haven’t been to Jarvis winery or Morimoto’s restaurant in Napa.

Yeah, Not So Much – We went there, and it was fine, but we didn’t like it well enough to personally recommend it.  We may change our minds later based on future experiences.

Next! – We went there, and probably won’t go back.  We’re not going to encourage others to go there.  If we do somehow end up going back, we’re willing to change our minds based on future experiences.

Oh, Hell No – Based on our experiences, or how we were treated, or how we saw others treated, we’ve gone past “not recommending to others” to “trying to forget this place even exists.”

If you have a favorite place and are thinking “but what about…”, we welcome your recommendations for initial visits and/or to give a place another chance.  Unless it’s something on our “Oh, Hell No” list.  We tend to be pretty firm on that group.