Livermore Valley
California, USA · Livermore Valley · Arroyo Road
2 places pinned — click any one for its story.
The place
The Livermore Valley is the wine country you can reach before the fog burns off. It runs east to west — rare in the Coast Ranges — so afternoon air off San Francisco Bay pours straight up it and the temperature falls twenty-five degrees after sundown, which is what keeps acid in fruit that ripens in genuine inland heat. The soil is gravel over more gravel, laid down by the creeks coming out of the hills, and it drains so hard that the vines have to go deep for water.
Vines went in here in the 1840s, before Napa was planted. By 1889 Charles Wetmore's Cresta Blanca white had taken a grand prix at the Paris Exposition and Livermore was, briefly, the most celebrated wine name in the state. Then the valley did what the rest of Alameda County did — it grew houses. Around five thousand acres of vineyard survive, hemmed in by an urban growth boundary the growers themselves lobbied for.
What is left is a short drive from San Ramon: the Wente estate on Arroyo Road with its caves and its concert lawn, Concannon still on Tesla Road after five generations of its own, and a run of small family houses along Vallecitos and Greenville that never bothered to leave.
Places I visited
History & facts for each spot — with a “then & now” archival photo where one exists. Every one has its own page; open it for the full write-up and all the photos.
The oldest wine region in California that nobody outside the Bay Area talks about. An east-west valley — one of the few in the Coast Ranges — which lets marine air off San Francisco Bay run straight up it every afternoon, so the days are hot and the nights drop twenty-five degrees. Vines were planted here in the 1840s,…
Full history & photos →The southern arm of the valley, where the road climbs out of town toward Del Valle. Charles Wetmore built Cresta Blanca into this hillside in 1882 and cut sandstone caves into it; the Wente family bought the site in 1981, and the restaurant, the concert lawn and the golf course sit on it now.
Full history & photos →
Wineries
Wente Vineyards
Livermore ValleyKnown for Chardonnay — the Wente clone, the vine behind most California Chardonnay
tasting notes →