| Issue 21 · October 14, 2026 |
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Stories · Tasting Room
Did You Make a Reservation?
On the back roads between Reno and San Francisco, more gates say by appointment only
The drive from Reno to San Francisco is supposed to take about four hours, and I almost never do it in four hours. Some days I come down Interstate 80 through the Placer County foothills, and some days I go the long way on California Highway 88 past Kirkwood and down into Amador County. Either way, once I'm out of the mountains I know the back roads, and if the day has any slack in it I take one.
The drive has changed. More of the gates now carry a small sign that says by appointment only. Once in a while, usually on a weekday, when the lot is close to empty, I pull in anyway and walk up to the door. The host looks up, and before anything like hello there is the question. Did you make a reservation? There is no one else in the room. I am still turned away.
Read the full story
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The Numbers
18%
Drop in Napa County tasting room visits last year, with Sonoma down about 8 percent, according to Wine Business Monthly's 2026 Tasting Room Survey.
70%
Share of guests at Grgich Hills Estate who walked in without a booking before the pandemic. Today, 85 percent book ahead.
100 to 500+
Napa wineries when the county's 1990 Winery Definition Ordinance was written, and the number it governs now.
How a 1990 ordinance still turns away walk-ins
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Insights · How-To
The Walk-In Is Decided by the Host's First Sentence
A walk-in policy, four host scripts, and three signs for the road
"Did you make a reservation?" puts the guest on trial at the door. "Welcome in. We're usually by appointment, but it's quiet this afternoon, so let's get you seated" gets to the same place and keeps the guest.
The new Insights post has a walk-in policy an owner can adopt as written, host scripts for four situations at the door, including the guest who won't be back this way, and three signs for the road. The same scripts work at a restaurant host stand or an inn's front desk on a slow afternoon.
Read on Insights
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A Note from Patrick
Vianarra Is Widening the Table
Starting next issue, restaurants and inns join the tasting room
Most of what I've written in Vianarra has been about wineries and tasting rooms, with an occasional turn into hotels. With close to 1,000 readers now across Vianarra and Pour Story Society, a good number have asked for a broader focus. Starting next issue, Vianarra is written for the food, wine, and travel hospitality trade, the people running restaurants and inns as well as tasting rooms.
A guest who drives up to Amador for a tasting also eats lunch somewhere on Main Street and sleeps somewhere that night, and remembers the whole trip as one story. The work of finding a place's story and getting the staff to tell it well doesn't stop at the tasting room door. It shows up at the host stand of a restaurant and at the front desk of an inn, and the people working those jobs face the same questions tasting room hosts do.
Wine will still be in most issues. Readers who want food, wine, and travel from the guest's side of the table will find it in Pour Story Society, my consumer publication, every other Friday.
Join Pour Story Society
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Meet the Winemakers
Winemakers With a Story Worth Keeping
Meet the Winemakers is an oral history series with winemakers around the world, well known and lesser known. Winemakers who want to take part, or readers who know one who should, can reply to this email or book an hour.
Book an interview
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Staff Workshops
The moment at the door is something a team can practice, whether that door opens on a tasting room, a dining room, or a hotel lobby. My Staff Workshops start with a visit, then a three-hour session with the whole team, including the people who don't usually face guests.
How the workshops run
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New here?
Vianarra is a free weekly newsletter on hospitality storytelling for the food, wine, and travel trade, written for the people who greet guests at the door.
Know a tasting room manager, innkeeper, or restaurant GM who could use the host scripts? Forward this issue.
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Patrick R. Dunn writes Vianarra and works with wineries, hotels, and restaurants on how their teams tell their story to guests. He spent thirty years leading global crisis management and operational resilience teams across four continents, and more than a decade as a National Park Service interpretive ranger at six sites. He trained in narrative at the University of Maine under Stephen King and folklorist Sandy Ives, holds WSET Level 3, and is the author of Stop Leading on Empty.
vianarra.com ·
patrick@vianarra.com
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