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According to some older folks from the area, a few years ago wine tasting used to be free. Now most wineries in Sonoma and Napa county charge for a round of tastings. If you look a little hard, however, you can still find a few free places. Korbel, the widely known American champagne—or sparkling wine, to be more precise—does not charge for tours and tastings.

A good option for broke students or recent graduates.

Plus the Korbel headquarters is just a short drive away from the impressive Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve, a destination in itself.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Even the best Sonoma County Korbel does not resemble Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin. But then again, to taste Veuve Cliquot at its headquarters one has to fly to Reims, France (and be willing to shell out a decent wad of cash).

And so we went to the Korbel Champagne Cellars. And it was much better than expected. I cannot imagine a nicer area—rolling hills, blue sky and fog, and the clear winter light just kind of nestling above the vines.

Then there’s the tour. Much of it, granted, is pure Korbel marketing. There’s a clear effort to make the brand seem classic, classy, spiritual, and even progressive (it was the first woman-managed winery in the area, or something). But that self-promotion is only expected.

To be fair, one does get some good info between the self-promotion; specially those of us who don’t know much about champagne-making.

According to the tour guide, when the Korbel brothers came to America from the old Czechoslovakia they tried their hands at ventures like cigar-box making and the production of Slivovitz–a cool but strong plum brandy popular all over Eastern Europe.

Only after failing at their other ventures did the Korbel brothers settled for sparkling wine.

Old Storage Room. Photo by Rexana Khan. 

Korbel was founded in 1882 and the tour takes you to the original storage rooms. Seeing how champagne used to be made and corked in the past was my favorite part of the tour. In the beginning each bottle had to be turned over manually in order to distribute the sparkle-creating yeast, I think. Sometimes it blew up on the worker’s face.

The champagne tasting is done in a big room with various bars. The room, by the way, could have used a couple of couches. But then again, if there were couches people would probably stay there for hours and hours, demanding free champagne.

The tour guide pours four kinds of champagne, starting with the driest and ending with the sweetest. Not much can be said about the champagne. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible either. Good enough (except for the Brute Rosé, which is too-candy like).

Would I buy a bottle? Sure; in fact, I did. And let’s just say I had some Slivovitz money left.