5 Best Sights in Napa and Sonoma, California

Krystle and Jason Jorgensen make small-batch rye and single-malt whiskey, plus gin, peach liqueur, apple brandy, and candy-cap bitters, at the couple's industrial-park distillery 2 miles north of Healdsburg Plaza. The rye derives its overlapping flavors from its "mash bill" of rye and malted barley aged in heavily charred American oak barrels that add further layers of spice and complexity. The Jorgensens pride themselves on crafting their spirits entirely on-site, from grain milling through bottling, a process they describe with enthusiasm at their apothecarylike tasting room, open on weekends (weekdays by appointment).

The Hanson family makes grape-based organic vodkas, one traditional, the rest infused with cucumbers, ginger, mandarin oranges, Meyer lemons, or habañero and other chili peppers. A surprise to many visitors, the Hansons make a blended white wine before distilling it into vodka. The family pours its vodkas and a single-malt whiskey in an industrial-looking tasting room heavy on the steel, with wood reclaimed from Deep South smokehouses adding a rustic note. In good weather, some sessions take place on the landscaped shore of a small pond. Per state law, there's a limit to the amount poured, but it's sufficient to get to know the product.

Entertaining educators keep the proceedings light and lively at this distillery, which bills itself as Napa's first since Prohibition. NVD makes gin, rum, whiskey, and the flagship grape-based vodka, along with brandies and barrel-aged bottled cocktails that include Manhattans, mai tais, and negronis. Lesson number one at visits, always by appointment, is how to properly sip spirits (spoiler: don't swirl your glass as you would with wine). If you just want to sample the wares, the distillery operates a tasting bar at Oxbow Public Market.

Zesty limoncello was the first claim to fame of this distillery whose nearly three dozen artisanal offerings also include other "cellos" (try the fig if it's being poured), gins, brandies, liqueurs, and bottled cocktails. You can sample six at the tasting room, down an alley due east of Sonoma Plaza. In addition to the alcoholic beverages, the shop sells bar paraphernalia, cocktail-related books, a few snacks, and coffee aged in bourbon barrels.

The husband-and-wife team behind this artisanal distillery forsook gainful employment to produce small-batch vodka, gin, bourbon, and absinthe. A few blocks northwest of Healdsburg Plaza, the two and their crew serve flights and cocktails in a high-ceilinged space whose loungelike decor—dark walls, padded-leather and plush-velvet furniture, and cowskin rugs—hips up the industrial-park setting. If it's on the menu, the Modern G&T (gin and tonic), made with the company's superb H.O.B.S. (Heart of Broken Souls), is the must-have cocktail.