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Napa Valley ranked most expensive US wine region for a holiday

28 February 2023 By Eloise Feilden

What better holiday for a wine lover than sipping a glass of vino in your favourite region? Vacation rental company HomeToGo has ranked 25 American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) to find destinations for the ultimate grape escape.

HomeToGo’s ranking system takes into account the affordability of wine tours, tastings and accommodation across 25 different AVA wine regions from 15 different states, to find those which are most affordable.

Shawnee Hills in Illinois, the state’s first AVA, came in top spot as the least expensive wine region to visit in the US. The region encompasses nearly 20 wineries and 55 vineyards. According to HomeToGo’s findings, it costs just US$74.73 for accommodation, a tasting tour and bottle of wine in Shawnee Hills.

Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Middleburg, Virginia, Isle St. George, Ohio and Monticello, Virginia all also ranked in the top five most affordable wine regions.

California’s Napa Valley was the most expensive on the list, with accommodation, a wine tasting and bottle of wine costing $394.83, according to HomeToGo.

Sonoma Valley, also in California, was the next most expensive region on the list.

California produces the most wine in the US, making a whopping 600 million gallons of wine in 2019. If California was a country, it would be the fourth largest wine producer in the world, behind France, Italy, and Spain.

California is also the largest wine-consuming state in the country. Californians consume over 156 million gallons of wine per year, twice as much as the next largest state of Florida.

As part of the methodology of the study, HomeToGo gathered information about the established American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in the US using information from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. It then created a shortlist of the top 25 most popular AVAs based on the number of traveler searches on HomeToGo.com. Each AVA was then assessed based on the average price of a top rated bottle of wine from the region, the average price of a 1-2 hour tasting, and the median nightly price of an accommodation.

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