California Delta Wine Drive: Self-Guided Audio Tour & Stories

4.50

(8 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

I didn’t expect Freeport to feel so quiet that morning — just the hum of my car and the smell of river air, kind of sweet and earthy. The California Delta wine country tour started right there, phone propped up, Lynn’s voice popping in with directions and these odd little facts about the levees and old steamboat races. I’d never used an audio guide for a road trip before, but it felt like having a friend in the passenger seat who actually knows why the towns have names like Walnut Grove or Locke.

We stopped whenever we wanted — sometimes for a cider tasting at Hemly (the apple smell hit me before I even opened the door), sometimes just to stare at fields that looked almost too green for California. Lynn talked about floods and fires, and I caught myself picturing what those nights must’ve been like out here. In Locke, I tried to pronounce something in Mandarin from one of her stories; Li at the grocery laughed so hard she nearly dropped her oranges. It was easy to linger — nobody rushing you along.

The tour wove us through places I’d barely heard of: Ryde, Courtland, Paintersville (which sounds made-up but isn’t). There’s this stretch near Grand Island Mansion where the light hits the water just right — I still think about that view. We finished at the Old Sugar Mill, which looks half-abandoned until you hear its history through Lynn’s recording. Honestly, I didn’t want to turn off the app yet.