Ty Caton Tasting Room
8910 Sonoma Hwy, Kenwood, CA 95452
Website: https://www.tycaton.com/
Ty Caton Vineyards has a small tasting room in Kenwood. One of the benefits of this location is that it is in the central part of lower Sonoma Valley. It is possible to spend an afternoon visiting several wineries in this one area without having to drive more than 1 or 2 miles. The Ty Caton tasting room is part of a small plaza off of Highway 12. An additional bonus of this tasting room is that is it open until 6 p.m. and many of the surrounding wineries close by 4:30 p.m. or 5 p.m.
I enjoyed my visit to this tasting room because it is cozy and inviting. The building from the outside doesn’t look like anything special with its brown paneling and red roof. There are some wine barrels out front signifying that this is a tasting room. As I stepped inside, I felt like I was walking into someone’s home. Within the entryway are some bookshelves filled with wine bottles and other wine paraphernalia, and there is a staircase leading up to a second floor. The place is very bright with light yellow walls and lots of windows. Straight ahead in the next room is a long tasting counter that stretches almost the full length of the room and can accommodate a large group of people at one time. There was one girl working behind the counter when we walked in and she was very welcoming. She seemed to be genuinely excited about her job and the wines she was pouring.
The tasting menu included quite a few wines. Ty Caton’s focus is on big red wines, like Cabernet Sauvignon and red blends. His most popular red blend, and my personal favorite, is called TyTanium which is a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Petite Sirah, Merlot, and Malbec. I don’t recall exactly how many different wines I was permitted to select from the menu as part of the tasting fee. My husband and I each purchased a tasting and were sampling each other’s wine so we could try more of them. It turned out that we sampled almost every wine on the menu. Good thing this was our last tasting room of the day! I grabbed a bottle of water and headed straight to dinner afterwards to sober up from all of the wine that I drank.