Hallcrest Vineyards

I wish I could go back more often. This small winery has a lot to offer including a full selection of quality organic wines which is really important. I have not found organic wines that I really love until a couple years ago at Hallcrest. I love the fact you can sit on their beautiful deck and enjoy the beautiful country setting, the biggest plus is they truly are dog friendly and even provide bowls of water for four legged companions. It is close to town but when you are there you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. Thank you Hallcrest and your knowledgable employees for making every experience memorable and special.

Hallcrest has it all. I mean c’mon! what do you want when you go check out a new winery? 1) Great tasting wines — and ideally more than 1 variety; 2) knowledgeable staff — its ok to smile and pour but if we’re coming all the way over the hill (from somewhere) we want to leave with more than a few sips of a new winemakers interpretation of yeast and grape. 3) fun atmosphere — i put this last, and it should be, but what a bonus if the place is cute, fun, friendly and has some personality — light touches like water, crackers, a deck overlooking a nice valley (dog/​kid friendly), etc.

This is a fabulous place to sit outside and sip some delicious wine. The property is gorgeous and the people working there were so friendly. Not to mention, the wine was spectacular! I wish we lived in the area so we could come here more often!

Really friendly people and very good wines. Bought the cab. The Pinot was also very good. Love the location as well. I Would def come back and sit out on the deck with a picnic

My wife and I love Hallcrest. Their outdoor area is a great place to enjoy a tasting. The folks who work there are friendly and knowledgeable (in that order!). They have a lot of good wines (with the rare dud), but the pinots are the star. You can bring food to eat while you taste if you want.

Reasonable in price and a good home feel. Family owns and work the vineyard. Organic wine and they are the first to get certified in 1997. 6 wines for $ 10. Great deal! They even let us smash some grapes!

What a great place! Stumbled upon this gem with my mom, and will definitely be returning. The tasting room doesn’t have a lot of standing room, but the there is a beautiful patio looking out over the mountains. They have olives, cheeses, and crackers to buy (in case you need a snack), but you are able to bring your own food if you so wish. They are also dog friendly (leashed), which is always nice to see! My mom and I ended up doing two tastings, buying some crackers/​cheese, and then some bottles of wine to go. I loved it so much that I ended up joining their Wine Club (great deal!)!!

Best Pinot Noirs in the area! $ 50-​ish bottles of pinot and worth every penny. No membership fee — requires 8 bottles a year. Easily done!
To taste, bring a picnic, even games, for their delightful deck.

I am not a wine tasting connoisseur. It is something I do now and then for fun. So, take my review with a grain of salt.
That said, we had a great time. The grounds are beautiful, with a fantastic outdoor patio. When we got cold and moved inside, it was comfortable and inviting.
The lady that poured our wine knew her stuff and had a fun, spicy demeanor. She stayed late to make sure we didn’t feel rushed, and we had a great time.
I liked all the wines, some more than others, and was impressed by the variety of things we got to taste.
Overall, I highly recommend spending a few hours checking out Hallcrest’s tasting room in Felton

Really enjoyed our visit here. The wine was fantastic, the lady that poured out wine was amazing and super knowledgeable! (Sad we didn’t catch her name). Overall great experience and a great place to relax and drink great wine

I was here for a bee workshop that included wine tasting. The wine tasting room was pretty small, but there is a nice patio and also grassy area below for outdoor seating. There was only 1 staff, Curtis?, that catered to our group of about 20 people on top of the usual wine tasting visitors. He was pretty awesome. Very knowledgeable, attentive and did not seem the least bit flustered when he had so many people to pay attention to. I was a bit turned off at first when I saw how small the tasting room is, but Curtis left a really great impression that the room size doesn’t even matter!
I love the wine that they make. Quite a few selections of organic ones too. We ended up walking out with 2 different types of wine as well as a bottle of their Pomegranate cider.

We love it so much we became wine club members, just so we’d have an excuse to keep visiting! :-)

A group of us participate in the Passport event for the Santa Cruz Winegrowers Association and have visited about 80% of the participating wineries. Hallcrest has been the only winery of them all that charged us for the tasting fee on the Passport days. Also, the $ 7 tasting fee was not waived when we purchased wine on our visit.
These experiences go against the spirit of the Passport Days mantra and known protocals.

What? I haven’t wrote a review or this place yet? I have been coming here for years and its a great place after a hike at Fall Creek across the street. Bring a picnic as they have tables to sit at and they serve you at your table as well. Wines are great! organic some not, some grown on estate and others are from grapes all over the central California. This place is wonderful and relaxing, especially in spring when the flowers are in bloom, like the Lupin right now. :-) Nice to try different wines as its been a couple of years since I have been here. We’ll be back. ;-)

The experience is incredible– beautiful deck, gorgeous lush meadow, fantastic staff, and friendly guests.
So why the 3 stars? The. Wine.
Yes, the wines aren’t very good. About 10 years ago or so, Hallcrest lost its vines to Pierce’s Disease. All the grapes are now outsourced from a few different parts of Northern California. Also, this is an «Organic» winery. We’ve tried a few Organic wines and they just don’t taste as good. We did enjoy a couple of the Pinots but the good one was well over $ 50.
If you’re interested in better wines for roughly the same price, try Beauregard a few miles down the road in Bonny Doon. The experience is a tad different but the wines are exponentially better.

If you have an afternoon to enjoy, this is a great stop. Minutes from 9, it is so relaxing. Wines are good to very good. The wine works ones are not amazing. I like the pourers and the setting.

Really nice people pouring wines here, and man is their deck overlooking the meadow beautiful! Come here on a nice day when your craving some sunshine!
The wines were good, but nothing under $ 50 blew us away. I really enjoyed several of their Pinots, most were priced in the $ 50-​$ 75 range and were smooth + interesting. This area is greatly lacking in wineries due to the dense forests and mountains, so if you’re craving some wines, this is your place!

It’s hard to beat spending a day wine tasting in the Santa Cruz mountains with close friends and great wine.
I love everything about Hallcrest from the relaxed environment and the down to earth staff to the beautiful grounds. They have a diverse selection of wines for any budget and any pallet.
My favorite thing about spending a day here is the patio. They have the perfect setup to soak up the sun while enjoying a wine tasting. Best of all, they allow you to bring a picnic, which is the perfect way to enjoy your tasting to the fullest.
Hallcrest is one of my favorite getaways in the bay area, a place you are bound to fall in love with.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things — T. S. Eliot
Here is where personality, and good service, trumps mediocre wine.
As my 7 readers know, I tend to visit wineries from time to time. I tend to also discuss the service aspects of wineries probably more than most. My baseline trends from great wines/​great service (Hunter Hill/​Ridge Vineyards), Good wines/​mediocre service (Fernwood) to mediocre wines/​mediocre service (Here is the reference Jane L: Clos LaChance which was actually such terrible service they are forever known as The Winery That Shall Not Be Named. Even though I name them, repeatedly).
Well, I have a new baseline. Very good service and mediocre wines. Yet, I like the ambiance and people here so much, four stars really is the way to go.
Hallcrest was planted to grapes in 1941 and the winery was started in 1945. Over the years the name was changed to Felton Empire Winery. The property was purchased by the Schumacher family in 1987 who brought back the original Hallcrest name and they create a variety of wines with grapes from Santa Cruz, Monterey, Mendocino, Lake County and San Benito County. Also of note per their website: Hallcrest Vineyards has established a precedent with the first certified organic wines in the Nation and the first wines allowed to state «organically grown and organically processed» on their label by the B.A.T.F.
After a hike in the Fall Creek area of Henry Crowell State Park, I spotted their sign off the road and made a visit after lunch at Redwood Pizza. The area where the tasting room is situated is just off of Felton Empire Road and you have a gorgeous view from the patio. They will also serve you at the patio, a nice touch, but there were several large groups so I opted to sit in the tasting bar.
Jessica, a dead ringer for reality TV star Kendra Wilkinson, was working the area too (she’s very funny BTW) but I was helped by the very cool, and down to earth Jayme (I believe, I’m terrible at names). I don’t know but there was something about her earthy presence (we discussed the high price of Almond Flour in Felton) and sweet humor that made this a very enjoyable stop in spite of the fact nothing (Cab, unknown White, rose, Syrah, Zin, pinot) was memorable and some of it (the 2010 Rose) was downright terrible. The staff, to their credit, knew it was not showing well with «interesting» being their knowing descriptor as I was at a loss for a more gracious term than terrible. Most of their premium pinots were not being poured and that is what I really wanted to taste. A nice touch though were the homemade cookies (Recipe perfected by the owner’s niece) paired with the decent Zinfandel which if I remember had a great price (No prices listed online and the website may need to be updated).
With so many wines that they create between Hallcrest and The Organic Wine Works, I may have just tasted a bad group. I generally love Santa Cruz Pinots so I would be interested in trying their versions sometime in the future and because of the staff and ambiance, will definitely return and I recommend you do too.
Tasting fee is $ 7 which I believe is waived with purchase. Hiking, pizza, cookies and wine; good times!

Loved the Zenful Zin organic they served us, and many of the other wines were good too. A nice place where you can sit outside for the tasting and sometimes meet the local animals (a dog and a goat whose name is gogo). Very relaxing and fun. I’ll be living nearby so expect to see me here for picnic lunches.
Update: I love the people, the wine, and the venue, some of my best Felton afternoons are spent here.