King County named in top 10 best wine destinations

In two years of studies, King County has been consistently named one of the country’s best wine destinations.

The studies, conducted by the financial website SmartAsset, placed King County in the number-five spot for wine destinations in the 2016 report, and in second place in the 2017 report.

King County has more than 60 wineries (about one winery every 32 square miles) and over a dozen of them have opened in recent years.

In first place on the list for both years was Yamhill County, Ore., with more than 80 local wineries.

Walla Walla County in eastern Washington also made the top 10 list, coming in at number 8, and California counties rounded out the rest of the top 10 list: Napa, third; San Luis Obispo, fourth; Sonoma, fifth; Alameda, sixth; Santa Barbara, seventh; San Joaquin, ninth; and Amador, tenth.

SmartAsset ranked 103 counties with at least five wineries, to develop the report. They rated each county by the total number of wineries in each, the number of them in the top 100, the total concentration of wineries in the county’s land area and the rental rates for the area on Airbnb.