Monterey wine and vineyards

My Beachy Suspense novels take place around the Monterey area of California in a fictional tourist town called Nightshade Bay. I did research on the city of Monterey, looked at their website, searched pictures of their beaches, things like that. Then made up my own town.

Picture from world-guides.com

At dinner with some friends a few weeks ago, we ordered wine, a delicious (and not-too-acidic) red from Monterey.

Ack! There are vineyards by Nightshade Bay!

Of course I knew that: California has Napa Valley, and to the north there are vineyards in Oregon and Washington, I mean I've had Californian wines! Never occurred to me that there were vineyards near Monterey and that my characters would no doubt try a bottle or 3.

And there's a wine festival. Now I'm not sure how a couple in a romantic suspense trilogy is going to make it to a wine festival in between solving murders, fraud, kidnappings, more murders, and corruption, but I'm sure as hell going to try to get them there!

I did decide against putting in a certain wine, however. I'm sure they're all great, but I won't be name-dropping.