Door Peninsula Winery

In the popular pursuit of turning wine making into a tourism attraction, the Door Peninsula Winery just north of Sturgeon Bay checks all the critical boxes. The county’s original winery has expanded to include a large building packed with enough amenities to justify a couple of leisurely hours of browsing. Free tours take visitors through the bottling area and aging room, where they can see plastic covers gently rippling as wine lets off gases, literally aging before their eyes. At tour’s end, guests line up at the tasting bar for free (and apparently unlimited) samples of the winery’s 50-plus grape and varietal-fruit blend wines. This being Door County, the winery is especially proud of its cherry wine. Next to the bar, a sprawling gift shop offers wine, of course, along with numerous wine-related gift items and a big selection of flavored balsamics, and Door County jams, sauces and other foods. Just past the sit-down Bistro 42, there’s a tasting bar for the on-site distillery, again with free samples aplenty.