According to LawnStarter, of all the wine making counties in America, outside of California, Benton County in Washington is ranked #1. King County is ranked #2 with four Oregon wineries making the top 10. That is some Pacific Northwest dominance, right there.

LawnStarter (they are like Uber, but for lawns) decided to omit California from this analysis as the Golden State is synonymous with great wine making and the authors wanted to showcase other potential amazing vino experiences that are a lot closer than some people think. No kidding.

Also making the grade in Washington, Pierce County placed 29th, Walla Walla County was 31st, Chelan County ranked 44th, just ahead of Snohomish County which was 45th.

The rankings come after crunching the numbers from about 1,260 of the best wine counties, outside of Cali, across the United States, with data comparison over 18 different relevant key metrics including visitor accommodations (hotels, motels, and inns in the area); number of winery tours; number of wine producers; tasting options; number of vineyards; number of award winning wines; great reviews and other factors.

It's interesting to note where Benton County definitely needs some work: Wine Tours and Accommodations. In those columns the rankings were #177 and #237, respectively. Ouch. To be fair, those numbers (numbers of tours and numbers of accommodations) in Dade (Miami) and King (Seattle) counties obviously swamp the potential numbers around here and as far as the most popular tours, the top three are in Hawaii, so it's hard to compete with paradise.

What carried the day to the overall number one ranking for Benton County is being tops in the nation in the number of award winning wines and fourth overall in the producers and origins categories. Benton County has 4 Gold Medal wines.

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