After dark on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the working machines of Sonoma Valley take a holiday lap. Vineyard tractors, farm trucks, grape harvesters and festive trailers, strung with lights and driven by local vintners, growers and neighbors, roll slowly around the historic Sonoma Plaza.
The Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance presents the parade with the City of Sonoma.
After dark on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the working machines of Sonoma Valley take a holiday lap. Vineyard tractors, farm trucks, grape harvesters and festive trailers, strung with lights and driven by local vintners, growers and neighbors, roll slowly around the historic Sonoma Plaza.
The Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance presents the parade with the City of Sonoma.
This is wine country without the tasting-room polish: the same machines that brought in the harvest a few weeks earlier, now wearing Christmas trees and twinkle lights, with the people who farm the valley at the wheel. It costs nothing to watch, and it is as local as Sonoma gets.
Make a day of it. Shops around the Plaza pour wine for browsers during the afternoon Sip N Shop, the square's trees are already glowing for the season, and dinner on the Plaza waits when the last tractor rolls by.
The alliance of Sonoma Valley's wineries and grape growers, which presents the parade each year in partnership with the City of Sonoma.
Visit organizer site →The first Lighted Tractor Parade rolled on Saturday, December 2, 2023. Its route was set from the start: south on First Street East, west on Napa Street and into the horseshoe in front of City Hall, a pause for photos, then back the way it came. A second annual parade followed in 2024.
The square it circles is far older. General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo laid out the Sonoma Plaza in 1835, and the City Hall at its center was completed in 1908.
