A Quick Tour of Napa Valley

Paul Franson

If your image of Napa Valley is America’s wine and food playground, the destination vacation of sophisticated travelers, you’re only partly right.

Yes, it’s all those things, but fundamentally, the rural valley an hour from San Francisco is full of farms and farmers; they call them vineyards and grape growers, but the beautiful valley has more in common with Iowa than Las Vegas or Miami. It’s just that the scenery is better and the end products of the farmers’ efforts is much more appealing than cornbread or ecofuel.

Napa Valley is a narrow valley – two to five miles wide – about 30 miles long. It’s  defined by steep mountain ranges on each side capped at the north by 4344-ft. Mount St. Helena.    At the south, Napa Valley opens into a broad plain and the rolling hills  of Carneros, then into marshes and San Pablo Bay, the northern arm of San Francisco Bay.  Where the valley opens and the mountain ridges end is the small but attractive city of Napa. It was long bypassed by tourists heading for the more picturesque towns up valley, but that has changed. Napa is now a major destination in itself with chic lodgings, fine restaurants and such attractions as Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts and the 135-year-old restored Napa Valley Opera House.

Napa offers many wine-tasting venues for wineries that can’t host visitors, and this fall, it will acquire a new treasure: The Oxbow Public Market named after a horseshoe in the Napa River. The market will be filled with eateries, shops, markets and wine-tasting opportunities.

The Napa River is one of California’s rare navigable rivers and was once the lifeblood of the valley and town. Long neglected and cursed for its frequent floods, the river is now being tamed into Napa’s top attraction. A pathway, parks, shops and cafés are blossoming – though it’s a work in progress that won’t be completed for years.

North of Napa, the valley becomes rural and county ordinances prohibit new buildings except wineries and homes, and both those are highly restricted. The valley is generally cooler south of Yountville, where the valley’s narrow waist and the Yountville hills confine the cold. The first town is small Yountville, which makes a claim to be the nation’s per-capita food capital. The star is the French Laundry, which some consider the best restaurant in the world, but Bouchon, Bistro Jeanty, Redd, Ad Hoc, étoile at Domaine Chandon and other restaurants add to the eating pleasure.

The freeway ends at Yountville, and that’s where the wine country really begins for many people who don’t realize how much excellent wine comes from southern Napa Valley. Next are two hamlets whose names shine far larger than their size on the wine scene: Oakville and Rutherford. Some of America’s most revered wines come from these compact areas.

Widely considered the heart of America’s wine business is 8000-person St. Helena, a picturesque town becoming a playground of rich residents, second-home owners and visitors. It also boasts fine restaurants and chi-chi shops and any visitor will find its two-block long downtown and Victorian neighborhoods appealing.   At the northern end of the valley is Calistoga, which started out as center of hot springs and mud baths, and grafted on a wild-west look. Many tourists don’t make it this far north, but they’re missing one of the valley’s most pleasant towns. Not yet the haunt of the rich and famous, it has plenty of attractions for visitors.

Of course, “Napa Valley” means wine to most people, specifically its rich Cabernet Sauvignons. Almost as famed are its buttery, oak-tinged Chardonnays, and many locals claim its Sauvignon Blancs are the best in the world. A number of producers make excellent sparkling wines from cooler-region grapes, too, and the Pinot Noirs from Carneros deserve attention, too.

If you are making your first visit to Napa Valley, you should certainly hit the classic wine attractions, notably the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville, Beaulieu Vineyards in Rutherford, Beringer Vineyards in St. Helena and Sterling Vineyards atop a knoll south of Calistoga and looking like a Greek Monastery. You ascend to the winery via a gondola from the base of the knoll.

Combining fine wine and amazing art are the Hess Collection in the mountains west of Napa and Clos Pegase near Sterling.

Three temples to Napa wine are worth visiting, too. Wines from Chateau Montelena Winery north of Calistoga and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars on the Silverado Trail in Napa won the famed Paris tasting of 1976, beating the best of France. The Montelena Chardonnay that won was made by Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, who celebrates the 30th anniversary of his own Grgich-Hills Estate Cellars this year.

If you’ve been to Napa before, you might visit a new attraction, the amazing Castello di Amorosa winery near Calistoga. The authentic-looking $35 million castle took eight years to build as a homage to vintner Daryl Sattui’s Italian heritage. He makes excellent wine, too.

Off the main roads in the mountains are two of Napa’s most-amazing and rarely visited wineries, Kuleto Estates and Long Meadow Ranch. Both are veritable self-contained estates that raise olives, vegetables, fruit and livestock as well as wine grapes – and boast interesting architecture as well. Long Meadow has the largest rammed-earth building in America. It’s both a winery and frantoio (olive press).

Though best known for wine, Napans take their food seriously, as demonstrated by the many fine (and expensive) restaurants, the gourmet shops, farmers markets and even the offerings in local supermarkets. Taylor’s Refresher in St. Helena (and soon in Napa at the Oxbow Market) sells cult wines along with gourmet burgers, for example, but the tacos at modest La Luna market in Rutherford are as famous locally.

At the other end of the spectrum in dining is the French Laundry, which requires jockeying for reservations exactly two-months ahead. Other luxury competitors include Auberge du Soleil and La Toque in Rutherford, and many other restaurants offer exquisite gourmet meals.

Napa isn’t only wine and food, however. Art fills the valley from the huge and eclectic di Rosa Preserve in Carneros to many wineries and galleries.   After all the wine and food, you might enjoy more active pursuits. You can canoe or kayak on the river, hike in the hills and mountains, bicycle along the river, play golf or tennis or even work a workout at many gyms. You might also enjoy an early-morning balloon ride over the vineyards, attend concerts at the Napa Valley Opera House in Napa or Lincoln Theater in Yountville, watch zarzuela at the Jarvis Conservatory, learn more about the valley and its history at a number of museums, or enjoy cooking demonstrations and more at Copia.

Whatever your interest, Napa Valley holds many attractions. It’s a great place to visit for a day or longer.

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