Description: From our hectic stay in San Francisco we headed out to the much heralded wine region of Napa Valley. I don’t pretend to be a wine connoisseur, but I had sampled the fine wines of this area in the past and we were all excited to inspect it in closer detail. It’s not a long journey from San Francisco, but we weren’t in a hurry and stopped off at a couple of outlet malls on route.
The valley is a stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of San Francisco and soon the clear blue skies were peeking through the wispy trees that lined art of our route. The towering steeples of local churches thrust skyward and once again the bluest of skies ensured that these crisp white buildings were shown off to their best advantage. We were booked into Stevenson Manor Inn, a Best Western Hotel in Calistoga, right at the northern end of the valley and were planning to call off in a few of the small towns on route.
We started off in Yountville, a village with only 4,000 residents. It was originally owned and lived by the Mexicans but in 1831 George Yount became the first white settler in the valley and in 1836 he got a "government grant" to have the land released to him. By 1855 it was formally laid out with its boundaries and George Yount named the town Sebastopol. After his death in 1867 it was renamed in his honour. Yountville seemed to have a few of the original stone buildings but it was hard for us to date the rest of the town. The Old Railway station is a wood clad building and is worth casting your eye over. There are loads of places to eat in town and we grabbed lunch her in a small modern shopping complex. Unremarkable but adequate.
From her we headed on to Oakville but this was so unremarkable that we passed straight through and decided to have our first tasting in the Beaulieu Vineyard. This was on the main road just outside of Rutherford and although we didn’t know it at the time this is the oldest vineyard in the region. It dates back to 1900 when French born George de Latour and his wife saw the land and "had a vision" that they could produce wine to compete with his birth country. Beau Lieu means beautiful place and we were given the impression that the couple fell in love with the land it must have been impressive because I preume that they’d have had the pick of the land back in 1900.
A tasting here was $15 (not cheap for us visitors from England), but the vineyard was happy to allow the four of us to taste for the price of two. We thought this was a great gesture until we discovered that you can pick up discount vouchers and "two for one" was one of the deals. Still they could have not told us about that option so we were grateful for their directness. Whilst sampling the wines I got talking to a chap who was sitting to my left. It turned that he owned a vineyard back in Yountville and he invited us to sample his wines if we were in town. They’ll be no charge he said quietly.
St Helena is described as being at the heart of Napa but we didn’t see too much to entice us to stop the car. So it was onward to Calistoga to find our hotel and prepare for the days ahead in Napa.
We’d planned our route using Google maps and although we had a map as back-up the computer print-out proved to be incredibly reliable and precise. It took us right to the door of The Stevenon Manor Inn. It was a small 35 bedded hotel, cleanly but simply laid out. The rooms were huge and well equipped and a small but inviting swimming pool enticed us to have a quick dip. Mind you it was a quick one because the water was a wee bit on the cold side. It has an appearance of a small ranch and is ideally placed on the edge of town. The staff were most helpful in advising us of local sights and we went to our rooms armed with leaflets about tastings and things to see in the area.
Certainly we’ll easily be able to use up our time in the Napa Valley and I was already suspecting that we’d be as busy here as we had been in San Francisco.
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