Wine-Soaked Women in the Napa Valley

An overnight stay and spa treatments at the picture-perfect Meadowood Spa and Resort - a member of the prestigious Relais & Chateaux international chain of privately-owned luxury hotels.

Discovering three fine vineyards where you don't have to arm wrestle a horde of tourists to get to the palate-cleansing cracker.

Dinner at Terra Restaurant in St. Helena, where the region's mandatory French-Californian menu is spiced up with Asian flair and a wine list to die for.

Brunch and celebrity-spotting on the terrace of the Auberge du Soleil - where to go when you can't get a reservation at French Laundry.

Quick Tips:

Travelers on a budget may wish to do what we did: pack as many close friends as your friendship will tolerate into one suite or cottage, and one rental car. We chose to splurge on wine, food, and massages instead - not to mention the 5-6 bottles of wine we each brought home! If you do decide to drive, make sure to leave enough room in the car for all the wine you'll be buying.

Best Way To Get Around:

Most people go to Napa in hopes of drinking as much free wine as they can stomach without being sick. These people are generally on bus or van tours, so they don't have to drive drunk. The wealthier ones are in antique cars with private drivers. I don't recommend the tours; only because I prefer to choose where I go and when. We avoided driving drunk by interspersing our tastings with other activities, and by only sipping enough of any wine to decide whether it was worth buying or not. A driver at my beck and call sounds good, though. Anyone want to finance it?

If you want to splurge (or if you have a few really close friends and don't mind sharing close quarters!) then it's hard to go wrong here.

Meadowood was originally a private club for local wine afficionados. The resort's main buildings, cottages, and lodges are tucked away in wooded corners of the sloping California landscape. Immaculately landscaped tennis and golf facilities blend effortlessly with the natural beauty of their 250 acres.

Our charmingly cozy cottage suite had a king sized bed in the bedroom, a double pullout sofa in the living room, a homey porch overlooking the grounds, and a spacious window seat which doubled as a sleeping area. The living room also featured an adorable fieldstone fireplace with a wimpy little fire set up inside (I had to double its size before I lit it).

Located 'across the tracks' from the railroad that gives the street its name, Terra welcomes immediately with its warm, beautifully lit stone façade. The interior is no less disappointing, with simple earth-toned banquettes and chairs around intimate tables that seem to curl up cozily against the massive stone walls of the interior.

The menu spices up the region's typical French-Californian style with the addition of an Asian influence, no doubt that of the Japanese chef, who is also the owner's husband. We chose Terra for it's carefully selected wine list, which highlights the best of the Valley's smaller vineyards.

We itinerant consultants never know where our next client will be located - so I was delighted to hear that I was leaving the Northeast winter cold and spending my next assignment in California's Silicon Valley. Suddenly all my friends I never see back East were scheming to plan a "Girls' Weekend in the Napa Valley".

We assembled almost the entire crew: Wendy, Deirdre, Nicole, and Jeanne, an expatriate who flew all the way from London for the weekend. Nothing quite makes me feel special like the sight of three busy career women and one much busier mom taking time out of their lives to coordinate a weekend to visit little old me! ( I'm sure the location had NOTHING to do with it!)

It was a beautiful warm day, with bright sun and cotton ball clouds. After an overnight in San Francisco, we arrived at the tony Auberge du Soleil just in time for our noon lunch reservation. Imagine a country inn on the Mediterranean - decorated by the French.

The Auberge is the kind of hotel where you need to reserve a room months in advance, so we were grateful to be able to dine at a roomy table out on its terrace overlooking a sloping hillside draped with grape trellises - simply beautiful! We enjoyed incomparable French-Californian cuisine, an unconfirmed celebrity sighting (Mary Stuart Masterson), and a fantastic Rombauer Chardonnay. Smooth and intense with hints of hazelnut, pear, and vanilla, you just don't get that kind of taste from an under $25 wine (although the Auberge marked it up quite a bit more!). We resolved to hunt it down and buy it before the weekend was out.

After lunch we visited several vineyards, trying to stay off the beaten path and focus on vineyards that don't sell their wines outside of California. Our first stop was the much touted and very crowded Silver Oak vineyards. They have a (deserved) reputation for producing exceptional Cabernet Sauvignons and little else. An eye-popping charge of 10 (TEN!) dollars allowed us a taste of the one and only Cab they were selling that month, a '97 Alexander Valley which was already selling for $57 and was likely to double in price over the next few years.

We sat outside, drenched in California sun, and sipped our wine while admiring the luxury cars that speckled their driveway. That outrageous $10 charge also covered a souvenir oversized red wine glass with the Silver Oak logo tastefully printed in silver. What am I supposed to do with one wine glass? I gave mine to Nicole, who has a collection from previous visits.

No one bought the snooty Cabernet.

The next few stops were more rewarding. First, a drive up a winding hilly road to Chateau Potelle, a smaller and less-well known vineyard in a lovely secluded setting. Chateau Potelle offered us four tastings for $5 (that's more like it!) and tipped us off to another nice vineyard down the road. I bought a citrusy, silky, yet very affordable Sauvignon Blanc there (not usually my favorite but this one completely lacked the grassy taste I expect from a Sauvignon Blanc. Very nice!).

The next vineyard, Regusci, was simply adorable. Housed in the remains of a much older (and long defunct) vineyard, the folks at Regusci didn't mind taking time out to give us a tour of their cellar full of aromatic casks. They also offered us a taste of their home made olive oil, which was unexceptional. Happily, I can't say the same about the wine. It was that perfect combination of reasonable and robust. I bought two very nice bottles of chocolatey, butterscotch-scented Merlot there, and had to be torn away from the Cabernets. Note to readers! This is a great spot to take a souvenir photo of you and your friends sitting on a pile of wine casks, perched upon an aging hay wagon, or leaning casually against a hundred-year-old barn. Not that we did any of that, mind you. Riiight …

Next stop was the Goose Cross Winery in Yountville. They got a universal thumbs-down from our tasting team. The Cabernets tasted chalky and the Chardonnay was unexceptional. Surprisingly, the place was packed - perhaps the result of a bus tour. No one bought anything there.

We checked into the Meadowood Resort and Spa. Meadowood was originally a private club for local wine afficionados. The resort's main buildings, cottages, and lodges are tucked away in wooded corners of the sloping California landscape. Immaculately landscaped tennis and golf facilities blend effortlessly with the natural beauty of their 250 acres. A rustic, low stone wall besieged with dark, leafy foliage trickled down the side of a hill on the way to our private cottage, and we were immediately hooked.

Our charmingly cozy cottage included a king-sized bed in the bedroom, a sofabed in the living room, a homey porch overlooking the grounds, and a spacious window seat which Jeanne promptly claimed as her sleeping area. The living room also featured an adorable fieldstone fireplace with a wimpy little fire set up inside (I had to double its size before I lit it). After tearing open the bag of Terra Chips in the well-stocked mini bar, we set off for the Health Spa for treatments.

Clad in fluffy white robes and nubbly rubber sandals, we waited in an airy lounge to be escorted to our afternoon's pampering. Most of us opted for massages. Mine was delightful, although the setting, a large airy aerobics studio with a picture window overlooking the pool, made me a little antsy about removing my shirt! The others had the standard-issue windowless treatment rooms.

Nicole, always the trend-setter, was the only one of us who decided against a massage. Instead, she had Meadowood's famous Grapeseed Oil Mud Treatment, which consists of being slathered with mud that smells like chocolate and hazelnuts, having a scalp/hand/foot massage while the mud works its magic, then rinsing off and being rubbed down with grapeseed oil, which apparently smells like buttered popcorn. Nicole is very expressive when describing such things: "Then she wrapped me up like a burrito!!!"

After our massages we showered in the spa's luxurious locker room and went back to our cottage to change for dinner. We had a lovely dinner at Terra Restaurant on St. Helena's Railroad Avenue.

Located 'across the tracks' from the railroad that gives the street its name, Terra welcomes immediately with its warm, beautifully lit stone façade. The interior is no less disappointing, with simple earth-toned banquettes and chairs around intimate tables that seem to curl up cozily against the massive stone walls of the interior.

The menu spices up the region's typical French-Californian style with the addition of an Asian influence, no doubt that of the Japanese chef, who is also the owner's husband. We chose Terra for it's carefully selected wine list, which highlights the best of the Valley's smaller vineyards.

We splurged on a truly great wine: a Stag's Leap Cabernet, which was hands down the oenophilic highlight of the trip. (Yes, I just made that word up.)

Before I wax rhapsodic about the wine, though, I have to clear up a point of confusion. There are two Stag's Leap vineyards in Napa. One is the Stag's Leap Winery, in existence since the 1800s and now owned by Beringer. Their label is suspiciously similar to that of the Stag's Leap Wine Cellars. Both feature a stag, as you might imagine, and their shapes and coloring are nearly identical. Though only in existence since 1972, the latter vineyard has the superior Cabernets. The former is known for its Petite Syrahs, which we didn't sample. How can you tell them apart? The Stag's Leap Winery label is a basic rectangle, and the Stag is actually leaping. On the Stag's Leap Wine Cellars label, the Stag is standing in front of what appears to be a small tree, and the corners of the rectangle are cut off.

A quick survey of the New York Times "Wine Today" archives shows that every Stag's Leap Wine Cellar's Cabernet they have reviewed has received at least three stars, averaging more like 4.5 for the better vintages. I can't argue with the experts – the hunt for a "Big Cab" was over. It wasn't cheap – but we hardly cared as the first whiff of allspice and cedar wafted to our noses. Powerful without being overwhelming, it was as full and satisfying a wine-drinking experience as I have ever encountered. The salad and entree seemed superfluous.

I suppose it was inevitable that we'd spend the next morning lolling around the cottage and reading the Sunday Times instead of going out for a run or visiting the exercise room as we had originally planned. But at 10am we were showered, dressed, packed, and eating brunch at the Meadowood dining room. What a brunch! In addition to a groaning buffet table covered with fruits, salads, bagels, pastries, desserts, and cheeses, we also had our choice of five or six entrees and as many side dishes as we could fit on our plates. Several of us sampled the Bloody Marys, with their exquisite seasoning, along with fresh-squeezed juices and coffee. The only sour note was a large, ravenous bee who was determined to profit from the dining room's "all you can eat" policy at our table. But the waiters gallantly chased it away into a corner and swatted it. What else could you ask for?

An hour later we finally summoned the energy to leave our table overlooking the grounds, and packed into my rental car. We were off to Rombauer vineyard to pick up the sublime Chardonnay we had the day before at the Auberge. We learned that the Rombauer vineyard, a three-level affair built right into a hillside, is run by a relative of Irma Rombauer, of 'Joy of Cooking' fame. We were nearly out of time, but before leaving for San Francisco, we stopped at Stag's Leap, picked up the incomparable Cabernet, and were on our way, the trunk crammed with luggage and bottles of wine filling every crevice.

Monday morning, as I pulled into the parking lot at work and took a look around, I discovered the only bad thing about the Napa Valley. You see, I was driving a white car. New car white. Rental car white. And Napa Valley was not kind to it. It had become more of a beige/white combination, with Napa Valley Grape-friendly dirt streaks behind each wheel well. Somehow my rented Buick Century, which had remained spotless for four weeks, had become an eyesore! The BMWs and Jaguars in the parking lot slunk away when I parked next to them! The Porsche convertibles rolled up their tops at the sight of me! It was a disaster. Fortunately Silicon Valley has as many car washes as the Napa Valley has vineyards. I can't wait to go back!