Late January through March is mustard season in the Napa Valley. Mustard fields are fairly common in all of California but among the vineyards they are particularly stunning. Its vibrant yellow color set against a grey winter sky brings a magical beauty to the dormant Napa Valley vineyards. It is another good reason to visit the wine country during this time of the year.

Our mission on this day trip is to scout locations of wild mustard to photograph. The annual Napa Valley Mustard Festival is underway and one of the events is a photography contest that will take place at Mumm Napa Art Gallery in March. We would love to enter at least one good photograph in the amateur division of this event.  Along the way on our mustard search, we will stop for lunch at a gourmet restaurant and of course visit at least one winery for a bit of wine tasting.

Today, the weather is mostly cloudy with rain predicted by the end of the day.  This is just about the perfect weather for photographing mustard. If the sun can poke through the clouds and beam a ray of light on a mustard field, it will provide a dramatic and awesome photo opportunity.

We zigzag our way across the valley floor from Highway 29 to Silverado Trail from south to north. We find that most of the mustard is growing in the north from around St Helena to Calistoga. We can see that in about two weeks' time, the mustard will grow more abundantly and be in many areas of the Valley. For today, the best mustard display we find is in an area near the Charles Krug winery just off Highway 29.

We arrive in Calistoga just in time for lunch. Our plan is to try the newly-opened Stomp restaurant located in the Mount View Hotel. Unfortunately, it is not open for lunch, only dinner Thursday to Sunday, during the winter season. So, we settle on an old favorite of ours, Wappo Bar & Bistro . Wappo is in its eleventh year of operation, standing the test of time as restaurants go.  Janelle orders the smoked chicken salad and Joe has the grilled Salmon sandwich. The lunch is delicious.  The wine list is good, but just our luck they are out of the half-bottle of Fiddlehead Pinot Noir we order.  Instead, we settle on an Oregon Pinot Noir from Cristom Vineyards, a very soft and light Pinot Noir. We rate our lunch at Wappo a 4.25 on our restaurant rating scale.

It is always fun to walk the shops in Calistoga.  It is our favorite town in the Napa Valley, a little high-end mixed in with an old town atmosphere.  We browse the shops for about an hour and then embark to Charles Krug winery for some tasting and mustard photography.

We have not been to Charles Krug for maybe as long as 20 years.  Things have changed. The tasting fee is $12, ouch! Six wines are poured ranging in price from $17 for the Sauvignon Blanc to $70 for the reserve Cabernet that is very delicious. The Sauvignon Blanc is very refreshing and well worth the $17 per bottle price. The Napa Valley Cabernet and the Napa Valley Merlot are also very good at $24. 

The next hour is spent composing and shooting various scenes of mustard around the Charles Krug vineyards.  We have some decent shots but probably none worthy of entering the Mustard Festival photography contest. We will return soon to take a look at the mountain vineyards on both sides of the Napa Valley in search of the ultimate mustard photograph.