We frequently get emails from visitors to our Website, WineCountryGetaways, asking for advice. The most common email goes something like this: “We will be in San Francisco in September and want to spend two days in the Napa Valley. Can you please tell us which are the best wineries to visit in the Napa Valley?”
Instead of replying to their email with a list of wineries, we suggest they consider these planning guidelines.
Food & Wine Pairing
Take the food and wine tour at the Robert Sinskey Vineyards. This has always been a favorite spot of ours. Too bad they closed their picnic area to visitors. We used to love to sit on the patio area across from the vineyards enjoying the view and our lunch with a glass of the Sinskey Pinot Blanc. For visitors to wine country looking for something beyond the normal tasting room experience, try the tour at this winery. This tour starts at 11 am daily and leads visitors through the culinary gardens, the cellar and cave, ending with a seated food and wine pairing produced from the Robert Sinskey Vineyard Kitchen. These appetizers are enough to tide you over until dinner. The tour lasts 90 minutes and is by appointment only. The cost is $60 per person.
This is an unofficial declaration that May is Bocce Month in Wine Country.
Why choose May as Bocce month? May is the ideal month to plan an outdoor activity in wine country like Bocce. The weather is at its best for a little physical activity. The rains are gone, the temperatures moderate, and the vines are looking delightful. What better way to spend a spring day than at a winery with your friends playing a round of Bocce? And why not have a month where we encourage folks to experience Bocce, a very social game that is easy to learn and takes only a few moments to acquire enough Bocce skills to have a very fun experience. Wineries with Bocce Courts: Please join us in declaring May “Bocce Month” in Wine Country.
I loved listening to the offbeat and jovial winemaker, Daniel Barons, who tells it like it is with a no-holds-barred approach to winemaking. He has been making wine for 41 years so he says he has seen it all.
I remember, on one of my first trips to the Napa Valley in the late 1960’s, driving down the entrance lane to visit the Inglenook Winery. I was mesmerized by the beauty and majesty of the Inglenook Chateau. At that time, the winery was in the hands of the Allied Grape Growers. When the legendary John Daniel Jr. sold Inglenook in 1964, the mystifying sale resonated throughout the Valley. I also remember entering the Chateau and browsing in a wine room to the right of the entrance doors. In the room, Allied was selling old bottles of the Inglenook wines. John Daniel Jr. made those wines and the Cabernet Sauvignon was renowned throughout the world. The Allied takeover sent the winery in the opposite direction, and since that time the name has been associated with plain and simple jug wine.
The two of you want to take a weekend wine country getaway to the Napa Valley. Most people budget for lodging and meals but often forget about figuring in the costs of their tasting room visits. Since we started tracking wineries for WineCountryGetaways.com in 2003, the tasting room fees, especially in the Napa Valley, have skyrocketed.
Let’s say you plan on visiting eight wineries during your two-day stay in the Napa Valley. That’s a pretty decent number of wineries to visit but many travelers get in much more than that. For you and your spouse or partner, the fees for those eight wineries can add a significant cost to your trip. My guess is the low-to-middle ground tasting fee for most Napa Valley wineries is about $15 per person. Throw in a tour or “Reserve” or “Special Selection” tasting and, Whoa! You are now looking at a big price tag of tasting fees for your weekend getaway.
The last couple of days I have been playing with a new iPad App called the Wine Tasting Tab. I am amazed that this little App has a database listing the tasting room fees of 800 wineries. I used this the App to research the tasting room fees in different California counties. According to my small study using this piece of technology, I found that the Napa Valley has by far the highest tasting room fees around. I don’t think that is one bit surprising to anyone that regularly visits the wine country.
It’s that time of year again. Bud Break is all around and the vines are beginning a new growing year in the wine country. That dreary, cold, and rainy period is over and tourists can now flock to the tasting rooms again. Wineries are ready to receive and pamper all tourists.
This is the when the wineries make big bucks selling their wines to tourists eager to bring home the bounty of the Napa Valley. Be a wise consumer when you visit the tasting room; you certainly don’t want “buyer’s remorse” when you return home with a trunk full of wine purchased on impulse. Here are some consumer tips for your tasting room excursions.
This was to be the 18th annual Mustard Festival but the event is taking a “hiatus” as it states on the Mustard Festival website. I must admit the only event I ever participated in was the mustard photo contest. All the other official mustard events sounded like fun but they were way too expensive for my pocket book. Just because there is no official Mustard Festival this year, don’t let that stop you from enjoying the wild mustard and visiting the Napa Valley. You can always make up your own Mustard Festival activities. We love this time of the year and here are a few of our favorite mustard activities that will be easy on your budget.
Yount Mill Road
We love walking this trail especially in the morning before breakfast. But it is great at any time of the day. The mustard plant is spectacular along this quiet road where most of the traffic comes from walkers, joggers, and bicyclists. Start in Yountville and park your car on Yount Street where the Bardessono Hotel is located. Walk up Yount Street and turn to the right on Yount Mill Road. Plan on about 45 minutes of walking for an out and back experience.
It is such a wonderful change of pace to visit a winemaker like Vince Tofanelli. Too often when we visit the Napa Valley we get caught up by the big and the fancy wineries and tasting rooms and tend to overlook the smaller names of the Napa Valley. It is much more fun and a truly rewarding experience when you meet and taste the wines of the small winemaker. We made an appointment with Vince via email to visit his family vineyards on Dunaweal Lane in Calistoga. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate that day and we had to forego the vineyard walk and instead met Vince at Envy Winery in Calistoga where he makes and ages his wines. We went into the barrel room where we tasted his 2007 Zinfandel and 2007 Charbono, and also got a barrel taste of a Grenache and a Petit Sirah that he will bottle and release later this year.
With 12 tasting rooms and wine bars in Yountville, you certainly can’t visit all on a weekend trip to the town. One that we recommend that you not miss is the Somerston Tasting Room. It opened in June of 2010 and soon will have an adjacent food market with farm fresh produce from their farmlands in the eastern hills of the Napa Valley. The tasting room is spacious and beautifully decorated and has a very inviting feeling. On our visit we also had the pleasure of having a great host, Jeff Fountain, who joyfully poured for us a variety of excellent-tasting wines made by Somerston.
