There was a time in history, no doubt, when the valley carved by the Napa River was truly an image of Eden, pure and unspoiled, a place genuinely and fully worthy of being likened to the garden of Biblical lore. Today, though still an undeniably special and, to many, enticing place, one cannot...
While Robert Redford was filming The Horse Whisperer, he would regularly make his way down the winding mountain paths to the valley floor near Calistoga, nestled neatly amidst the two mountain ranges in the northern part of the Napa Valley, in order to visit his friend Carol Green. Carol had...
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. From the moment we approached the Castello di Amorosa, I felt as if I ought to be carrying a rapier on my hip, ready to duel. The crow of roosters as we crossed the drawbridge into the shadows of the turrets was almost too...
You've heard of Chateau Montelena. I pen (type) that line with a high degree of confidence because you're reading this review on a web page devoted to wine, and if you're at all interested in wine, then you're familiar with the Napa Valley. And if you're familiar with the Napa Valley then you're...
On my recent trip to the Napa Valley, I visited so many tasting rooms that pretty soon they all began to look alike: polished wooden racking, dark marble bars, big windows for lighting, a few stained oak barrels for ambiance, and maybe a small rack of assorted kitschy trinkets for sale -you...
Down a little dirt road in the small, up-valley town of Calistoga in the Napa Valley, there sits yet another vineyard, tiny by the standards of the area as a lone acre planted with Cabernet, along with a few modest structures and a scattering of stunted trees. In some ways, it's quite like many...
The northern Napa Valley was still a thickly forested, rugged terrain, and a difficult place to navigate when Jacob Schram set forth to establish the second winery in the area, one year after Charles Krug had opened up shop just a little ways to the south. Krug was a Prussian immigrant, Schram a...
The noble experiment that was Prohibition, the result of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, lasted from 1919 to 1933 and did irreparable damage on multiple fronts. To the economy as well as to the personal welfare of many early vintners and distillers,...
The tectonic plates that slammed together to form Mount George and the other noteworthy peaks at the southern end of the Napa Valley had long since settled by the time that Henry Hagan arrived in California in 1852. Drawn north from San Francisco by the allure of untamed wilderness and unbridled...
Michael Honig stepped casually into the room dressed in a sport coat and blue jeans, his hair ever so slightly mussed, the faintest beginnings of a five o'clock shadow beginning to form upon his jawline as the afternoon progressed; he was the quintessential image of the Napa Valley, the...
As a lifelong fan of the Kansas City Chiefs, Coach Dick Vermeil is one of my sports heroes. He may never have brought a Super Bowl victory to my team, but he brought a sense of calm and compassion, of quiet dignity and integrity that few programs in the NFL or any other league have ever...
The Ledson Winery in Sonoma is about people. I didn't yet realize that the first time my wife, Sonja, and I visited the grand estate on our honeymoon many years ago. At the time, it seemed like just another grandiose winery in the Sonoma Valley, producing fantastic wines because, well, because...