A visit to Quintessa is an invitation to enjoy what's best about the Napa Valley: committed relationships with the land, dedication to making fine wine, and the insistence on quality and sophistication in every task or gesture, no matter how small. Built into a bank of wooded hills on the west...
Don't plan to visit Gundlach Bundschu unless you are in a serious frame of mind. Serious about having fun, that is. At this historic Sonoma winery, family owned since its founding in 1858 and now operated by members of the sixth generation, the only thing they take seriously is their wine....
In a business where braggadocio, self-importance, and delusions of grandeur seem to be standard operating procedure, it's refreshing to come across a winery that chooses to keep a modest profile, to play it low-key. It's also especially impressive when the winery in question has the history,...
If you have ever driven the Silverado Trail through the Napa Valley you have seen Chimney Rock Winery. Maybe it's the way the winery buildings sit back several hundred yards from the road, surrounded by some of Napa's finest vines. Maybe it's the way it looks, from a distance, like one of...
I should have known. When you plan to drop into a winery before 11 a.m., you don't expect the place to be already crowded. But I wasn't planning on visiting just any winery. My destination was Stag's Leap Wine Cellars. Yeah, I should have known. Ever since turning the wine world on its...
When you make a reservation to visit Shafer Vineyards, you're immediately sent a confirmation email filled with all sorts of information about the winery and your appointment. If you read that document carefully, you learn just about everything you need to know about the Shafer mindset: precise,...
When my wife, two daughters, and I moved from Connecticut to California in 1996, everybody we met in our new town said we had to get up to Napa. We had to visit wine country. Well, being smart enough to follow the local wisdom, we hightailed it up the Silverado Trail to do as we were told. The...
You can't be familiar with the better producers in the Napa Valley and not know the name Sequoia Grove. But there's knowing, and then there's knowing. It wasn't until recently, when I came across a few bits of Napa Valley history that described the winery's 19th century roots, that I decided I...
For years I've been driving through Los Carneros -that rolling strip of vineyards and farms hugging the bottom of the Napa and Sonoma Valleys -without really understanding what it was I was looking at. Then I spent an afternoon at Truchard Vineyards. Now I get it. The Truchard family helped to...
Chappellet Winery is not just someplace you pop into on your way to somewhere else. Being there is never a fun bit of serendipity, never a surprise. You have to want to go there. In fact, you should want to go there. That's appropriate given the Chappellet family's pioneering role in today's...
If you're a lover of American wine, and eager to know more about its upper echelon, then a visit to Spottswoode is a must. Long regarded as one of the top producers of cabernet sauvignon in the Napa Valley, Spottswoode draws favorable comparisons to the top chateaux in Bordeaux, where, in the...
The next time I hear somebody complain that Napa is too commercialized, too touristy, I know what my response is going to be. Two words: Stony Hill. Want to shed some of the creeping cynicism that's starting to cloud your appreciation of the Napa Valley? A visit to Stony Hill will take you back...