Visit the Napa Valley

admin | May 4, 2016

Vacationing in the Napa Valley

A vacation in the Napa Valley. A week exploring the Napa wineries. This is something worth planning to make sure it’s the best it can possibly be. The Napa Valley is known for cool mornings and warm to hot days, especially in the summer, so pack enough clothes for a range of temperatures.

First, find a place to stay in the area. This probably isn’t a family vacation (children and wine tastings are not a good pairing) so look for a little bed-and-breakfast. There are many of these in Napa Valley, mostly vintage homes. As for transportation, at the airport at San Francisco, Oakland or Sacramento, you can rent a car. The San Francisco and Oakland airports also have shuttle bus service.

In addition to Napa itself, there are the towns of Calistoga, St. Helena, Yountville, Oakville, Rutherford and Angwin, all with interesting things to see and do. The reservoir of Lake Berryessa is a great place for fishing, waterskiing, canoeing, hiking, birdwatching and other outdoor pleasures. If you’re not afraid of bees, you can learn all about beekeeping in American Valley. The Oxbow Public Market in the town of Napa is a 40,000-square-foot indoor market which offers an extraordinary variety of different foods from many different cultures. If you aren’t vacationing by yourself, the Cameo Cinema in St. Helena is a movie theater so old it has love seats in the back rows.

But most of all, there are the famous Napa wineries. There are many vacation packages that will allow you to tour the Napa wineries alone, as a couple or in a small group. Or you can develop your own itinerary, if there are one or two Napa wineries you particularly want to visit. The usual tasting fee is $10 to $20 per person per winery. Keep this in mind when planning your vacation budget.

One of the best Napa wineries around

Some of the best California wines come from Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley. Just a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, these vineyards produce world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain. Instead of a busy tasting room, the vineyard offers you the chance to meet the owners and wine-makers and taste excellent wine stored in a cave. Wine Merchants Gourmet includes them in one of its Middle Valley tours.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. By ordering six bottles or more per year, you can join their wine club, giving you discounts on many of their finest wines.

The Biggest Little Town in Wine

admin | April 27, 2016

St. Helena, the biggest little small town in the wine world

Although the small town of St. Helena, CA, has fewer than 6,000 people, it is one of the acknowledged centers of the global wine business. With more than 80 wineries, it is known as the home of some of the world’s finest wines.

St. Helena was incorporated as a town in 1876, by which time it already had a number of small businesses, a schoolhouse and a hotel. Ten years later it had a population of about 1,800. Even before it was officially a town, it was a center of the growing California wine industry, with vineyards being planted by new arrivals in the 1860s.

In 1981, the Napa Valley was named California’s first American Viticulture Area. Since then, it has come to encompass 16 nested AVAs. The St. Helena AVA itself is noted for warmth, with less fog and wind than other parts of the valley. Its soil ranges from gravel-clay soils on its southern and western borders to rich volcanic soils in the north and east. It produces deep, ripe Cabernet Sauvignons, Cabernet Francs and Merlots with jammy flavors and blackcurrant aromas.

Planning a visit

If you’re planning to visit St. Helena, look for their best St. Helena wineries on Yelp. Look for places with at least 20 reviews and at least four stars. Don’t confine yourself to the town itself — get out into the Napa Valley countryside, exploring the intricate topography that allows the valley to produce such a great diversity of wines, marveling at all that can be found within a mere five to ten mile radius of St. Helena. Find a hotel, and be prepared to spend several days there.

A winery near St. Helena

Some of the best California wines come from Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley. Just a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain. The microclimate of Conn Valley is cooler than many other parts of the valley, although warmer than Howell Mountain itself, so the grapes they grow are closer to mountain grapes than the grapes in the St. Helena AVA proper. At the vineyard, you have the chance to meet the owners and wine-makers and taste excellent wine stored in a cave.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. By ordering six bottles or more per year, you can join their wine club. This will get you a discount on many of their finest wines. Try a bottle today.

Napa Wineries – Different Vineyards, Different Wines

admin | April 6, 2016

A quick guide to Napa wineries

The Napa Valley in California has long been synonymous with quality wine. Its warm Mediterranean climate, shielded by the surrounding mountains from the extremes of heat and cold, render it one of the best places in the world to grow wine grapes. Its intricate topography offers a wide range of potential growing areas to choose between, from fields of rich volcanic soil to rugged mountainsides, each imparting a different set of qualities to the terroir of the grapes.

The first grapes in the valley were Mission grapes, planted by missionaries to grow wine for Communion. The first American settler in the area, George Calvert Yount, planted grapes there in 1831. Another pioneer, Charles Krug, opened a commercial winery in the area in 1861 in what is now the St. Helena American Viticultural Area.

The worst disaster ever to hit Napa wineries was, of course, Prohibition. The vineyards that survived did so by an ingenious marketing ploy. They would sell bricks of grape juice concentrate, intended to be dissolved in a gallon of water. These bricks would include strict instructions not under any circumstances to leave the jug of juice sitting in a cool cupboard for 21 days, or else it would turn to wine, which would be illegal if taken out of the home. In some cases, this warning went so far as to specify what sort of wine the juice would turn into. As you can imagine, consumers were grateful for this advisory.

Which are the best wineries in Napa depends on what you’re looking for in a wine. As mentioned earlier, there are many kinds of terrain and soil in the valley, along with little microclimates with different average temperatures and levels of rainfall. That’s why there are 16 AVAs within the Napa Valley American Viticultural Area. Deep, rich, almost jammy red wines with firm tannins and distinct acidity come from the St. Helena area.