About Napa Valley
Napa Valley is a world-famous wine region in Northern California, about 1.5-2 hr drive from the San Francisco airport. With it’s Mediterranean climate, the region is ideal for growing grapes and making wine, with Cabernet Sauvignon being the top grape found in the area. Chardonnay and Pinots are also quite prevelant. Napa increased in popularity after the 1976 Judgement of Paris blind wine tasting where local Napa wines beat out French wine. Key areas of Napa include downtown Napa, Yountville, St. Helena and Calistoga; Sonoma is also a quite popular area further North. Here’s a neat map that outlines some of the regions: https://napa.guides.winefolly.com/regions/.
Getting There
On our trip, we took a rental car to Napa straight from the San Francisco Airport. It’s about 1.5 hr drive on a good day but we ran into a ton of traffic so be prepared for around 2 hours.
At the end of our trip, on the way back to San Francisco, we drove back by way of Sausalito, with a morning stop at John Muir National Monument and then lunch in Sausalito, before driving back over the Golden Gate bridge! Sausalito is a cute little town and worth a stop – it reminds me of a coastal Italian city with houses built right on the shoreline and up the moutain.
Where to Stay
- Downtown Napa – We stayed at the Hotel Indigo near downtown Napa (not walkable to downtown). Downtown Napa itself is walkable, has lots of restaurants and feels like a small corporate city to me.
- Yountville and St. Helena would be other towns worth exploring
- I’ve previously stayed in Calistoga, when I went on a girl’s trip, and we were more budget conscious. We stayed at the Calistoga Inn & Brewery (and granted it was over 10 years ago!), but I remember Calistoga feeling a bit like Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls. The area is known for their mud baths!
- Sonoma is about an hour from Napa and has it’s own wineries and its own vibe. Sonoma is centered around a large main street square area with restaurants, shops and tasting rooms. It felt more quaint and calm to me than Napa did.
Wineries
Note: Most of these places you will need to make a tasting reservation in advance.
I just went in May and these are the wineries we went to:
- Benziger Winery in Sonoma – We did the tram tour and biodynamic tasting. We had a great guide (he was over 80 and still so active!) that took us through the property and we learned about biodynamic wine techniques. The tasting was at the end in their tasting room, and I really enjoyed all their wines! This one is close to downtown Sonoma so we did this one in the morning, had lunch in Sonoma and then drove back to Napa.
- Bouchaine Winery – close to downtown Napa. We did a terrace tasting – lovely and leisurely wine tasting with a great view. Our rental car broke down here and the staff was nice while we got that sorted out!
- Lynmar Estates – in Sebastopol about an hour from Napa. Beautiful landscape / garden to look at. We did a tasting here and they gave us some popcorn for snacks. The host we had was super knowledgeable and passionate about the wine. Felt family owned, less corporate.
- Alpha Omega Winery in St. Helena – this one felt very corporate. Pretty fountains to look at. They don’t have food but you’re able to order DoorDash/Uber Eats. We ordered Gott’s which was so delicious! One of the best meals. The host was more straightforward and didn’t share a lot of detail about the wine we were tasting but it was a nice place and a good opportunity to try wine that was very expensive if you were purchasing bottles!
I also went on a Napa trip over 10 years ago and went to the wineries below. They are pretty well-known ones near Napa/Calistoga and would be worth looking into. I know they are still around b/c I often saw them mentioned as stops on bus wine tours when I was researching for our most recent trip. We didn’t do a bus wine tour this trip but that is an option too for transportation!
- Sterling – They have a gondola that takes you up to the winery! Kinda neat.
- Stags’ Leap – Pay attention to the apostrophe because there’s another winery called “Stag’s Leap”! This one was lovely – beautiful views of the winery and cool history. I remember they had a neat story about selling wine during Prohibition because they opened a mail postal service location on the property so people came to “pick up their mail.” I really like their wine. My husband and I still get a bottle of their wine for our anniversary.
- The other Stag’s Leap is the more famous one – their wine called Artemis won a famous wine award at the Judgement of Paris / Paris Wine Tasting in the 70’s which brought a lot of attention to Napa wines (watch the movie Bottleshock – free on YouTube right now! – it’s a comedy/drama movie with Allan Rickman and Chris Pine). Montaluce is the other winery that won an award from this event for their Chardonnay.
- Castello Di Amarosa – This winery was built using all stone imported from Italy and using medieval building techniques. Cool property. I remember getting a tour of the castle and then doing a wine tasting in their wine room.
Activities
- Biking in Napa – Our friends rented bikes somewhere downtown and there’s a path you can ride on to a few different wineries. I know they didn’t do tastings and just showed up the day of to share a bottle of wine. I’d just check the winery out online first to make sure you don’t need a reservation to show up.
- JaM Cellars – live music Fri and Sat in downtown Napa – We didn’t get a chance to go but this looked like a fun thing to do in the evening.
- Sky & Vine Rooftop Bar at the Archer Hotel – nice rooftop bar in downtown Napa
- Muir Woods National Monument (near Sausalito) – On the way back to San Francisco from Napa, we stopped by here for a short hike through the redwoods (very easy paths to walk through – you don’t need hiking shoes) and had lunch in Sausalito at a place called “Fish.” – it was delicious! Muir Woods is beautiful. You will need to buy a parking pass in advance online.
- Hiking – we weren’t able to fit in hiking on my recent trip but here are some hikes I had on my list based on online research, whcih offer views of wildflowers (at the right time of year) and sweeping views of Napa Valley: Alston Park Loop, Westwood Hills Park and Skyline Wilderness
Restaurants
- In Sonoma
- Sunflower Caffee – Went here for lunch. Super fun, shaded patio and really good food. Top meal of the trip!
- Sonoma is super cute with lots of food options and tasting rooms
- In Napa
- ZuZu – nice place for tapas
- Gott’s Roadside – great place for lunch! we ordered this to a winery but you can also go to the place to eat. Top meal of the trip!
- Il Posto Trattoria – it’s about 10 min away from downtown – we stayed at the Hotel Indigo Napa which is right next door so that’s why we went here, but this place is a small, family-owned feeling place for Italian food.
Recommendations
- Plan for 2 wineries a day – one in the late morning and one in the afternoon. The tastings are designed to help you enjoy and taking your time and doing more than 2 will make you feel rushed (and be a lot of wine!)
- There are hundreds and hundreds of wineries in the area so as a result, even when researching online, it’s hard to find a definitive list of wineries you must go to. I’d recommend picking wineries based on what types of wine you like and what you’re interested in learning about. For example, I’ve recently been interested in biodynamic wines so that’s why we picked Benziger as one of the wineries we went to on this recent trip
- Remember to drive responsibly! On our recent trip, we did two wineries a day and drove to the morning wineries and then picked a winery close to our hotel for the afternoon and ubered. Most places seem to be fairly easy to get an Uber to and from but some wineries are more remote – I’d recommend checking reviews / checkign the website or even calling to ask if getting an Uber will work (I’ve seen some wineries mention you might have difficulty getting an Uber in their booking reservation notes).
- If you’re older than your twenties, bring electrolyte packets for hydration 🙂
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