Return to Atlanta
I've just returned from my annual rite of passage to the Napa Valley and I got to say its great being a tourist. Guidebook and camera in my bag, a bottle of water in the car, the map spread out on my knees - what could be finer?
The road from San Francisco to Napa Valley, one of my favorites, levels from terraced waves of grape vines to undulating hills, bright green with cypress and long grasses in spring, and now in late summer, brilliant with golden wheels of mustard grass. This is the sweetest countryside I know. Only occasional blasts of cow barn odors remind me that this is not paradise.
My second stop, following a brief interlude to open up the senses at Prager Winery and Port Works, is Calistoga, a funky and unstuffy town on the northwest tip of the valley. Some of the prettiest roads are found in Calistoga. This is the best place to start and see what this valley is all about. Working my way south from this point is best seeing that the temperature will be approaching the 100 degree mark in early afternoon and the expectations of my head spinning from oodles of vino.
Around noon, I cozy up to a winery in St. Helena and unpack some cheeses from the local Cowgirl Creamery. Along with some Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc, I feed myself silly with fresh bread, prosciutto, and a heirloom tomato and pesto pasta salad. In 1880, Robert Louis Stevenson and his bride, Fanny, honeymooned in the same area as I am eating lunch. They'd gone there to flee the fogs of San Francisco, which were thought harmful to the writer's sickly and perhaps tubercular lungs.
"The woods sang alound, and gave largely of their healthful breath," Stevenson wrote of his first ascent up the mountain. "Gladness seemed to inhabit these upper zones, and we had left indifference behind us in the valley. ...There are days in a life when thus to climb out of the lowlands seems like scaling heaven."
Or maybe it was just the wine.
Before long I am back on the Silverado Trail ascending the slopes of Pritchard Hill to my final tasting destination. Sunlight filters through the trees, and the cooler mountain airs smells of pine, just as Stevenson described it, more than a century before. I stopped at the top. "It's amazing," I said. "I can see 360 degrees."
You could drink in the entire wine country in one gulp. I spent over two hours on the Pritchard Hill summit before reluctantly returning.
Of course, I had one consolation: that night I'd be sipping the fruits of these valleys once again
The road from San Francisco to Napa Valley, one of my favorites, levels from terraced waves of grape vines to undulating hills, bright green with cypress and long grasses in spring, and now in late summer, brilliant with golden wheels of mustard grass. This is the sweetest countryside I know. Only occasional blasts of cow barn odors remind me that this is not paradise.
My second stop, following a brief interlude to open up the senses at Prager Winery and Port Works, is Calistoga, a funky and unstuffy town on the northwest tip of the valley. Some of the prettiest roads are found in Calistoga. This is the best place to start and see what this valley is all about. Working my way south from this point is best seeing that the temperature will be approaching the 100 degree mark in early afternoon and the expectations of my head spinning from oodles of vino.
Around noon, I cozy up to a winery in St. Helena and unpack some cheeses from the local Cowgirl Creamery. Along with some Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc, I feed myself silly with fresh bread, prosciutto, and a heirloom tomato and pesto pasta salad. In 1880, Robert Louis Stevenson and his bride, Fanny, honeymooned in the same area as I am eating lunch. They'd gone there to flee the fogs of San Francisco, which were thought harmful to the writer's sickly and perhaps tubercular lungs.
"The woods sang alound, and gave largely of their healthful breath," Stevenson wrote of his first ascent up the mountain. "Gladness seemed to inhabit these upper zones, and we had left indifference behind us in the valley. ...There are days in a life when thus to climb out of the lowlands seems like scaling heaven."
Or maybe it was just the wine.
Before long I am back on the Silverado Trail ascending the slopes of Pritchard Hill to my final tasting destination. Sunlight filters through the trees, and the cooler mountain airs smells of pine, just as Stevenson described it, more than a century before. I stopped at the top. "It's amazing," I said. "I can see 360 degrees."
You could drink in the entire wine country in one gulp. I spent over two hours on the Pritchard Hill summit before reluctantly returning.
Of course, I had one consolation: that night I'd be sipping the fruits of these valleys once again