Picks and Pans – Napa Valley

Although their website is, frankly, uninformative, the staff at St. Helena Chamber of Commerce was helpful in the utmost. We got recommendations on wineries and good bike routes to take between the wineries, all delivered in the friendliest of manners.

Located close to the main winery thoroughfares and with plenty of free parking, Crane Park was an ideal base of operations for our day of biking and wine tasting in St. Helena. We left Arvin there during the day and returned to cook dinner on one of the many available picnic tables before crashing for the night (we had to park elsewhere, however, because overnight parking was not allowed at the park).

Honestly, we could not have picked a better time to be in Napa Valley. The grapevines were resplendent in their fall colors, the weather was crisp, clear and sunny and the wineries were plentiful and within easy biking distance of each other. Simply put, we had a spectacular day of bicycle riding and wine tasting, and because it was a weekday the traffic was of little concern and the wineries were pleasantly unpopulated. Since St. Helena is fairly bursting with winery tasting rooms, I would feel a little under-informed to strongly recommend any that we sampled. That said, we did have a positive experience at all of our stops. Our first two stops ( V. Sattui Winery and Mumm Napa Valley) were more on the large scale operation side of the spectrum, and, as such, were definitely more impersonal than the other tasting rooms we visited. V. Sattui was practically a winery amusement park with large picnic grounds, a sizable cheese and souvenir shop and a tasting bar running the length of the building, but the man pouring for us was knowledgeable, congenial and generous (and bore the Sattui name as a distant relative of the owner). A flight of 5 wines chosen from a longer list of their “classic” wines was $5 per person. Mumm, which specializes in sparkling wines, also has a large estate and gives tours daily. Their tasting flights were on the expensive side (the cheapest was $10) so Sean and I shared a tasting that included two of their recommendations for serving with a Thanksgiving meal. Neither of the wines at Mumm were especially remarkable, but the view from their patio was stunning.  Conn Creek Winery was our next stop, and was a much smaller operation than the first two and so the tasting was a bit more personal. We especially liked the strong blueberry flavor and woody finish of the 2004 Collins Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, but the $45 price tag was a little out of our price range. We did, however, end up buying a bottle of 2006 Napa Valley Zinfandel (a combination of berry and black pepper that was quite tasty) at Rutherford Ranch, where we discussed public school curriculum and child psychiatry with the pourer (a retired teacher). Our last stop was the Milat Estate Winery, where all their wines are made from grapes grown on the property. Most remarkable was their 2006 Merlot, which had distinct, and not unpleasant, taste of freshly picked mint. And the best part… for under $50 we got a fantastic day of tasting and bicycling and went home to Arvin with a nice bottle of wine.

Despite its tourist town status, we couldn’t find a coffee shop in St. Helena (!), so we drove down the road apiece to Calistoga, home of the Calistoga Roastery. Good coffee, comedic staff, free wi-fi, lots of outlets and tables aplenty.