Napa Valley

Over this busy summer I have been working at the Seafood Restaurant with their wine list, but towards the end I was allowed to escape for a couple weeks and managed to get over to the USA where my family is from. I snuck away for a couple days and visited Napa Valley - somewhere that has always appealed to my love of American wine and culture. It did not disappoint. This first post about Napa is more a general impression of the area, while later ones will detail tastings and recommendations. 

I was travelling with my flatmate in St Andrews, and although he isn't quite as in to wine as me, he was open to try it, and did not feel left out. This seemed to be the theme of the Valley: openness to any level of appreciation. He was always made to feel welcome at all the vineyards, whether they were talking to me about the length of oak ageing, or pouring us tastes of new vintages. 

We drove in from the South and immediately drove North along Hwy 29 all the way up to Calistoga, to be ready to taste at 10am at Chateau Montelena, of Bottleshock fame. The climate in the summer is hot - around 28 degrees - and cool in the evening, with little to no chance of rain. It was an idyllic setting to drive towards. The Valley itself is relatively contained, and Hwy 29 is only paralleled by one other road, meaning that everything is right there and easily reached. We were bombarded by signs advertising tastings from 10am until 5pm every day, offers such as 'Crazy Good Cabernets' and 'The Wine is Bottled Poetry' and much more. We had booked just the one tasting in advance, with the intention of popping in wherever took our fancy afterwards, and in retrospect this was the best way to do it. Driving along the Highway I saw a few vineyards from whom I had recently bought, and it was great to be able to decide to pull up unannounced and be welcomed for a selection to try without pre-booking, as one would surely have to do in Europe. 

The impression I was given about wine-making in Napa was that it was unrestricted and all about passion. One wine-maker I was talking to said that he had given up a career in France to work in California because of the lack of restrictions on grape variety, length of ageing, materials you can use - the list goes on. For him, the Californian wine industry was all about what you wanted to do, if you made good wine, well done, otherwise you wouldn't sell it! The soil and climate is so suited to viticulture, that with that passion, it is possible to produce fantastic wine. The vast majority of what we tried was fantastic, and if not, it was at least interesting, off the wall or something I had never before thought of trying. 

Napa was, for want of a better word, alive and a place I would without doubt live and work. If one doesn't want to live and work there, one leaves. It seems to be as simple as that. As a result, everyone, down to those working part time in the tasting rooms pouring wine for tourists, loved what they were doing and that was a very impressive and likeable trait. 

Keep your eyes peeled for a series of write-ups of a selection of the vineyards I visited - they are without doubt worth watching out for.