A Wine Expert’s Guide to Napa Valley

What is this place, really? Thirty miles north to south, about five miles across at its widest point, it’s definitely the most famous wine region in the United States, and one of the most famous in the world. It’s jammed full of wineries: 475 at last count. And it’s often jammed full of people visiting those wineries — some 3 million a year. In fact, it’s one of the most popular tourist attractions in California.

Napa Valley makes some of the greatest Cabernets in the world, definitely. It abounds in excellent restaurants, wine shops, and hotels. Without a doubt, it’s a delightful place to visit. The trick is doing it in a way that won’t make you feel like you’re tourist number 3,000,001.

I’ve been visiting and writing about Napa Valley for more than two decades, and if there’s one piece of advice I’d offer to someone headed there now, it’s to plan well in advance. More and more wineries require reservations for tastings, and the best restaurants and hotels book up weeks — often months — in advance. The other suggestion I’d make is to simplify. Plan to visit four wineries per day at the very most; three or even two probably makes more sense. Instead of a sit-down lunch, opt for a wine tasting that includes food pairings — something more and more wineries now offer — and save the blowout meals for dinner.

It can also help to break the valley into sections, as I have below. Stretches of Highway 29, in particular, can be a traffic nightmare; the less time spent driving back and forth, the better. Pick one day to explore the lower part of the valley, around Yountville; another for the area around St. Helena and up to Calistoga; another to spin off to some of the mountain appellations. And don’t overlook the city of Napa itself, which in the past decade or so has gone from drab to exciting.

Finally, when planning those winery visits, lean toward variety. Balance classics with upstarts. For every big place, visit a smaller one; from an estate whose wines you know and love, head to a place with wines you’ve never tasted before. The currency of the kingdom is definitely Cabernet, but there’s far more to try than most people realize. 

The City of Napa

When I first started going to Napa Valley, the city itself was a place you zoomed through on your way to the wineries. There used to be a traffic signal where Highway 29 met Trancas Boulevard — now the highway swoops right under the intersection — and you’d often hit a stoplight. That gave you time to consider whether you needed any of the things the city had to offer back then: a bag of mulch, for instance, or windshield-wiper fluid.

That’s changed — big time. It probably started with the opening of Oxbow Public Market, at the end of 2007, which brought restaurants, shops, and buzz to downtown. Napa started to feel like somewhere you might actually want to linger. The 2017 opening of the stylish Archer Hotel was another pivotal moment. Today, Oxbow is still going strong. Its latest addition is Moro Napa, a delectable Moroccan street-food joint from San Francisco star chef Mourad Lahlou, who’s made his first venture into wine country.

Another big development has been the proliferation of tasting rooms, many affiliated with wineries up-valley. Check out Arch & Tower, the Robert Mondavi Winery’s home-away-from-home while the original Oakville tasting room is under renovation, particularly at its “Golden Hour” tasting from 4 to 7 p.m. At the Mayacamas Vineyards tasting room on First Street, you can sample their ultra-classic Cabernets without negotiating the lengthy, winding, and somewhat spine-jarring road up to the winery on Mount Veeder.

The most alluring new spot for me is the Gentleman Farmer Bungalow. Joey Wołosz and Jeff Durham, partners in business and in life, make very good wine, but more than that they have a sharp curatorial eye: their 1926 Craftsman bungalow on the edge of downtown feels like an expression of everything you wish wine country would be. Call it elegant cheekiness, or cheeky elegance — the place has antique light fixtures but also a stack of vintage Playboys in the bathroom. The kitchen is beautiful, all butcher-block and blue tile, and also functional. That’s the point. Wołosz is a terrific cook, and starting the day with the bungalow’s wine breakfast — a tasting of current releases, but also gougères straight from the oven, house-smoked pancetta, individual soufflés, and more — is not to be missed.

Recently opened Chispa is another standout. Aubrey Bailey and Taylor Kindred already run Cadet Wine & Beer Bar, one of the best in town, and in 2023 they opened this tequila-centric bar and restaurant. Why tequila? Well, even winemakers sometimes get tired of wine — hence the presence of a whole lot of industry folks. There are also excellent cocktails and inspired cooking from chef Mac de Chavez, who does an exceptional tequila-marinated hanger steak with chimichurri and a must-order kung pao octopus.

Another newcomer is the bright, Mediterranean-themed Scala Osteria. Owner Giovanni Scala is also the force behind local fave Bistro Don Giovanni, north of town. At Scala he heads to the southern Italian coast, channeled through fresh California seafood. It’s a fine place to spend an evening after a day of wine tasting. My suggestion? Order the pasta with calamari, spicy sausage, and white beans, along with some cioppino and a glass of Massican’s crisp Annia white.

Yountville and the Lower Valley

The town of Yountville, nine miles north of Napa, is the anchor point for the Oak Knoll, Oakville, Stags Leap, and Yountville appellations. It’s hard to make the case that there’s a lot of town in Yountville (restaurants, tasting rooms, hotels, and wine stores seem to outnumber actual homes) but that doesn’t mean the place isn’t charming.

Restaurant-wise, the big name is, of course, the French Laundry. It’s still stellar, but it books up months in advance — and the sticker price doesn’t include wine, tax, or tip. Ouch. If that figure gives you pause, as it does me, I suggest heading to Ciccio. Chef Christopher Kostow and his wife, Martina, took the helm at this casual, effortlessly excellent Italian bistro in 2023, and it’s been packed ever since. Kostow found fame at the Michelin three-starred Restaurant at Meadowood, which was sadly destroyed, along with a good portion of the Meadowood resort, in the 2020 Glass Fire. At Ciccio, he brings his skills to bear on dishes like gnudi with burnt peppercorns and Pennyroyal Farm cheese; super-crisp pizzas, like one with potato, leek confit, fontina, and caper salsa verde; and a pork Milanese that will make you wonder why the Italians bothered with veal in the first place.

There are many classic wineries to visit here, but one great possibility is Inglenook, which has a long and complicated history. Founded in 1879, it sank during Prohibition, bounced back to produce some of Napa Valley’s most legendary Cabernets in the 1940s and 50s under owner John Daniel Jr., then was flipped from one corporate owner to another until the brand found itself languishing in the jug-wine realm. Enter Francis Ford Coppola, who bought the property in 1975 (and got the name of the brand back in 2011). Now wines such as the flagship red, Inglenook Rubicon, are once again top-notch. The château’s library-like Athenaeum room is a lovely place to taste them.

The newish kid on the block, south of Yountville in the Oak Knoll appellation, is Ashes & Diamonds Winery. People claim that Millennials and Gen Zers aren’t interested in wine; the crowd here clearly didn’t get that message. The wines themselves point toward a less ripe, more restrained vision of Napa Valley wine — call it elegance over power — that’s echoed in the look of the winery and tasting room. The brainchild of owner Kashy Khaledi, it is all of one aesthetic piece: from the white interior, which leans Midcentury Modern, to the wine labels to, in some ways, the wine inside the bottles — cool and streamlined. And, even better, it’s fun.

The A&D wines are made by several top winemakers, among them Steve Matthiasson, who’s also one of California’s most sought-after vineyard consultants. He and his wife, Jill Klein Matthiasson, own Matthiasson Winery, one of my favorite places to visit in the valley, partly because it’s as unpretentious and honest as they are. Their organically farmed Phoenix Vineyard produces a complex and thrillingly aromatic Cabernet from unusual-for-Napa shale soils. Tastings are outdoors at a couple of big wooden tables on the concrete crush pad, right in front of tanks and barrels. There are no pseudo-Italian bell towers, no crystal chandeliers in subterranean cellars, no weird 10-foot-high eyeballs staring at you as you drive in (I’m looking at you, Raymond Vineyards). Just good people and good wine.

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With very few grandfathered-in exceptions, the county of Napa does not allow wineries to have restaurants. However, the law does allow food to be served with wine if it is part of a tasting. Hence the rise of what I call the “it isn’t really a meal but it might as well be” tasting. Some of these, I’ve found, are truly superb. One of the best is at B Cellars Vineyards & Winery, where chef Derick Kuntz creates tasting menus of intricate small bites to go with wines: a shrimp tostada with avocado purée, pickled red onion, and cilantro (with a bright 2021 rosé) or fried ravioli, arugula pesto, and a sweet-and-sour tomato gastrique (with the powerful 2019 Blend 24). You’ll never have those exact pairings, though, because Kuntz changes the entire menu every three to five weeks and never repeats a dish. Is it lunch? Oh, definitely not. Nope. No lunch here. But you won’t walk away hungry.

One important note: many of the absolute superstar wineries don’t accept visitors. One workaround is K. Laz Wine Collection, right in the heart of Yountville. Places like Harlan Estate and Screaming Eagle may bar the doors — but not to industry insider Kerrin Laz, whose connections are unbeatable. If you’re hunting for the hardest of the hard to find — think Abreu, Colgin, Futo, Maybach, Realm, and so on — she’s your woman. Even better, her store offers tastings, at a range of prices. Essentially, you can “visit” four or five cult Cabernet producers in one stop, buy a few bottles, and still have time left over for lunch. Just don’t make the rookie mistake of leaving the $400 Cabernet you just picked up in your trunk during the summer.

St. Helena and the Upper Valley

When Arkansas billionaire Gaylon Lawrence Jr. purchased the historic Heitz Cellar winery in 2018, one of the things it came with was an 800-acre parcel hidden away on Howell Mountain. Long a grape source for Heitz wines, Ink Grade is now its own biodynamic estate. The hitch? No winery, no tasting room, and a location far from the valley floor. The result? Senses by Ink Grade, an “immersive wine tasting experience” in St. Helena. It combines a guided tasting with a 360-degree video installation that takes you through the seasons in the vineyard, harvest work, and the wine-making process. Does Senses substitute for setting foot in an actual vineyard? No. But the futuristic approach does give a remarkable overview of how the vineyard looks through the course of a year — and it admirably demonstrates the hard manual labor that goes into harvesting grapes and making wine.

Another vision of the future of Napa Valley is on view at Newfound Wines — at least, the future in terms of how talented young winemakers can get a foothold in a valley known for wineries owned by the 1 percent. Married couple Audra Chapman and Matt Naumann make small amounts of a lot of different wines, with fruit from vineyards in Napa Valley, Sonoma County, and beyond. They don’t own a winery; the Newfound tasting room is in a small house on a leafy side street in St. Helena. And since there’s no staff, Chapman or Naumann host all the tastings. Low overhead, in other words — and also terrific wines, particularly those made from Grenache, the couple’s focus. Why Grenache in the midst of Cabernet country? “Because of its untapped potential for greatness in California’s Mediterranean climate,” Chapman said. “And because the way our Grenache comes across to me is pure California sunshine in a glass.”

Maybe it’s the past that’s actually the future, as at Spottswoode Estate Vineyard & Winery. Though its history stretches back to the 1800s, Spottswoode was among the first wineries in Napa Valley to certify its vineyards as organic, in 1985; today, under Beth Weber Novak’s leadership, it’s also at the forefront of climate-change awareness in the wine world. “Being good stewards of our land, people, and planet has been an important part of who we are since the start,” said Novak, who’s on the board of the nonprofit International Wineries for Climate Change. “We are always looking for new ways to champion the environment and better our communities, whether it’s adopting new regenerative agricultural practices or encouraging other winegrowers to embrace organic farming. It’s not just a Napa Valley issue; it’s a planetary issue.” The Spottswoode Estate Cabernet is a Napa Valley benchmark, balancing power and grace, and is not to be missed.

There’s also considerable innovation on the food front. The best meal I’ve had in several years in this part of the world was at Auro, at the Four Seasons Resort & Residences Napa Valley, where chef Rogelio Garcia seems to be racking up accolades faster than he can count them. Garcia’s seven-course tasting menu leans heavily on local produce, with Japanese and Mexican accents. This is high-wire cooking, impeccably executed in dishes like dry-aged Japanese yellowtail with avocado and a mandarin aguachile. The wine list is excellent and also lengthy; thankfully, sommelier Derek Stevenson is both easygoing and deeply knowledgeable.

The Unmissable Outskirts

A valley isn’t much of a valley unless it has mountains around it, and that certainly goes for Napa. The Mayacamas rise in the west, home to the Diamond Mountain District, Mount Veeder, and Spring Mountain District appellations; to the east are the Vaca Mountains, with Atlas Peak, Howell Mountain, and Pritchard Hill, which is not technically an appellation, though it might as well be.

The most recently designated American Viticultural Area, or AVA, in the valley is Coombsville, which was approved back in 2011. Though it has plenty of vineyards, there aren’t a lot of wineries, a fact that makes Favia Erickson Winegrowers all the more special. It’s owned by superstar wine-making consultant Andy Erickson — he’s worked at Dalla Valle, Ovid, Screaming Eagle, and many more — and equally renowned vineyard consultant Annie Favia. They make their own stuff in a restored stone building that dates back to 1886. Their Cerro Sur red, mostly Cabernet Franc, is regularly one of my favorites: vividly aromatic, polished, and even better after a few years in a cellar.

To cap off a Napa trip, make a visit to Smith-Madrone, hidden away above St. Helena on Spring Mountain Road. If there were a casting call for “old man of the mountain,” Stu Smith — bearded, rugged, and emphatically direct — would probably win the part. (His winemaker brother, Charles, wouldn’t be far behind.) To me, visiting Smith-Madrone is like stepping back into the Napa Valley that was.

“When I bought this land in 1970,” Stu said, “it was $350 an acre. Today, normal people like me and Charlie, we could never afford this place. At the time the only thing here was the road down. No electricity, no water, no nothing.” There’s electricity now, and water, but the wine is still made in an old wooden barn, and tastings take place right outside at a table. Zero pretension.

The Smiths are among the few people who still make Riesling in Napa Valley — and it’s excellent — but their Cabernet is the star. The estate bottling is elegant, complex, and classically styled; the brothers’ Cook’s Flat Reserve is even better. “I describe this wine as us trying to make something that competes head-to-head with the best Bordeaux,” Stu said. “They have a five-hundred-year head start — but you have to start somewhere.”