When you travel as much as we do, and with so many new properties opening up all around the world, it’s sometimes easy to forget about the classics. Especially if you don’t have to cross any borders to get there. That’s why we’re here to remind you. It’s time to revisit Napa Valley.
When you travel as much as we do, and with so many new properties opening up all around the world, it’s sometimes easy to forget about the classics. Especially if you don’t have to cross any borders to get there. That’s why we’re here to remind you. It’s time to revisit Napa Valley.
Yes, Napa has been around for a long time. It was probably one of your first grown up trips you took without the backpack. But Napa is also changing with the times. The wine was always good, but now, it goes head to head with any French or Italian vineyard.
Napa is more relevant now than ever. In the past, there was one woman winemaker for cult wines: Heidi Peterson Barrett. She’s the brilliant mind that created some of the best vintages for Screaming Eagle. Now? Women winemakers are all over the valley. You have new icons like Katherine Carothers with Bryant Family, Allison Tauziet at Colgin, or Helen Keplinger with Grace Family—and that’s just to name a few. And they’re making some seriously fierce reds. Napa wineries are world-renowned for offering so much more than just wine, but rather an all-encompassing appreciation experience for the art that is wine. You know that expression about wine being “an iron fist in a velvet glove”? Well, their velvet is softer, and their iron hits harder.
But even though Napa is the main wine-growing US region, and one of the major wine destinations of the world, wine is only one part of Napa Valley. If wine really isn’t your cup of tea (get it?), olive-oil tasting is equally as pertinent to Napa. You can also eat your way through some of California’s most gourmet restaurants or have a picnic on the winery grounds. You can stay in some of the most idyllic places of the East Coast, paddle down the river, take a cooking class, camp among the world-famous redwoods, try local mud bath spa treatments, or take a hot air balloon ride above the vineyards. Rest assured – wine or no wine, there’s more to do in Napa than you’ll have time for.
So don’t take Napa for granted and ditch the “been there, done that” attitude. Napa evolves every year and, lately like good wine, it just keeps getting better and better.
