By an Express Train Through a Winemaking Disneyland, or A Trip to the Napa Valley

Davis, the first stop of an American tour of the Czech Philharmonic in February 2008 did not presented us with a heartwarming welcome. It rained and was surprisingly cold – nothing what would remind us of a lovely image of a sunny California that had been maturing in our minds as a fixed idea during whole weeks until the departure, in order to help us to overcome the dejection of the muddy Prague and the existence of the trip wanted by nobody. The thermometer of our mood decreased to zero immediately at the San Francisco airport, where it turned out that no luggage of ours was dispatched from London during the change for the follow-up flight of the British Airways company. Thus, the trip began oddly for us and went on in the same way... While my poor colleagues, all equally deprived and surprisingly agreeing on the same course of action, were filling their gall bladders with a fresh production during the day, my mind was occupied by very different thoughts. I was spinning last threads of the realization map of the trip to the most famous American winemaking area – the Napa Valley.

I was well armed from home! That is, I had not underestimated the preparations and I had not forgotten to study diligently winemaking maps, studies and recommendations:-) When I lay at the hotel room, surrounded by those copied documents, all seemed so easy, within my grasp! The original plan from Prague – to set out for Napa together with wineloving colleagues by a rented car - fell apart like a house of cards. In contrast with the initial information, only one owner of the international driving licence was finally found, and moreover, he refused to exchange unusual touristic experiences for the necessity to give up alcohol consumption. It was therefore necessary to find an alternative solution. My usual viniculture luck worked for me again - a few meters from the hotel I found an information touristic office of the district Yolo, where they filled me with optimism by confirming the expectations that there must be some kind of a public transport connection between the cities of Davis and Napa. A while later, I entered the door of a little building of a picturesque little train station, located directly behind our hotel due to some random luck, and it looked like it had fallen out from a wild west movie. Two friendly employees readily advised me how to find follow-up connections, even though they almost lost a whole afternoon by doing so. As soon as the Big Brother verified my identity (you cannot even buy a ticket any more without some identification in the USA), I went back to the room with the freshly printed tickets. However, I found very soon that the connections were wrongly reserved by mistake and no time would have been left for me to visit Napa. So I turned to the friendly train station employees again, this time accompanied by the secretary Mr. Antony, who started to ponder participation in the expedition as well, but it finally failed to be realized because of his limited time dispositions. Perhaps I even came in handy to those two behind the counter – the young mulatto was first time at work and his older colleague was giving him initial training. How many new procedures did he learn while attending to this European exotic weirdo! Despite that, a smile never disappeared from his face. When I accompanied yet another colleague to the station counter, the pianist Šaroun, who knows only Russian and who thanked for an age discount for the tickets by a gracious „Danke schoeeeenn“, they were already laughing their heads off. I was falling asleep in a very nice way that evening, while listening to a lullaby of the characteristic chordal tooting of the motor trains passing by.

In the morning, my colleague Šaroun and I, we set out in the direction of the winemakers paradise accompanied by drops of rain. The view from the second floor of the high carriage allowed us to enjoy the sight of marshes hemming the railroad tracks from both sides. Rounded grassy hills in the horizon indicated the vicinity of the typical relief of the Napa Valley. In an hour and quarter, the train arrived at Martínez, an ugly town with a sad scenery of refiners and ports in the bay, where the follow-up connection already awaited us directly on the platform. I appreciated very much working of the network Amtrak, which includes both trains and follow-up buses – it is an ingenious system, the existence of which facilitated the expedition for us quite a lot. Even the journey in the bus passed away quickly, it is nice talking with the colleague Šaroun, and not only about wine! He is connected with wine more than I could have imagined, through his father – a former profesional in the wine field. But I also learned many interesting things about atmospherical phenomena, meteorology and above all about bees, which are the most favourite pastime of Jaroušek Šaroun. We made an excellent team of travellers! In less than an hour, we were already arriving into the region, where the Pavlov's reflex is triggered in any wine lover. One of the stops of the bus even lead us shortly into the area of the neighbouring, no less famous region Sonoma. The increasing number of photogenic vineyards on hills covered by blooming mustard indicated the closeness of the destination of our journey. The weather, as if it had wanted to support our enthusiasm, drove off clouds far behind the horizon.

The sleepy town of Napa, which gave the name to the entire region, is a picturesque, widely unfolded bunch of small wooden family houses, from which a stone building with maximally three or four floors peeps out here and there. Everything circles around wine here, even outside of the main season, in which the entire valley is literally flooded by crowds of tourists. At every corner, you can find little company outlets, degustations and wine bars. One must strengthen the power of their will not to catch the wine fever. In our case, what saved us from it was the limited time – only 40 minutes were left to us until the departure of the town transit bus, so we just circled around the bus station in a safe distance. Immediately behind the corner, the Napa Wine Train that was just departing clinked at us by its bell – this train is a favourite attraction of the valley. You do not have to leave the luxurious, price ranked wagons with viniculture names (Champagne etc) during the whole day, you feed yourself with price ranked delicacies, you taste price ranked vines of the local and surely the most successful (at least commercially) winemaking companies during stops at stations of towns along the route and then you say to all your acquaintances: „I got to know the Napa Valley!“... If you are not a fan of railways, a great number of operators can organize a similar journey for you even by bus. Yes, wine is a real attraction here and it cannot be helped, they are always ready here for solvent tourists. The valley is interwoven with a network of public bus lines called the „Vine“, by which you can get almost anywhere. The lines no. 10 and 11 are routed with respect to transport needs of a classic wine tourist. They pass through the whole valley from the south to the north and back, and they pay a short visit to the neighbouring Sonoma. The carrier offers a wide spectrum of various types of tickets, the visitor is also equipped by necessary maps and informations at the ticket office. What served best for our purposes was an all-day pass, available for a favourable price.

At last! A very flaked-off veteran bus of the line 10 puffed next to the platform, an energetic Afroamerican woman was grinning behind the steering wheel. I tried the tactics, which usually pays off in Czech conditions: „Please, could you tell me how many stops it is to Yountvile?“. „Man, you crazy or what? You´ve never gone by bus? How the hell can I know?!“ she broke into loud laughter. Only her visage did not correspond to that of Whoopi Goldberg – otherwise I would believe, according to her voice, slang, diction and her cheeky mouth, that it is that famous actress! She was enchanting! How mistaken was I in my idealistic plans of the journey! What seemed, from both the map and the airplane (when getting close to the San Francisco airport the whole Napa Valley lay open in front of my eyes by my left) as a distance manageable even by a walk at worst, turned into a long series of stops during a half-hour long journey. There were so many stops that only departure times of few chosen ones were written down into the timetable. And this was the problem! Not even specification of our destination helped. I would have never believed how difficult effort it might be to convey the name such as Stag´s Leap to an American (the name of a part of Napa and of one of its wineries). I tried to pronounce various phonetic versions of the given words, but the driver was only goggling her eyes at me. Until someone from the back of the bus yelled „Stéééééááágs Lip“ and immediately we understood each other. Despite that we did not start to move... Luckily, who saved us (almost) was a compatriot, who knew what place is being talked about. We found that this friendly co-passenger, who promptly started to chat with us, is a publisher of the local newspapers St. Helena Star, Mr. Doug Ernst, with ancestors from one side of the family from Czechia and from the other side from Vienna – so in fact a full Czech... We learned many interesting informations from him, and above all – we made it right to Yountvile.

By some lucky chance, the stop of Yountvile and the local touristic information center are only few steps apart. Two friendly retired ladies behind the counter obligingly called a taxi for us, told the operator the direct address of the winery and chatted with us kindly, as the vehicle was quite late, which made us check our watches regularly – it was already two o'clock p.m. and the available time for planned visits of the winemaking companies around was shortening quickly. Not even the transport to the first winery did pass quite well – the confused driver somehow got lost. However, he acted quite fair and he did not charged us with the excess fare. A strange person – a sharp boxer by his look, but he was listening to classical music in his car and he drived very carefully.

I did not choose the winery Stag´s Leap Wine Cellars, next to which we stopped, by random. The small subregion carrying the same name is well-known for its particular style of wines born in its vineyards and wineries of famous names, which are abundant there in walking distances from each other. Just a random example – Schaffer, Silverado, Pine Ridge and others. The owner of the winery Stag´s Leap Wine Cellars, Mr. Warren Winiarski, can be credited by a key role in the history of the current famous wines of California. It was just his Cabernet Sauvignon S. L. V. 1973, which – together with other wines from Napa - beat many famous 1er GCC from Bordeaux in an anonymously evaluated competition in Paris in 1976, even though the competition jury consisted only of French tasters. The battle, which is still today considered as a national disgrace by the country of the Gallic rooster, was a huge victory. World markets opened to the Californian wine, in which nobody had believed until then, and the formerly poor, agricultural valley of Napa was flooded by treasure seekers both on the side of investors and customers.

We too found ourselves in such a role and with great expectations we were ascending the steps in the middle of a leafy bosque, in which the buildings of the winery are situated. Employees of the degustation room, probably made from an old tank hall, partially knew about us, however, it turned out that the administrators of the winery understood something quite different under the word „visit“ than I did during our email communication. It was not possible to look into any technical rooms, nor to cellars, to our great regret. The winery allegedly did not have enough employees available that day, so none could attend us individually. I realized soon that they are probably not very used to such kind of visits – before we made it through the prepared degustation of top wines of the winery, almost twenty guests had taken turns to see the room, evident laymen, who were just passing by and wanted to peep inside. I guessed it from the „professional“ commentaries about the offered beverages.

These are the wines that the winery showed off to us for a fat payment (I state my own evaluation before the names, in a 100-point scale):

86 Chardonnay 2005, Arcadia vineyard, Napa, Stag´s Leap Wine Cellars
87 Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, Fay vineyard, Napa, Stag´s Leap Wine Cellars
91 Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, S. L. V. vineyard, Napa, Stag´s Leap Wine Cellars
92 Cabernet Sauvignon 2004, Cask 23, Napa, Stag´s Leap Wine Cellars

These were refined wines and very carefully produced. On the other hand, it is necessary to say, with regard to quite vertiginous prices for individual bottles (from 60 – 160 USD), that Chardonnay, with its pleasant style, much closer to the fine spicy Chablis than to the typically fatty oaked style of California, should have a vertiginously long (instead of an average or under-average) body and finish in its price category. Cabernet Sauvignon Fay, although fine, spicy and aromatic, lacked a significant depth and juiciness of its body. Only the last two wines showed completely, where the potential of the famous domain lies. Due to this we left quite satisfied to spend our last minutes until the arranged arrival of our taxi driver in a vineyard in the neigbourhood (probably in the ownership of the Pine Ridge Winery). But we were soon driven out by a rain shower. It covered the day by a slight melancholy – it was about time to go back. There was nothing more for us to do but to gaze longingly from the windows of the taxi to see the typical vineyards flooded by yellow mustard, ventilators serving for protection of the vines against freezing air, signs with names of wineries along the road...We arrived at Yountvile little ahead of time. In the infocenter, a crew had been alternated during our absence – two new retired ladies gifted us with a voucher for a free degustation in the antique shop at the corner. The tasted wines could not have surpassed our impression from the last samples in the Stag´s Leap Wine Cellars, of course, but the visit was interestingly charming anyway. That is, few words exchanged with the attendance revealed that the young man played a horn and his mother as well – even as a professional!

When the very flaked-off veteran bus of the line 10 stopped next to the road, who do you think it was, that was grinning at us from behind the steering wheel again? Loaded with new experiences, we went back the same way we had arrived. The warm light of the evening sun in the low horizon made the surrounding vineyards even more charming!The bus to Martinez was reliably followed up by the train to Davis, so it did not take long and we were back at the hotel. We wound up the magnificent day in an authentic Mexican restaurant by a big portion of beef fajitas. We gained great experiences and desire to return to Napa some day to explore more thoroughly!