Day 92 & 93 - Calistoga in the Napa Valley, CA

The drive from Kings Canyon National Park to Calistoga was really smoky due to the fire in Yosemite. We traveled with the windows up and the aircon on to keep the smoke out from the car. Whilst it wasn't smelly smoke coming from the burning of vegetation, it did make your nose itch and gave us both dry throats.

The closer we drive to Calistoga, the less dense the smoke seemed to be getting. A good thing too as all that smoke could have ruined the grapes used in this years wine!

We reached the entrance to the Napa Valley and started to see fields and fields of grape vines all perfectly lined up and incredibly neat and tidy with wineries dotting along offered tastings and tours.

As we drove into the town of Calistoga, we started to panic. A fire had just started and it wasn't too far away from the town! Worried we had left one fire for another, we asked a local what was going on and if we needed to panic. He calmly told us that it was just a small fire at the local dump, some wood chip had caught on fire and it was nothing to worry about. Phew!

We arrived and headed straight out for dinner at Jonny's, a gastropub just a 10 minute walk away from our B&B. The food was excellent and the bar staff were lovely, they provided us with a list of wine producers we really should try to visit whilst visiting the town. We left promising to try as many as we could the next day.

We woke up the next day to an awesome breakfast in the B&B. It was all home cooked and fresh local produce, it tasted amazing. After filling ourselves up, we picked up an iced coffee from the Calistoga Roastery and decided to do some exploring on foot.

It was a lovely hot day and we enjoyed walking down the main high street and then to the outskirts of town where we walked along fields of vines, with all the locals giving a friendly hello or a wave until we reached the Old Faithful Geyser of California.

Apparently there are only 3 Old Faithful Geysers in the world and we were going to be seeing 2 of them on this trip (one in Calistoga and one in Yellowstone). The third is in New Zealand so we'll have to wait to see that one.

Old Faithful wasn't a big geyser but it did seem to fire off every 10 minutes. There was a fee to get into the park to see the geyser which is privately owned but once inside, there was actually a surprising amount to do. The park is filled with information stations explaining that Napa Valley used to be a huge volcano which erupted about 4.3 million years ago. The remains of the volcano sit under the Napa Valley causing the hot springs the valley is famous for and the ash is in soil which is one of the reasons the grapes grow so well here. There was even a mini museum documenting a theory that the geyser could be used to predict earthquakes.

The park contained lots of seating, picnic ares and outdoor games, you could easily keep a family entertained here all day.

My favourite part was the animal farm. We bought some animal food and then I went to feed the sheep and goats. After seeing the amount of goat slime on my hands, Lee decided to let me do all the feeding while he took on the important job of looking after the camera. Some of the goats were Fainting Goats. We'd seen videos of these goats on YouTube, when you scare them, their bodies lock for a few seconds, sometimes causing them to fall over. When it came to seeing them in real life, neither of us could bring ourselves to scaring them and making them 'faint', it just felt too cruel.

We left the geyser and walked down the road to Chateau Montelena, a recommendation from the guys in Jonny's. Chateau Montelena is Napa Valley's most famous winery, famous for winning the white wine section of the historic "Judgement of Paris" wine competition. The competition was a blind taste test and the Chateau Montelena Chardonnay was the only non-French wine. The story was made into a film called Bottle Shock, something we need to watch when we get home.

You don't need to book a tasting, you can just walk into the winery which has a beautiful lake and castle like house and its open everyday from 9am to 4pm. The tasting was supposed to cost $30 per person but we had it for free (not sure why, it might have been because we told them about our trip). It included tasting 6 of their wines, 2 white and 4 red, one of the reds was $160 a bottle! We enjoyed the wines but there weren't any we were interested in buying based on taste and price.

We then called up the free Calistoga shuttle bus. This is a fantastic service offered by the town to tourists. You call up, tell them where you want to be picked up from and where you want to go and within 10-20 minutes, the bus is there. It runs from 7am to 9pm Sunday to Thursday and until 11pm on Fridays and Saturday.

Our next stop was Envy Wines. This is another winery where you can just turn up and do a tasting of their wines. They're open 7 days a week 10:30am to 4:30pm and the cost of a tasting is $25 per person although this is waived if you purchase wines over $45. We were the only people in the tasting room and we tried some awesome wines here, in particular the Petite Syrah which we bought a bottle of. We also met Haley who was doing the tasting for us and we had a fantastic time chatting to her about wines, Napa Valley and our trip. She even dropped our purchased wine off at our B&B for us so we could continue our wine tasting tour.

Haley recommended that next we try Vincent Arroyo who do wine and olive oil tasting. She called up and booked an appointment for us. We hopped on the bus and headed over there. The tastings here were free and we got to try 5 different wines and 3 olive oils. Between the tastings we had a tour of the wine making area which included playing ball with the owners dog. We really enjoyed the Syrah here too so bought a bottle which we plan to enjoy one night camping.

We headed back on the shuttle and this time into town. Our final wine tasting for the day was at Romeo. The B&B had given us free tasting coupons which instead of tasting, we decided to use on a whole glass of wine each instead. The wine was lovely and we enjoyed chatting to the manager who was originally from the UK before moving over to California.

By this point, we were sozzled so we went back to the B&B for a lie down before dinner.

I mentioned previously that the B&B was awesome. Asides from the spacious and comfortable rooms and public areas, breakfast was out of this world, so tasty and unique every day. Plus there was free wine and cakes in the evenings and what we enjoyed most was the sherry and chocolates before bed. Given how last minute the booking was and all we went off was a quick look on TripAdvisor, we really lucked out on this place.

Before leaving Calistoga, we did pop over the road to a winery we wanted to taste the day before but ran out of time / had too many wines. Tanks is a converted gas station and it was opposite the B&B and inside, it had a real funky vibe. Neither of us tasted any of the wines here as we were either driving (i.e Lee) or still feeling too rough from the day before (i.e. me). Next time we come back, we will have to pop in! 

We love Napa Valley and now Calistoga has become our favourite town here. We love the quality of the wines, the friendliness of the people and the ease in which you can travel between wineries learning about the wine making process and trying their fares. Although we have now visited Napa a number of times, we are still wanting to come back!