California Wine Country

The "dormant resources" that the father of California's viticulture saw in the balmy days and cool nights of the temperate Napa and Sonoma valleys have come to fruition today. The wines produced here are praised and savored by connoisseurs throughout the world. The area also continues to be a proving ground for the latest techniques of grape growing and wine making.

Ever more competitive, vintners constantly hone their skills, aided by the scientific expertise of graduates of the nearby University of California at Davis and by the practical knowledge of the grape growers. They experiment with high-density vineyard planting, canopy management (to control the amount of sunlight that reaches the grapes), and organic farming techniques to finely tune the quality of the grapes that will go into the wine.

For many, wine making is a second career. Any would-be winemaker can rent the cumbersome, costly machinery needed to stem and press the grapes. Many say making wine is a good way to turn a large fortune into a small one, but that hasn't deterred the doctors, former college professors, publishing tycoons, entertainers, and others who come here to try their hand at it.

In 1975 Napa Valley had no more than 20 wineries; today there are more than 250, though not all of these have tasting rooms open to the public. In Sonoma County, where the web of vineyards is looser, there are well over 150 wineries, and development is now claiming the cool Carneros region, at the head of the San Francisco Bay, deemed ideal for growing the chardonnay grape. Nowadays many individual grape growers produce their own wines instead of selling their grapes to larger wineries. As a result, smaller "boutique" wineries harvest excellent, reasonably priced wines that have caught the attention of connoisseurs and critics, while the larger wineries consolidate land and expand their varietals.

This state-of-the-art viticulture has also given rise to an equally robust passion for food. Inspired by the creative spirit that produces the region's great wines, nationally and regionally famous chefs have opened restaurants both extravagant and modest, sealing the area's reputation as one of the finest destinations for dining in the nation.

In addition to great food and wine, you'll find a wealth of California history in the Wine Country. The town of Sonoma is filled with remnants of Mexican California and the solid, ivy-covered, brick wineries built by Haraszthy and his followers. Calistoga is a virtual museum of Steamboat Gothic architecture, replete with the fretwork and clapboard beloved of gold-rush prospectors and late-19th-century spa goers. A later architectural fantasy, the beautiful art-nouveau mansion of the Beringer brothers, is in St. Helena. Modern architecture is the exception rather than the rule, but one standout exception is the postmodern extravaganza of Clos Pegase winery, in Calistoga.

The area's natural beauty draws a continuous flow of tourists -- from the late winter, when the vineyards bloom yellow with wild mustard and mist shrouds the mountains encircling the valleys, to the fall, when the grapes are ripe.