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Click cover for larger view
Napa Valley is well known for its large and luxurious tourist-frequented
wineries, and visiting them is definitely part of the Napa experience.
However, there is also a different side to the wine country—a
place that’s vibrant, young, and far more accessible and
friendly than you might assume. Back Lane Wineries of Napa is a
guide to the small, genuine, and often difficult-to-find wineries
of the region, where handcrafted wines are produced.
The wineries featured in Back Lane Wineries of Napa are friendly and down-to-earth operations where the wines are made by on-site proprietors. Though revered by locals and industry insiders, these wineries are visited less frequented by visitors to the region. The book profiles over seventy wineries, many of them pioneers of sustainable and organic viticulture, and provides a unique glance into spirited Napa culture, including:
• Free salsa lessons at Ceja Vineyards (p. 34)
• Breakfast tastings at the family-owned Andrew Lane Wines
(p. 181)
• The unique tour of Heibel Ranch Vineyards, which uses
the tailgate of a jeep as its tasting room (p. 245)
Back Lane Wineries of Napa also includes restaurants and local attraction listings, as well as Wine Tasting Essentials, Wine Shipping Services, an overview of the area, ideas about how to plan an itinerary, the etiquette of tasting, general prices, and much more practical information.
Tilar J. Mazzeo is the author of Back Lane Wineries
of Sonoma (The Little Bookroom), The New York Times best-selling "oenobiography" The
Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who
Ruled It (Harper), and the forthcoming Back Lane Wineries
of Napa (The Little Bookroom, Spring 2010). The Widow
Clicquot has been
recognized by Gourmand as the Best Work of Wine Literature in the
United States for 2008. A member of the International Food, Wine,
and Travel Writers Association, her work has appeared in Food
and Wine magazine. She divides her time between the California wine
country and the East Coast, where she is a professor of English
at Colby College.
Raised on his
family’s vineyard overlooking the Dry Creek Valley, Paul
Hawley is a wine-country native. He graduated from the University
of California at Santa Cruz in 2003 with a degree in film production.
You can find him most days in the cellar at Hawley Winery or behind
his lens somewhere along the beautiful back roads of Sonoma County
and beyond. Photography and filmmaking remain a passion; Paul’s
feature film, Corked, premiered at film festivals in 2008.
4.75” x 6”, color photographs throughout
ISBN: 978-1-892145-83-3
Retail price: $19.95
Price: $15.96 (20% off)
HEIBEL RANCH VINEYARDS
1241 Adams Street, Suite 1043, St. Helena
Tasting offsite, call or email for directions
Tel. 707.968.9289, www.hrvwines.com
Tours by appointment only
Wine tasting at Heibel Ranch Vineyards with proprietor Trent Ghiringhelli is safari style, and the only tasting room is the tailgate of a vintage baby blue U.S. Navy Jeep up on a mountaintop with long views of the Pope Valley. Sitting here above the fog line, sipping some wine, and taking it all in is what the back-lane experience is all about.
Visitors to these ranch vineyards—owned and operated by Trent, his mother Helen, and stepfather Bruce Nelson—travel more than a mile off the county road, through ancient stands of redwood trees and along ridges with gnarled manzanita, as part of the winemaker’s tour. This 186-acre hillside property is the parcel of land the family retained when they sold the Aetna Springs Resort, long a favorite haunt of old Hollywood and a piece of California history. Here, Ronald Reagan announced his first run for the governorship in the 1960s.
Heibel Ranch—the name is a nod to Helen’s father,
George Bennett Heibel, who purchased Aetna Springs Resort back
in 1945—released its first vintage in 2006, and the wine
sold out in a matter of months. The estate still makes just one
wine, fewer than 200 cases a year of a proprietary Napa Valley
red blend called Lappa’s ($32), made with cabernet sauvignon,
zinfandel, and a bit of petit sirah. It’s grown on their
two-acre, certified organic, estate vineyard that the family
cleared on weekends and farms by hand. As the vineyards develop,
there are plans to add a single-vineyard-designate cabernet sauvignon.
The tasting fee is $25.
RUSTRIDGE BED AND BREAKFAST AND WINERY
2910 Lower Chiles Valley Road, St. Helena
Silverado Trail to Sage Canyon Road (Highway 128), east to Chiles
/ Pope Valley Road, north to Lower Chiles Valley Road
Tel. 707.965.9353, www.rustridge.com
Tasting by appointment only
If you are longing to get away for a wine country weekend but the fancy spas up in Calistoga aren’t your cup of tea, the RustRidge Winery—which does double duty as a bed and breakfast and as a working ranch and horse farm—is the kind of place where you can fall off the grid for a few days of real peace and quiet. During harvest, guests can watch the crush first hand, and that’s the kind of education in the life of a winemaker you won’t find many places. If you visit during the other eleven months of the year, there are gourmet breakfasts, hiking trails, tennis courts, and even an on-site sauna to enjoy.
When you’re not out wine tasting, of course. And wine tasting at RustRidge can begin right after a hearty breakfast. It’s a great opportunity to discover the Chiles Valley, one of Napa’s less familiar but most distinctive appellations. The valley is known for its production of claret-style zinfandel wines; Rust Ridge is also known for its chardonnay. The grape develops beautifully here at this elevation, where the nights can get cold even in the summer months.
The husband-and-wife team of Susan Meyer and Jim Fresquez run the ranch, which Susan's parents bought in the 1970s. Her father and brothers planted the first vineyards on the property in 1975. Now Jim and Susan, with partner Kent Rosenblum, make seven different wines: the signature zinfandel and chardonnay wines; the highly acclaimed red and white blends, simply called (in a nod to the more than fifteen horses they keep in the stables) Racehorse Red and Racehorse White; a sauvignon blanc; a cabernet sauvignon; and a new release, petit sirah. The chardonnay and Racehorse Red have taken gold medals in the San Francisco Chronicle wine competition in recent years. There are plans to plant some pinot noir and petit sirah in the vineyards in the future; the climate should be ideal. Total case production is around 3,000, and the well-priced wines range from $22-40. Tasting is $15, waived with purchase; room rates, if you are hoping to take in the full RustRidge experience, are in the $165-350 range.