Though the Napa Valley has earned a place on gastronomic and tourist maps, few visitors realise it is so scenically spectacular, with small towns still retaining their turn-of-century character and their historic and literary heritage. And there’s not a centimetre of neon to be seen anywhere.
California Wine Country, immediately north of San Francisco, has two parallel valleys, Napa and Sonoma, each 48km long and divided by the Mayacamas Mountains.
Mount St Helena, with a massive conical peak, is at the north end of the Napa valley and is surrounded by the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, where the Scottish author spent his honeymoon in a bunk house in 1880. He also spent the next year there writing the first draft of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde and completing Silverado Squatters, which contains the first published advertisement for local wines when he confessed the highlight of his honeymoon was tasting 18 of Joseph Schram’s local champagnes in one sitting.
‘Fainting goats’
Calistoga, at the foot of St Helena, is a pretty town lined with avenues of large old trees and is famous for its hot mineral springs, mud baths and Old Faithful Geyser, as well as its wineries. When prospectors moved into the area in the 1920s they struck boiling water instead of oil. It spurted 25m into the air, caused severe burns and blew away the equipment. Since then, it has erupted every 20 to 30 minutes and is a local attraction, resulting in a high yield of tourist dollars instead of oil. Its owner, Olga Kelbek, has added a picnic area, snack bar and a herd of “fainting goats”, normal in every way except that every one of every generation faints when they’re startled.
Kelbeck recorded Old Faithful’s eruptions for many years and, during a recent TV programme, said they became less frequent just before seismic activity. No one believed this elderly school teacher, but Dr Paul Silver of the Carnegie Institute recently validated her claim.
The Petrified Forest, 8km west of Calistoga, is said by geologists to be one of the finest Pliocene fossil forests in the world.
Three million years ago giant redwoods were knocked down like matchsticks by waves of lava from Mount St Helena, which solidified on their trunks, branches and between their layers of bark. They lay unnoticed for centuries till a Swedish goat keeper, later nicknamed “Petrified Charlie”, bought the land and discovered stone trees instead of pasture.
Stevenson was staying nearby, taking a break from writing Silverado Squatters, so he explored the area with Charlie and included the detailed description of a giant redwood in his book. This tree, still there, is now called the Stevenson Tree. Charlie, however, sold his fossilised forest to Ollie Bockie, who spent 25 years excavating and establishing the present museum on the premises.
St Helena, south of Calistoga, is at the heart of the greatest concentration of wineries. It is overflowing with boutique-style shops, coffee bars and restaurants and is famous for the Silverado Museum containing more than 8 000 Stevenson-related artefacts.
‘Petrified Charlie’
The main tourist value of Napa, at the southern end of the valley, is that it leads to Highway 12 and the Sonoma Valley.
This is smaller and more rustic than Napa and the wineries are informal, family-run businesses - most of them with tasting rooms. Though both valleys produce only six percent of the total Californian output, their vintages are considered the best in the country.
Spanish colonial Sonoma, the main town, was originally the home of the American Indian Miwok tribe and is where California freed itself from the Spanish and became a republic - but not for long.
A month later the US declared war on Mexico and, without firing a single shot, made California its 31st state.
Sonoma’s 3ha plaza is surrounded by historic buildings, many built from sundried clay, including a mission and its barracks, historic homes, a hotel, upmarket shops and a cheese factory with several hundred different cheeses.
A few kilometres north is picturesque Glen Ellen, once the home of author Jack London. This is a “self drive” village where visitors are given a map and see historic places and homes at leisure. London and his wife lived in the lava stone Wolf House, in The Jack London State Park, and he is buried on the hill above.
The Sonoma Wine route continues to the region’s main city, Santa Rosa, also with a claim to literary fame, for this is the home of Raymond Chandler’s fictional private eye, Philip Marlowe.
The Napa Valley is over the Golden Gate Bridge north of San Francisco and is well signposted. Visitors without a car can travel on a Greyhound bus.
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