Would you ever guess it’s one of America’s top tourist spots? This is Napa Valley, the deep heart of American wine country. Over five million people visit Napa each year, making it second only to Disneyland in California tourism.

And why? Well, to drink, obviously. Because there’s not a whole lot else to do. And unless you’re on the overwatered Domaine Chandon estate (anyone there ever heard of a drought?), being outside is pretty miserable. It’s not a clean sort of dry heat like you get in the Arizona desert or the Australian outback. Nope. It’s kind of lung-clogging. Polluted.

You can take the tourist wine train, which, despite its being an overpriced joke, isn’t all that bad. That is, if you can get past the shock of the waiting station. It has the air of a church basement in preparation for post-service coffee hour. My sister, at some ungodly hour of the morning, took one look in shock at the burnt sludge called coffee they were selling, and went straight to the customer service desk. “I need coffee,” she said, hoping for directions to a Starbucks. “They’ve got coffee at the cafe,” said a very chipper guy in a bow tie. My sister collapsed on the counter and prepared to explain why the liquid is in no way coffee, and the dusty counter was not a cafe.

Just before boarding the train, you get a young’un with a goatee dribbling wine into plastic glasses for Midwestern tourists and a couple of nuns while informing everyone that, “This wine is individualistic.” The nuns made sure to get an extra swig and I’m sure they needed it.

I’d skip it. Stay in San Francisco. Eat at the jazz club and restaurant 1300 on Fillmore in the city’s very cool revitalized Fillmore jazz district, where you can get waited on by my other sister and drink lots of great California wine without ever having to subject yourself to Napa.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 8:21 am and is filed under Antonia projects, US travel, food & drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.