1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (96 page)

Crowd-pleasing wineries include powerhouse Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville for the best and most extensive tours; Rutherford’s Rubicon Estate (formerly Niebaum-Coppola), owned by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, for its expansive wine offerings and stunning restored historic grounds; Yountville’s Domaine Chandon for its sparkling wines and fine dining; and Sterling Vineyards for its broad selection and tram-accessed valley views. But don’t overlook the little gems, like Schramsberg, with excellent sparkling wine and appointment-only tours of hand-dug caves, and Swanson Vineyards, where tastings are limited to eight guests and include finger foods in an intimate, vibrant Salon.

For a multisensory experience (and eliminating concerns about designated drivers) hop aboard the Napa Valley Wine Train, which runs from Napa to St. Helena, past 27 vineyards. Enjoy the scenery and dine handsomely during the three-hour, 36-mile journey aboard restored 1915-era Pullman Cars.

Develop your palate at COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts, a $50 million complex that offers classes like Wine Tasting 101, rotating art exhibits, summer concerts, movies, and cooking classes with famous chefs (the caliber of Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson). Many visitors come for the day, but to truly appreciate all Napa’s offerings, stay awhile. The Meadowood Resort is one of the finest choices, with an old-money feel in the rambling main lodge and cottagelike suites scattered in the hills above. Rooms are at their most precious the first week of June during the Napa Valley Wine Auction, a lavish three-day swirl of parties, wine tastings, dinners, and the auction at Meadowood, the world’s most soigné charity wine event.

Sterling Vineyard’s cabernet vines yield the grapes that go into its esteemed Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

Smaller and more intimate, Auberge du Soleil is a luxury property perched on a 33-acre hillside dotted with olive trees. Its sunny one-bedroom suites all have private decks or terraces overlooking the vine-studded valley, offering the same heavenly views as its celebrated Restaurant at Auberge. Seek out Gordon’s Cafe and Wine Bar for its famed fresh scones. For lunch and dinner, there’s a long list of favorites: Mustard’s Grill in Yountville; Terra, known for chef Hiro Sone’s innovative cuisine (see p. 850); and the French Laundry’s more relaxed sister restaurant, Bouchon, in Yountville, featuring classic bistro fare. Tra Vigne in St. Helena, a Tuscan-style trattoria in an ivy-laced farmhouse with high ceilings, offers wood-fired pizza, decadent short ribs, and the best alfresco dining in the valley.

Believe it or not, there’s more to the valley than food and wine. It’s beloved by joggers and cyclists for its undulating country roads, spa junkies for its famed mud baths (see p. 814), and just about everyone for its warm, sunny days and laid-back country air.

W
HERE
: 50–70 miles north of San Francisco.
Visitor info:
Tel 707-226-7459;
www.napavalley.org
.
R
OBERT
M
ONDAVI
W
INERY
: Oakville. Tel 888-766-6328 or 707-967-2110;
www.robertmondavi.com
.
R
UBICON
E
STATE
: Rutherford. Tel 707-968-1100;
www.rubiconestate.com
.
D
OMAINE
C
HANDON
: Yountville. Tel 707-944-2280;
www.chandon.com
.
S
TERLING
V
INEYARDS
: Calistoga. Tel 800-726-6136 or 707-942-3345;
www.sterlingvineyards.com
.
S
CHRAMSBERG
: Calistoga. Tel 800-877-3623 or 707-942-6668;
www.schramsberg.com
.
S
WANSON
V
INEYARDS
: Rutherford. Tel 707-967-3500;
www.swansonvineyards.com
.
N
APA
V
ALLEY
W
INE
T
RAIN
: Napa. Tel 800-427-4124 or 707-253-2111;
www.winetrain.com
.
Cost:
from $89, includes lunch.
C
OPIA
: Napa. Tel 707-259-1600;
www.copia.org
.
When:
closed Tues.
M
EADOWOOD
: St. Helena. Tel 800-458-8080 or 707-963-3646;
www.meadowood.com
.
Cost:
from $450 (off-peak), from $525 (peak).
A
UBERGE
D
U
S
OLEIL
: Rutherford. Tel 800-348-5406 or 707-963-1211;
www.aubergedusoleil.com
.
Cost:
from $500 (off-peak), from $600 (peak); dinner $60.
G
ORDON’S
C
AFE
& W
INE
B
AR
: Yountville. Tel 707-944-8246.
Cost:
lunch $15.
M
USTARD’S
G
RILL
: Yountville. Tel 707-944-2424;
www.mustardsgrill.com
Cost:
dinner $50.
T
ERRA
: St. Helena. Tel 707-963-8931;
www.terrarestaurant.com
.
Cost:
dinner $60.
When:
closed Tues.
B
OUCHON
: Yountville. Tel 707-944-8037;
www.frenchlaundry.com
.
Cost:
dinner $50.
T
RA
V
IGNE
: St. Helena. Tel 707-963-4444;
www.travignerestaurant.com
.
Cost:
dinner $50.
B
EST TIMES
: 1st week of June for the 3-day Napa Valley Wine Auction; summer for the Mondavi Summer Concert Series.

Real-Life Shangri-la

California

When filming
Lost Horizon
in 1937, Frank Capra was looking for a sunny paradise to be Shangri-la, the mythical land of eternal youth. He chose the mystical, oak-covered Topa Topa Mountains that ring
Ojai (pronounced OH-high), a Spanish colonial-style village north of Los Angeles. The ancient Chumash Indians (whose word for “the nest” gives the town its name) revered it as a place of healing, and over the years it has drawn many spiritual seekers like the East Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti, who moved here in 1922. Sunsets, when the mountains take on a warm, rosy cast known as the Pink Moment, are its most special time.

The downtown’s picture-perfect signature is its tall stucco and red-tiled bell tower, one of many similar buildings commissioned in the ’teens and ’20s by Edward Libbey, a Toledo glass magnate who wintered here. Libbey was also the impetus for what is now the most perfect place to stay, the 200-acre Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. In 1923 he built a private Spanish-style clubhouse and 18-hole golf course, designed by George C. Thomas Jr. to be one of the country’s most beautiful and challenging golf experiences, with scenic vistas and sharp angles. At the far end of the resort, cars are banned to maintain the peace of a walled 31,000-square-foot Spa Village, complete with 50-foot bell tower and small courtyard with fountain. Inside, the spa offers seasonal treatments with organic ingredients from local farms, like Ojai Pixie Tangerine body scrub in the spring.

Ojai’s post office bell tower was inspired by the famous campanile in Havana, Cuba.

Artists, writers, and craftsmen are thick on the ground in Ojai. Unleash your creativity under their tutelage in the spa’s Artist’s Cottage and Apothecary, which offers more than 30 classes in watercolors, weaving, pottery, soapmaking, drawing, print-making, journaling, and aromatherapy. The Nickelodeon set (ages 5–12) stays busy at Camp Ojai, a kid’s program that includes
visits to the inn’s ranch and stables (where there’s also horseback riding for adults). Local farmers, ranchers, fishmongers, and vintners supply the inn’s four restaurants, which feature specialties like roasted Ojai squab with butterball potatoes and persimmon chutney.

A very different experience can be had right in the midst of Ojai’s downtown buzz at the Oaks at Ojai, one of the first destination spas (where the entire environment is geared toward health and wellness) in the country. Known for its high spirits and low prices, the Oaks has a loyal clientele who keep coming back to burn calories, condition the heart, and lose weight on 1,000 calories a day. The Oaks is located in the historic 1918 El Roblar Hotel, whose exterior was recently restored to its original Spanish Colonial style. While most of the rooms are simple, it recently added five new luxury suites and the unusual (for a spa) downtown location is part of its charm. Between the aqua-toning class and the Ojai Olive Oil Body Soufflé, stroll along Ojai Avenue’s arcade of boutiques, art galleries, and ice cream parlors. If you buy a cone, you won’t be the first Oaks patron to do so. Paradise pardons all.

W
HERE
: 40 miles east of Santa Barbara.
O
JAI
V
ALLEY
I
NN
& S
PA
:. Tel 800-422-6524 or 805-646-1111;
www.ojairesort.com
.
Cost:
from $400; greens fees from $160 for guests, $170 for non-guests.
T
HE
O
AKS AT
O
JAI
: Tel 800-753-6257, or 805-646-5573;
www.oaksspa.com
.
Cost:
from $179 per person, includes meals and classes, 2-night minimum.
B
EST TIMES
: spring and fall for weather; early June for Ojai Music Festival (
www.ojaifestival.com
) and Ojai Wine Festival (
www.ojaiwinefestival.com
); early Oct for Ojai Studio Artists Tour (
www.ojaistudioartists.com
); mid-Oct for Ojai Film Festival (
www.ojaifilmfestival.com
).

The Highway to Heaven

California

Known by those not from these parts as Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway is America’s dream drive, offering stunning coastal views along almost all of its twisting 1,000-mile route from California’s northern border
with Oregon to its southern boundary with Mexico. Most of the two-lane PCH runs through gorgeously isolated terrain, and frequent turnouts and vista points provide ample opportunity to soak in the coast’s rare and astounding natural beauty. You can head south from L.A. to San Diego, or take the traditionalist’s route north to San Francisco and even beyond, past the 19th-century fishing-town-turned-artists-colony of Mendocino (see p. 829).

From the heart of L.A. head west to Santa Monica then follow the coast to Malibu, where you’ll already feel a world away. Seventy miles up the road, you’ll skirt the environs of Santa Barbara (see p. 854) at the base of the dramatic Santa Ynez mountains. Further north, the fabled PCH begins to unfurl at its most majestic, carving an awesome ribbon of highway 500 to 1,000 feet above the roaring Pacific. Extolled as America’s road trip extraordinaire, the wild and rugged 90-mile stretch from the
Hearst Castle at San Simeon (see p. 853), past Big Sur and on to the Monterey Peninsula (see p. 830) is the uncontested high point.

Bounded by the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains to the east and the Pacific to the west, Big Sur remains a remote wilderness and natural masterpiece. “A place of grandeur and eloquent silence” is how Henry Miller, the author of
Tropic of Cancer,
described his adopted home. Virtually inaccessible before the PCH was built with the help of prison labor and New Deal funds, Big Sur saw more tourism and second homes when the highway finally opened in 1937. Its beauty drew writers and artists like Miller, whose books and photographs can be explored at the Henry Miller Memorial Library, and alternative thinkers, some of whom later helped found Esalen Institute (see p. 812).