Day 10
- In Search of Napa
From Rickards to the 101
I've expressed my concerns that the Napa Valley might be a lost cause where the wealthy, but soulless newcomers are making it too exclusive for the rest of us, and with this in mind I venture out of the Napa Valley, into Sonoma, and up into Cloverdale for a meeting with Jim Rickards, winemaker, grape grower, farmer and teller of wonderful wine war stories.
His grapes produce medals and awards by the barrelful, and his knowledge should be bottled and shared, because his ‘Jimisms’ are enlightening and made of good sense. I tell him that they should be on the t-shirts he sells, but he smiles gently, knowing what works for him.
My visit to Sonoma and my talk with Gary has given me hope that there might be something of what was once there. I'm not holding my breathe, but I'm holding out that Jim might provide a respite, because there are times when you sense that something is going to be everything you hoped for, and I was feeling optimistic about this visit.
Jim and I talk on the terrace (interview coming up) and he takes me through a selection of various wines that are very strong contenders for the best on the trip, and the way he guides me through them is as though he has always known, and is waiting for me to reach the same understanding.
After sitting in the shade talking, he takes me through his oldest vineyard where the ground undulates and provides wonderful views of the directions I’ve travelled this morning, and it is hard to think that life can get any better, and I almost ask him if he needs any help picking the next vintage. Jim's vineyard is relaxing, and Highway 101 is so quiet it might be having an afternoon nap.
We then head, along with his dog, into his ‘experimental’ vineyard where he grafts and splices in efforts to bring forth greater variety and knowledge of his yields potential. I stare down nervously when he tells me that he’s encountered a few rattlesnakes here, but that they’re harmless. I’ll take his word for it, but I hope he's got an antidote ready just in case.
The hour I’d planned to spend with him quickly passes the two hour mark, and it’s about 2 and a half hours before we say our goodbyes and I promise myself that the next time I come to California I’ll be seeing Jim, listening to his 'Jimisms' and tasting wine with a real erudite gentleman.
I head back to Calistoga, and like always, time becomes the enemy of leisure, and I know that I’ll have to rush a little bit more than usual.
Souvenirs are bought because this is my spiritual place. I've written about it before, but just in case you don't know, I came here in 1990 and fell in love with the town so much that I brought my wife a few years later, and our daughter is actually named after this most fetching of locations.
I have followed its progress since that time and can never come to the Napa Valley without a visit. It always fills me with calm and has worked its magic in such a way that I always feel a strange kind of homecoming when I walk along the Main Street. ​​​​
It lies between two mountains ranges, at the top of the Napa Valley, and though it has a good population who live on the leafy rural streets off the main drag, they seem mostly absent and keeping themselves to themselves.
Main Street draws visitors who want to sample a location that the people in the Napa Valley will tell you is one of the best places to visit if you want to get the feel of what Napa used to be like.
Of course stores have opened and shut down in the time I've been coming, and the place has been painted to make it look like it's wearing its finest party dress for the visitor, but this cannot take away from spas with signage that hasn't changed since the 1950s, a covered walkway where it's easy to imagine 1970s wine workers strolling along before popping into a bar for a couple of hours after a hard day.
Obviously, people are very happy with the lot that has deposited them here, and the Calmart Supermarket that lies at the end of Lincoln Avenue, opposite the Calistoga Depot (built for when trains trundled up here) is still the most enticing supermarket I know. Sort of like Trader Joes, but without the poseurs lifestyle shopping to impress their friends.
I want to stand and take it all in. I want to stay, shop and sleep here, but I've got to go and there's only so much time I've got to buy cups, trinkets and fridge magnets to help me get through my Calistoga fix.
I point the car towards St. Helena and put in a quick stop at Beringer to buy a bottle of white zin or Chardonnay as a gift for fans of this Gothic style winery, but am only confronted by their latest promotion of Reserve Cab, Estate Cab, or something red and heavy (and I'm not talking about an embarrassed sumo wrestler) and I leave so disappointed that I fail to take a single picture of the front of the property that has been a tradition for me over the years.
Oxbow in green
I used to like St. Helena and found it to be a pleasant stop between Calistoga and Napa. Its shops were authentic and welcoming, and I would spend hours looking around before sampling a glass that would steady me for my next delve into attainable sophistication.
I park, get out and amongst the heaving crowds of desperately trendy tourists and polished couples wearing shirts that are so white it's unnatural I find it difficult to take a couple of steps without feeling as though I just don't belong here anymore.
After what I've been experiencing there's a sense of sad inevitability, because once, where there were real shops for real people, there are more lifestyle stores for people with too much money and not enough trust
in their own taste.
They have to pay mountebanks to tell them what they should use and wear to make their floating lives of boredom that little bit more interesting.
I want to shake them and shout in their faces that they live in the Napa Valley. Isn't that good enough for them without worrying over if their new Arabian rug will go with a pseudo Roman sculpture that has been made in a pseudo Roman factory on the edge of Milan. I've realised something about this new brazen Napa where money is for rubbing in the faces of others, These lives of one-upmanship must be so tiring that choosing a good restaurant is seen as the definition of an exhausting day's work.
St Helena has always been the classy locale of the Valley, the place with galleries to acquire the paintings, the furniture shops to buy the marble counter tops featured in the latest magazines, and clothes stores for the fashionista in your life, but now it has become rather vulgar in the way some of its inhabitants parade around like snooty peacocks. I was going to write a bigger piece, but I'm too disappointed, and within thirty minutes of observing I'm jumping into my car and heading for the hotel.
I feel that I have to wash off this wealthy vulgarity as though it might be contagious, and the pool is my target, but this is marred by three married couples who are so loud, headphones should be issued to everybody including the nearby shady trees.
They are showy off in the way that people are when they are middle-aged holidaymakers, but act as though they’re a frat party up to some prank or other, and these loud dullards prank with the best of them, which means they try to involve the rest of us who have no interest in what they're offering. I leave these ‘characters’ to their own devices and slope off to somewhere less threatening.
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This has been a mixture of a day that started in the company of Jim Rickards with his approachable honesty, and was followed by a speedy, short visit to Calistoga and too long a visit to St. Helena with its affected lifestyle chasers, before descending into the ruined calm of my hotel swimming pool. If I wanted evidence of the difference between the old and the new of Wine Country I'd encountered it today.
