Sparkling Napa Valley and Sonoma County

The happy marriage between culture and agriculture at Napa Valley in California is what entices visitors from all over the world to this place. Napa is legendary for its beauty and wines – endless acres of neatly-lined vineyards are a feast to the senses. The sweet and tangy smell of wines, both young and old, unrelentingly spray their welcome aroma. The golden hills dotted with California oaks and the taste of food caress the taste buds at every turn. This is Napa Valley, America’s wine capital, where one can have the opportunity of a lifetime to taste still and sparkling wines, enjoy world-class views and learn how the wines are made.

Napa Valley once again became the giant playground for my whole family last December.

Being the most knowledgeable in the family when it comes to wine, Yvonne and her husband Pael Romualdez led us to different wineries. One of the best stops was the magnificent Viansa winery, which sits atop a hill overlooking the vineyards. My sister Michelle quipped that this winery will always bring out the artist in a visitor, what with its European-styled verandah, statues, fountains and huge red roses clinging unruly but dramatically to the wall. Enchanting aria music cuts the air as visitors enjoy the smoothest limone muscat and the freshest strawberries.

"The food here is excellent," said my friend Lia Anonas, who graduated from the prestigious Hotel Institute Montreux in Switzerland. We delightfully savored Viansa’s sumptuous al fresco lunch of brie and salami sandwich, penne pesto pasta, and creme brulee.

We must have visited several wine houses that day, but Yvonne just wouldn’t call it a day without stopping at Kohnan winery with its 22 acres of premium wine property. The winery is owned by a Japanese named Hakusan and surrounded by beautiful Japanese gardens. They produce sake or Japanese rice wine. Why sake here at Napa Valley? Simply because it was most logical to get started in a place with a history of being a leader in new technology. In 1965, Robert Mondavi built the first winery designed for cold temperature fermentation. In 1978, Domain Chandon introduced the latest sparkling wine technology. Thus, Hakusan decided to embark on their rice wine- or sake-making here. Their brewery can produce up to 240,000 cases of sake yearly. Using rice grown in the Sacramento Valley, Hakusan has been able to capture the distinctive flavor of sake by blending ancient tradition with modern technology.

If Napa Valley is not enough for a visitor to sample the agricultural bounty of California, a day’s ramble in Sonoma County will surely delight the traveler. Where Napa wineries are housed in grand buildings, Sonoma wineries are often found in old hop barns and geodesic domes. At Sonoma, we drove down uncrowded country lanes and tasted wines for free.

At the Korbel Champagne Cellars, we tasted the finest sparkling wines. We even joined their tour to learn more about how wines are made and how to enjoy a taste afterward. Korbel also produces a limited amount of sherry that is available only through the winery. If you don’t drink wine, they have a micro brewery.

The Armida Winery is very unique. It’s housed in a geodesic dome perched on a hill that’s worth a trip all by itself. The winery serves delectable wines and they don’t charge for tasting. Instead of a well-tended lawn or gardens of flowers, they have a simple wooden deck under two big trees. With a gentle breeze to stir the wind chimes, the water below and a pair or two of hawks gliding lazily on the horizon, you wouldn’t want to leave this enchanting place.

With us on our US tour were my nieces and nephews who, you bet, are too young to drink wine in these places, but Napa and Sonoma have parks and playgrounds for kids to enjoy.

The Petrified Forest of Calistoga, California attracts thousands of visitors every year. Here, great redwood trees do not "turn into stone" in the literal sense of the word. Millions of years ago, a forest grew here, covered by ashes and mud from an active volcano. Water seeped down through the dust carrying volcanic ashes. Gradually the wood was replaced by silica, in many cases cell for cell. So perfectly was this accomplished that very thin sections of the petrified wood can be studied microscopically and their structure determined. This process of petrification took a long time and gradually the mud and ash deposited ages ago were eroded away.

Geologists call this attraction one of the finest examples of a pliocene fossil forest in the world. The park itself is privately owned and has been since its first proprietor started excavating the large petrified trees in the 1870s. In the early times, settlers came and built cabins, noting and collecting the stonewood as a curiosity. One man named Petrified Forest Charlie unearthed a whole tree and became the guardian of this natural wonder. He met Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote about him and the trees. Then the distinguished OC, Marsh arrived in 1870 and took samples back to Yale University for study. An unusual woman, Ollie Bockee, came in 1910 and stayed with her husband to develop the area as a public attraction. She advertised the forest and soon people the world over flocked to see this unique area. Her heirs, the Hawthorne family, continue to improve the property in the same proud tradition.

Another attraction in Calistoga is the Old Faithful Geyser of California. This nature-directed spectacle is a stage walled by thick bamboo and plumed pampas grass, looking like an innocent pool of shallow water until it’s time for the major attraction. Uprising steam and bubbling hot water herald the coming of the geyser. With the Mount Saint Helena and the jagged Palisades mountains as backdrops, Old Faithful Geyser of California throws a tower of thousands of gallons of water skyward.

The water is 350 degrees hot and shoots approximately 60 feet into the air and dances on the breeze for about three to four minutes before it recedes. When the sun is just right, bright rainbows dip and dive like a halo in the curtain of water. This performance is repeated every day, every 30 minutes.

Water for the Old Faithful comes from an underground river. When this water flows over the hot molten magma deep in the earth, it boils and expands and is collected in large cavities. Under tremendous pressure from the heat, and aided by a constriction of the passage upward, the superheated water is forced through the fissures and fractures and erupts with an outpouring of steam followed by a fulmination of hot dancing water.

Indeed, the areas of Napa Valley and Sonoma County in California offer spectacular sights, impressive wines, breath-taking vineyards, dramatic geysers and amazing forests. What more can you ask for?

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