By Paul Redman

My wife Helen and I have only been married three months, so when her mother called to announce a visit to California just weeks after our wedding, we felt pressured to plan an entertaining weekend. Luckily, the purpose of the trip was twofold; her parents hoped not just to see us, but to visit old friends—friends who were now partners in a small vineyard at the top of Napa valley.

We kicked off the weekend with a dinner in the city at the Cosmopolitan Café, located on Spear Street. There is an earthly pleasure in having someone else choose the restaurant for dinner; an even greater one replaces it when that restaurant is good. Although the Cosmopolitan Café is known more for cocktails than for breaking down culinary horizons, the food was prepared with integrity and served with panache. It was also a good way for our two groups to mingle over varietals of California wine, chosen deftly by our grape-loving hosts. They may have belonged exclusively to my parent-in-law’s list of friends, but they were rapidly sliding into my own column of favorite people.

After a quick jaunt over the Golden Gate Bridge the next morning, we found ourselves settling back in at the table with our dining companions—this time at Bistro Don Giovanni in Napa.

The atmosphere of Don Giovanni will always remind me of California wine country, right down to the red Ferrari that all but blocked the path to the restaurant’s entrance. For lunch, I finally devoured a little item long on my must-try list: spot prawns. They were served head-on over a plate of rich, tomato-enhanced risotto. But like many things too long anticipated, the spot prawns were just good—not wonderful. They were vaguely mealy, merely shrimp dressed with a fancy name.

The highlight of the meal, and the highlight of this dining season, was by far the heirloom tomatoes. They may be the single most over-mentioned food item in Northern California, but when you are blessed with ripe ones you will know why. Their round flavor and faint acidity suggest that their raison d’etre is to be layered among slices of soft and creamy fresh mozzarella.

We did not linger and let the lunch slow us down, instead shifting into a higher gear of wine tasting, beginning at a couple of private cellars along the side of Spring Mountain, courtesy once again of our vintner-card carrying hosts. This mood carried us through the afternoon, at the end of which we finally arrived at our hosts’ humble home and its accompanying fourteen acres of Cabernet Sauvignon vines.
I felt special because we were able to spend quality time in good company in a setting almost unequalled. We passed the rest of the day and the next morning with the bulging bunches of grapes hanging just outside our doorstep. I tasted the near-ripe fruit several times; it reaffirmed my belief that wine is first and foremost a practice in agricultural perfection, more than just a name on a list or a bottle in a store.

On our last day, we took a late morning tour of the gorgeous Sterling winery, which sits atop a hill and overlooks the valley. The only way to visit Sterling is to ride a ski-gondola up to the winery, which is fun and does not feel like a gimmick. When you arrive, the self-guided tour winds through the massive complex, with little kiosk tasting stations all along the way. And by the time you make it to the main tasting room, it does remind you uncannily of a ski lodge on an Alpine summit.

After Sterling, we rallied one last time and set out to our final dining destination: that St. Helena wine country classic, Taylor’s Automatic Refresher.

Within everyman’s budget, Taylor’s speaks to the combination achieved only in California, a semi-rural setting with top-notch American food treated with caring hands as if it were haute cuisine. Our hosts pulled out the final bottle of wine from their personal cellar we were to share. With the cork popped and the trays of hamburgers, ahi burgers, and fish tacos in front of us, we were in heaven.