TRAVEL SHORTS
Bike your way through Napa wine country
Wanting to do something a bit different for our third trip to California wine country -- without sacrificing the wine part -- my husband and I decided to get a bike involved. California more than obliged.
The state is extremely bike-friendly, with spacious bike lanes built along many of its roads. Just as important, cyclists are respected and yielded to. And unlike cars, bikes allow both parties to enjoy Napa's extraordinary landscape while also getting a welcome burst of exercise.
Before we move on, yes, when you tell people you're taking a daylong cycling tour of wineries, you get raised eyebrows, maybe a smart-aleck laugh, followed by questions about how you expect to operate a bicycle after all those wine tastings. An odd question, indeed, given that most visitors to wine country are driving cars to and from their wine jaunts.
So let's just assume that the behavior is responsible, whoever is driving whatever. One key is that you can sip and spit; another is that twosomes can share tastings, a thrifty and widely practiced move that also prevents inebriety.
We booked a daylong "Sip 'n' Cycle" tour in Calistoga with Getaway Adventures for our September trip. We met tour guide Tom Scott in a predesignated area; his van came equipped with bikes for us and a mother-daughter twosome -- who didn't drink (Mom had won the tour). Scott met the challenge of his disparate (and fortunately easygoing) group with a route that included back-road cycling, great views, visits to five wineries, an alfresco lunch and just enough education to keep everybody happy without anybody getting bored.
We started with a quickie tutorial on how to ride the wonderful Marin San Rafael hybrid bikes, outfitted with shock absorbers that delivered a seamless ride of about 12 miles total. We drove through a picturesque neighborhood of stucco ranches and rose-festooned yards and on to back roads lined on either side with acres of grapevines almost ready for harvest, with the mountains and more acres of grapevines in the distance. We used busier roads only when necessary. The pace, true to the company's Web site, was designed for the "enthusiastic beginner."
Our tour included two boutique wineries (Summers Estate Wines and Lava Vine) and larger, more familiar ones (Cuvaison Estate, Clos Pegase and Chateau Montelena). Highlights included Summers' varietal "petting zoo," where we plucked grapes off the vine, tasting the familiar (pinot noir and zinfandel) and less familiar (charbono and muscat) while Scott discussed winemaking in general and these grapes in particular.
Clos Pegase's 45-minute tour offered a comprehensive look at the winemaking process as well as owner Jan Shrem's estimable, wide-ranging art collection, which visitors are encouraged to photograph and get up close and personal with. Getaway's package also included a terrific, fruit- and salad-dominant lunch outside Lava, all the better to enjoy the spectacular wine country view.
Yes, we tasted many wines, and bought some too. (Typical of these tours, our purchases were rounded up and ready for pickup at day's end.) But the tour was more about the wine than cycling -- which actually whetted our appetite for a more challenging ride.
So two days later, we biked wine country on our own, with rented hybrid bikes from St. Helena Cyclery. The shop gave us a map with several routes outlined, but we decided to fashion one of our own. After cycling through St. Helena's charming neighborhoods, we headed for Rutherford via the Silverado Trail, the main drag on the east side of Napa Valley. The bike lanes made cycling the highway relatively unobnoxious and (squirm warning ahead) easier to bypass the poor fox and raccoon that had met their maker without us having to swerve into traffic.
Still, we exited as soon as we could. The smaller roads afford the prettier vistas, less traffic and more opportunity to set your own pace as you and your bike traverse this sublime terrain. We ventured along roads that let us peek past mailboxes at some amazing homes and enjoy mountain views with only olive trees blocking our view. We passed several wineries on our self-guided tour and could easily have incorporated some tastings, but this time it was all about the biking and the scenery.
We wound up tallying nearly 18 hilly miles. We returned our bikes exhilarated, sort of tired and, OK, ready to climb into the car and visit some wineries.
Old habits die hard.
California: Spring wine-country travel deal at Sonoma Creek Inn
Not all trips to the wine country north of San Francisco have to cost an arm and a leg. The...
Read more »
Taking restless Southern California on vacation
Los Angeles Times e-mail newsletter, delivered every Thursday
wherever it appears.