Weekend Escape: Napa Valley : Champagne Wishes Fulfilled : But at St. Helena’s Meadowood Resort, You’ll Also Need Your Caviar Wallet

We heard about Meadowood Resort in the usual way you hear about anything in Napa Valley: through the grapevine. The word from the grapevine was that guests lived in luxury in the woods, that they drank great wine and ate great food, that they hiked and bicycled across 250 acres of bucolic wilderness.

Still, we had to wait six months to get a room, and the price was high: $221 for the cheapest room, and more than $1,500 for the most expensive.

At Auberge de Soleil in Rutherford, the other hot ticket in the Napa Valley, the wait for a weekend room was four months. The two grand luxe hotels had only 130 rooms between them, so demand clearly exceeded supply. Nonetheless, as my wife and I drove toward Meadowood from San Francisco Airport, we wondered over and over again: Just how good could it be?

“Hi,” I said to Seamus Dooley, Meadowood’s resident manager. “I’d like to check in.”

“Fine,” he said. “Would you prefer our 1991 Bon Marche Pinot Noir or our 1991 Clos Pegase Chardonnay?”

Meadowood’s Friday wine reception was going full blast, and credit card imprints could wait. The Chardonnay was cool and wonderful, and we didn’t have to ask for refills. We filled our plates with cheese, strawberries, pate and crusty French bread.

Seamus seated us next to Jeff and Sherry from Brentwood in the warm, woodsy lobby, between the fireplace and the grand piano. Jeff and Sherry had just visited the Clos Pegase winery up in Calistoga, and the art there was beautiful, they said, and it was everywhere. Tomorrow Jeff and Sherry were going to Meadowood’s health spa, and they were going to get massaged with Chardonnay. So were their two daughters. Chardonnay massages were $120 apiece, and I was starting to understand why every other car in the lot was a Mercedes.

In our rented Chevy, we followed Dave, our bell person, along a winding rural road under a canopy of pines to the path leading to our gabled cottage, high on a hillside. We had our own private porch overlooking the grounds. Dave showed us how to open the skylight and the mini-bar, and he said the apples and Chardonnay were free.

We dressed for dinner. Jackets were required at Meadowood’s Starmont dining room. The room was packed and buzzing, yet the maitre d’ treated us as if we were his only customers. His greeting was so warm that I turned around to see who the VIPs were, but there was no one behind us.

I ordered a bottle of Markham Merlot, which Meadowood’s wine pro, John Thoreen, had recommended at the wine reception. We loved it. With it our waitress brought us rabbit in phyllo dough and salmon with cucumber salsa, a big step up from our customary beer nuts. We chose the prix-fixe dinner--any appetizer, any entree and any dessert for $42. We started with prawns and smoked squab, moved on to sea bass and John Dory, and finished with a flour-free baked-to-order chocolate cake and a raspberry souffle in Chambord sauce.

On Saturday morning we walked down the hill in our whites, required for our upcoming croquet lesson, and ate a buffet breakfast in the Grill.

Our croquet lesson was a hoot. Phil, our teacher and Meadowood’s assistant croquet pro, taught us trick shots for knocking your opponent’s ball to the wrong side of the wicket, but I never got the hang of it. After our one-hour lesson, my wife and I played a serious game, and she beat me 5-1.

We drove north to Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga, a 15-minute trip, with a picnic lunch that we had bought on our way in from San Francisco at Oakville Grocery, a gourmet landmark that offered 19 kinds of olives.

To go to the winery and tasting room at Sterling, we parked just off Route 29 and took an aerial tram over lush green forest. At the top, we drank two wine samples and carried our third, a Cabernet Sauvignon, to the picnic deck just outside the tasting room. My wife sliced up hunks of sweet barley bread, Cotswold cheese with chives, Scotch Cheddar cheese and red and green apples while I uncorked a bottle of Johannisberg Riesling that I had picked up at the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville. As we took in the view of the Napa Valley and enjoyed our leisurely picnic, my wife said, “I hope Sterling doesn’t mind that we’re using their picnic deck to drink somebody else’s wine.”

“No chance,” I said. “They don’t even sell their own wine up here.”

A few minutes later, a Sterling wine host stopped over to say, “I’m sorry, but we can’t permit customers to open their own wine.” He confiscated what little was left of our Riesling.

On our return, I set out to explore Meadowood’s three miles of hiking trails. They were steep and rugged, a challenge. From the heights, I could see just how sprawling Meadowood was, how remote some of the lodges were. I watched half a dozen golf carts scurrying about the forested grounds, carrying suitcases and room-service meals.

At the health spa, between the Olympic-size lap pool and Meadowood’s seven tennis courts, a well-toned blond fitness instructor told me about Meadowood’s philosophy of balance, of good food and wine along with sports and health programs, and asked me if I might be interested in a massage.

She rubbed Chardonnay gel onto my arm, and told me about the Chardonnay massage. “It’s our signature here at Meadowood,” she said. “It really makes you glow.”

My arm had in fact taken on the peach glaze of a Thanksgiving turkey, but I turned down the massage.

For supper, my wife and I drove south to Yountville, 10 minutes from Meadowood, for dinner at Domaine Chandon, one of the Napa Valley’s most popular restaurants ever since Moet-Hennessy opened it in 1978. One attraction was the Domaine Chandon sparkling wine at supermarket prices. We ordered a Carneros Blanc de Noirs for $14.

Domaine Chandon was very ‘80s, with complicated dishes that ended up as mere squiggles on our plates. My dessert, for example, was creme brulee millefeuille with caramel pistachio ice cream, poached pears and butterscotch sauce. The whole thing was smaller than a Ping-Pong ball. Good, though.

As we drove back onto the grounds at Meadowood, hotel staff members and fellow guests waved and smiled. We felt like we lived there. We wanted to.

We took a romantic walk under the stars, past the pools and tennis courts, and waved to guests sipping wine on their porches.

We awoke with hunger pangs. Meadowood served an elaborate Sunday brunch, but it was only 6:45 a.m. and we wanted something now.

Tra Vigne, a venerable Napa Valley Italian restaurant, had just, the day before, begun opening for breakfast. In the Cantinetta, an Italian delicatessen, we had two chefs and two servers all to ourselves. We ordered organic poached eggs whipped with chives and tarragon through a cappuccino maker until they were fat and fluffy. We scooped up the liquid with big brioches and drank down thick, delicious cafe mocha. The head chef invited us to fill a plate with huge strawberries, all we could eat, no charge.

We window-shopped on St. Helena’s turn-of-the-century Main Street for half an hour, returned to Meadowood and said our goodbys. We turned in our keys and signed our credit card vouchers but, although we checked out of Meadowood, Meadowood will never check out of us.

Budget for Two

Air fare, LAX to San Francisco: 202.00

National car rental: 58.58

Meadowood, two nights: 442.00

Dinner, Meadowood: 133.90

Breakfast, Meadowood: 26.02

One hour with croquet pro: 50.00

Oakville Grocery, wine: 32.31

Dinner, Domaine Chandon: 113.81

Tram, Sterling Vineyards: 12.00

Breakfast, Tra Vigne: 16.72

Parking, tolls: 22.80

FINAL TAB: $1,110.14

Meadowood Resort, tel. (800) 458-8080.