Napa for Next to Nada

A friend of ours, a high-powered lobbyist in Washington, D.C., complained the other day that the room he booked in Napa Valley would set him back $700 a night.

“Isn’t there some place cheaper you could recommend?” he asked, knowing that my wife, Sandy, and I are frequent visitors to Northern California’s wine country. We’ve been there three times in four years.

“Is 75 bucks a night cheap enough?” I asked, reaffirming my credentials as a tightwad traveler.

He laughed. “Let’s not go overboard,” he said. “You can check into a roadside dump. We’re looking for something a little more romantic, no more than, say, $350 a night.”

Sure, Napa has several lovely places to stay at that price, and I gave him a couple of names. Let him spend the big bucks, I thought. I’ll just keep my romantic little $75-a-night secret for myself.

A rare and beautiful place that has blossomed into something of a theme park for wine buffs and food lovers, Napa Valley deserves its reputation as an expensive destination. But here and there bargains can be found--in lodging, dining, wine sipping and sightseeing--which make the valley affordable even for the financially challenged. My wife and I spent four days in February seeking them out. Winter and early spring are low season but a great time to go. The crowds are gone, and if the sun cooperates you can picnic with a view.

Our lobbyist friend, I’m sure, was kidding when he suggested we might be foisting a dump on him. The lodgings we found--mostly motels--appeared well kept and inviting and had pleasant settings within easy reach of the vineyards.

The best lodging buys are clustered in Calistoga, a small hot-springs resort town at Napa Valley’s northern end. Tucked at the foot of a lofty ridge, it’s a pretty town that retains the look of the frontier West and has about 5,000 residents and more than a dozen spas. Lincoln Avenue, its well-preserved main street, is dotted with galleries; its cafes cater to a range of budgets.

Our finest find was the one the lobbyist turned down: the Calistoga Inn Restaurant & Brewery, a 90-year-old charmer filled with antiques, where we spent much of our time on this trip. Downstairs is a good, moderately priced restaurant and bar. Upstairs are 18 clean, sunny rooms that go for $75 a night for two from Sunday through Thursday. On weekends and holidays the price increases to $100, still a bargain in the valley. A continental breakfast is also provided.

The drawback: The rooms share toilets and showers, although each has a sink. “European style” is how the Calistoga describes this arrangement, and it is as nice as any European shared-bath pension where I have stayed.

Elsewhere in the valley we found similarly appealing rooms, all with private baths, for about $80 to $150, or a little more during peak summer and fall seasons. (Midweek rates are cheapest.)

We found dining at reasonable rates easy too. At St. Helena’s Trattoria Tomatina, two can dine under the stars on triple-cheese ravioli in a lemon butter sauce and a mixed green salad for about $50, even if you each order a glass of wine.

Calistoga’s popular Smokehouse Cafe served up a full barbecue chicken dinner (with roasted Yukon potatoes, portabello mushrooms, salad and cornbread) for $13.95. Even cheaper was Taylor’s Automatic Refresher in St. Helena, a classic drive-in with contemporary pizazz. Its whopping Texas burger (Jack cheese, salsa, guacamole, mayo and pickled jalapenos), a full meal, cost only $6.49. A glass of Napa wine added $5 to the bill. We ate and sipped at picnic tables and watched the passers-by.

Like dining and wine tasting, a mud bath is a quintessential Napa Valley experience, and the rates at spas in Calistoga tend to be more reasonable than elsewhere in the valley.

Our favorite spa is funky Dr. Wilkinson’s Hot Springs Resort, which we’ve visited three times. On this trip we signed up for “the Works,” a two-hour budget-priced round of pampering for $99 per person.

Sandy went to the women’s spa section, and I to the men’s. I stepped into a deep, tiled tub of hot volcanic mud. This time I knew what to expect. But on our first visit I watched apprehensively as a spa attendant stirred the steaming mud with a huge wood paddle. Then he beckoned me from a stool where I was waiting nearly naked.

“Just step right in,” he said, as I dropped the towel from around my waist and hesitantly placed one foot and then the next into the muck. “Now sit down and stretch out, and I’ll cover your chest and shoulders.”

As a youngster I eagerly romped in mud, but as an adult, submerging my body in the stuff was quite another thing. I eased into the experience cautiously, sinking slowly into the tub as he packed the goop almost to my chin.

The mud is part volcanic ash deposited by a long-ago eruption of nearby 4,300-foot Mt. St. Helena--which accounts for the red color--and part peat, and the two are mixed with steaming water from the area’s natural hot springs. The combination is gritty and spongy but not at all unpleasant. Picture yourself sitting in a bowl of hot oatmeal, and you’ll get the idea.

Several times the attendant wiped sweat from my face with a cool towel.

The mud bath was followed by a shower, a hot tub soak, a steam bath, a blanket wrap and a 30-minute massage. Afterward my skin glowed pink, and I felt invigorated and ready for some serious wine tasting.

Defined by two modest, oak-covered mountain ranges, slender Napa Valley is about 30 miles long and only three miles wide. In this compact area, dotted with half a dozen communities, more than 350 producers are creating some of the world’s finest wines. If you’re a wine buff, as Sandy and I are, the proximity of so many wineries is exciting. So is the opportunity to sample Napa’s noble product on a budget.

As part of our penny-pincher’s tour we found wineries that, as yet, do not charge for samples. (Many valley winemakers impose a tasting fee of $3 to $10.)

The best way to navigate Napa’s plentiful vineyards is to have a plan. Decide in advance to sip only white wines, for example, or only Chardonnays. Or stick to wineries in one of the 14 officially designated appellation areas. Other options: Visit the oldest wineries, among them Beringer, Charles Krug and Beaulieu. Or head for hilltop wineries with a view, such as Artesa, William Hill and Rutherford Hill.

Clos Pegase resembles the ancient temple of Knossos on the island of Crete. Within its majestic walls and gardens are artworks enough to fill a museum. To reach Sterling Vineyards’ hilltop version of a traditional whitewashed Greek village, we had to board a modern aerial tram. The Hess Collection, draped across a steep hillside, bottles its wines amid a fascinating display of contemporary sculpture. Francis Ford Coppola has patterned the gardens of his Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery after Paris’ Luxembourg Gardens. Fountains splash, and youngsters launch sailboats in a sparkling pool. Opus One, home of Mondavi’s premier vintages, is frequently likened to an alien spaceship.

On our most recent visit we sought out small, little-known wineries, which tend to be places that don’t charge for tastings. One that we especially liked is Dutch Henry Winery, on the Silverado Trail just south of Calistoga. Now in its 10th year, the family-operated establishment crafts premium wines in small quantities. Its limited production of 4,500 cases is sold mostly to San Francisco-area restaurants and to visitors like us. Scott Chafen, who heads the winery, staffed the sampling table along with Buggsy, his Airedale.

Chafen guided us through five wines, beginning with a 2000 Carneros Chardonnay. It reveals “flavors of apple, pear and pineapple,” he told us. The grapes are grown in a single vineyard in Los Carneros, one of the valley’s appellation areas. A single hillside vineyard near St. Helena produced Dutch Henry’s 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon. This vineyard was cultivated to keep yields low, “to intensify the flavor of the fruit.” At the winery, a bottle is $58. The sample, our chance to savor a mouthful of this fine wine, cost nothing.

We moved on to Vigil Vineyard, another small Calistoga winery, which likewise charges no tasting fee. Vigil sits well back from the highway, all but hidden by rows of grapevines lining both sides of the entrance drive. As we pulled up, the tasting room and other buildings reminded me of a modern, well-tended farmyard.

Inside, Randy Nygaard, who was staffing the tasting bar, guided us through several Zinfandels. “Perhaps our most popular,” he noted, “is the Mohr-Fry Old Vine Zinfandel, grown on 70-year-old vines.”

He told us to look for elements of vanilla, cassis, berries and spice, but my taste buds aren’t sophisticated enough that I could discern them.

On another day, at the Franciscan Winery, we treated ourselves to an hourlong lesson on how to blend our own version of a Napa Pinot Noir. The tutorial cost us $10 each, but we had so much fun (and wine) that it was worth it.

My head can survive no more than three rounds of tastings a day, because I would rather swallow than spit out (as advised) some of the expensive vintages I might never otherwise get to try. So we had plenty of time to take advantage of Napa’s other diversions. Our goal here, too, was to find free or moderately priced activities. We browsed art galleries for free and took in a couple of historical museums for nominal entrance fees.

In Calistoga we stopped in at the “Artful Eye,” an eye-boggling gallery filled with offbeat glassware and other contemporary crafts. Just outside the town of Napa we sought out Jessel Gallery, a barn with nooks and crannies stuffed with paintings and crafts by 150 local artists, including owner Jessel Miller’s lively, impressionistic Napa Valley watercolors. Prices ranged from the modest to the expensive, though browsing was free.

At the Oakville Grocery, an old-time country store with contemporary flair, one can almost make a meal of the free samples of cheese, sausage, jams, mustards and crackers. One year we put together a picnic lunch at the grocery and drove up the mountainside to Rutherford Hill, where--after sampling wine--we spread our lunch on picnic tables in the olive grove.

In St. Helena we stopped briefly at the free Silverado Museum, which houses what is reputed to be the best collection of artifacts from the life of author Robert Louis Stevenson. In 1880 Stevenson honeymooned on nearby Mt. St. Helena. On display is the writing desk he used at his home in Samoa and an original copy of “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” which he inscribed to his wife, Fanny. In Yountville, the Napa Valley Museum (adult admission $4.50) uses interactive devices to introduce visitors to a day in the life of a vintner.

We also took a look at one of the daily hourlong cooking demonstrations ($10 per person) at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. On this day, chef David Katz, highlighting Italian comfort food, whipped up a frittata.

We visited Copia, the much-touted American Center for Wine, Food and Arts, which opened last fall in the city of Napa. It was a big disappointment. The center purports to raise one’s understanding of wine and food, but what we found was a huge building and not much to see or do. For the one program that intrigued us, a 90-minute forum called “In Love With Chocolate,” $20 per person was charged on top of the adult entrance fee of $12.50. We skipped it.

For the money, the wine classes at Franciscan Winery or the cooking classes at the Culinary Institute are a better buy.

Taking advantage of Napa’s budget lodgings and cafes and its free (or almost) attractions, a budget traveler can stay for as many as four days on what it would have cost our lobbyist friend for one night at his $700 resort. Whatever you spend, everyone can revel every day--as we did--in lovely views of the valley. Which--need I say?--doesn’t cost a penny more.

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Guidebook: Navigating Around Napa

Getting there: From LAX to Oakland, Southwest, United and American have nonstop service. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $88.

From LAX to San Francisco, United, American, Alaska, Hawaiian and Delta offer nonstop service. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $178.

Where to stay: Prices below are for summer/fall high season.

The 18-room Calistoga Inn, 1250 Lincoln Ave.; (707) 942-4101, fax (707) 942-4914, www.calistogainn.com. Rooms in this historic building are bright and spacious. Doubles with shared bath, $75 weekdays; $100 weekends.

The 42-room Dr. Wilkinson’s Hot Springs Resort, 1507 Lincoln Ave.; (707) 942-

4102, www.drwilkinson.com. A modern two-story motel with limited views. Doubles $109-$189.

The 41-room Calistoga Village Inn & Spa, 1880 Lincoln Ave.; (707) 942-0991, fax (707) 942-5306, www.greatspa.com. The inn has the loveliest setting of Calistoga’s well-

priced lodgings. Doubles $79-$159.

The 60-room Roman Spa, 1300 Washington St.; (800) 820-4463, fax (707) 942-1251, www.romanspahotsprings.com. Spanish colonial inn located in a quiet neighborhood. Standard rooms $94-$125.

In St. Helena, the 41-room

El Bonita Motel, 195 Main St.; (800) 541-3284, fax (707) 963-8838, www.elbonita.com. A resort-like little retreat that sits amid 2 1/2 acres of gardens. Doubles $129-$279.

In Yountville, 10-unit Napa Valley Railway Inn features lodgings in restored rail cars. 6503 Washington St.; (707) 944-2000, fax (707) 944-

1701, www.travelhero.com. Doubles $75-$130.

These neighboring motels in the city of Napa provide clean, basic accommodations. The 58-room Napa Valley Budget Inn, 3380 Solano Ave.; (877) 872-6272, fax (707) 252-

2702, www.napavalleybudgetinn.com. Doubles $83-$125.

The 34-room Chablis Lodge, 3360 Solano Ave.; (800) 443-3490, fax (707) 226-6862, www.chablisinn.com. Doubles $95-$160.

Where to eat: In Calistoga, the Calistoga Inn, 1250 Lincoln Ave.; (707) 942-4101. Wood floors and china plates give it a country kitchen look. Entrees $14.50-$23.

Bosko Trattoria, 1364 Lincoln Ave.; (707) 942-9088. Features ravioli, gnocchi and other pastas, as well as pizza and panini from a wood-burning oven. Entrees $10.50-$14.50.

Smokehouse Cafe, 1458 Lincoln Ave.; (707) 942-6060. In California’s oldest still-standing train depot (1868), the Smokehouse’s specialty is barbecue. Entrees $12.95-$21.95.

In St. Helena, Trattoria Tomatina, 1016 Main St.; (707) 967-9999. Choice entrees are pizzas, pasta and other light fare. Entrees $7-$12.95.

Taylor’s Automatic Refresher, 933 Main St.; (707) 963-3486. An old-fashioned drive-in with up-to-date flair. Burgers $3.99-$8.99.

In Yountville, Pacific Blues Cafe, 6525 Washington St.; (707) 944-4455. Specialties include hot chili, stuffed potatoes, crispy fried chicken, a “build your own” burger. Entrees $11-$22.

In Napa, Mustards Grill, 7399 St. Helena Highway; (707) 944-2424. The decor is today’s Napa, which means the place and menu are elegantly simple. Entrees $13.95-$26.95.

For more information: Napa Conference & Visitors Bureau, 1310 Napa Town Center, Napa, CA 94559; (707) 226-7459, fax (707) 255-2066. www.napavalley.com.

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James T. Yenckel is a writer based in Washington, D.C.