This wine trolley makes touring Napa Valley wineries easy — and delicious.
Hopping from winery to winery in the Napa Valley for tastings and tours is a bucketlist dream for the rest of the world, but it’s a convenient day trip or overnighter for us Northern Californians.
The only problem? Some 225 of Napa’s 475 wineries are open to the public, but which to choose? Can you even find them while navigating hectic traffic on Highway 29 or twisty Silverado Trail? And then there’s the issue of buzzed driving.
We avoided all those hassles by heading instead for downtown Napa’s Oxbow Public Market parking lot, where the open-air Napa Valley Wine Trolley begins its trek, carrying wine lovers to four wineries, a mix of old and new, big and small.
The motorized 30-by-10-foot wood-and-brass trolley was hand-built from original 1900s San Francisco cable-car blueprints and welded to a truck frame. With fresh air blowing through the trolley, bringing in the sounds and scents of the verdant valley, you’ll be connected to Wine Country in ways not possible inside a wine train, motor coach or limousine.
The six-hour journey meanders through gorgeous scenery, into vineyards, barrel rooms and fermentation rooms, and in front of wine educators and tasty flights of reds and whites at each stop. On this particular day, the trolley group included four 30-something friends from Marin County “on a girls’ day out,” and couples from Switzerland, Canada and Florida. There was a doctor, a biologist, an event planner, an engineer, even a winemaker.
“More than half our passengers haven’t been to Napa before,” says Wine Trolley general manager Mark Leonardi. “They want to experience the valley, but don’t know where to begin. Some are wine connoisseurs, but most are just learning. We’re definitely not intimidating.”
Trolley driver-tour guide Epaul Fischer rang the trolley’s bell, the passengers cheered and we were off to our first stop, St. Helena’s Whitehall Lane Winery. The trolley gently bounced and creaked along, passing endless vineyards, magnificent stone wineries and weathered farmsteads set against a backdrop of foothills and mountains. Fischer delivered a good-natured narrative over the PA system, touching on geology, grape-growing, winemaking and local history, sugared with a few jokes.
At Whitehall, wine host Dana Hunter greeted us with glasses of “breakfast wine” — sauvignon blanc. A stroll through a merlot vineyard,
glasses of merlot in hand, led to a discussion of Paul Giamatti’s famous merlot rant in “Sideways,” the iconic 2004 movie.
The roving tour took us to the winery’s shaded deck, with its glorious views of vineyards and hills, to taste a red blend and two styles of cabernet, before heading downstairs to the barrel and fermentation rooms.
“My friends and I planned this day so we could talk and hang out,” said Trish George, a registered nurse from Marin County, “and we have all this extra entertainment besides.”
Fisher’s dinging bell roused the group — somehow more convivial now — to climb back aboard. So the day went, each winery loosely following the same greeting-pouring-touring template, as the group’s decibel level increased from stop to stop.
Inside the ivy-covered stone building at 125-yearold Pestoni Family Winery, host Paige Kinyon poured a tasting flight that included sauvignon blanc, sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon and petite sirah, as she explained the unique minerality known as “Rutherford dust.”
“Here in the Rutherford AVA,” she said, “we’re known for our dusty soil, which blows everywhere and makes your black car totally brown. It actually comes through in the wine itself, adding an earthy, chocolatey taste to the flavor notes.”
Outside at a picnic table set on the sun-dappled grounds, the group enjoyed a leisurely lunch catered by Sonoma’s the Girl & the Fig. Some of the group bought bottles of rosé to share.
One of the day’s many thrills came as the 10-footwide trolley rolled across a 12-foot-wide bridge to reach homey Judd’s Hill Winery, where a coop of 14 clucking chickens and a little vegetable garden sit near the vineyard.
A table had been set inside the tiny tasting room for the day’s most intimate sit-down sip-and-chat. Sauvignon blanc was followed by zinfandel rosé, cabernet sauvignon and a “Judd’s Hill Surprise,” a Madeira-style chardonnay.
Our final stop was the Andretti Winery, which resembles a Tuscan villa with its weathered-stone wrought-iron balconies, climbing ivy and courtyard fountain.
Winery co-owner and legendary race car driver Mario Andretti drops by a few times a year.
Today, it was general manager Roger de Lorimier who led the group past the barn-like barrel room to a tree-shaded area near a vineyard.
A cool breeze rustled the leaves as he poured sauvignon blanc and later, inside the tasting room, chardonnay, pinot noir rosé, pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon.
Later, back at the Oxbow Public Market parking lot, the tasters hugged their goodbyes and scattered, toting bags full of wine bottles and memories to share.