27 Ultimate Things to Do in Napa and Sonoma

It’s worth getting up before sunrise to take to the skies for a hot-air balloon ride over the vineyards. Depending on where you soar, you’ll get a sense of how compact the Napa Valley is and conversely how vast Sonoma County is. If you’re traveling with your significant other, the experience is beyond romantic (the pilots report that many a proposal takes place aloft), and the excitement continues on the ground at the post-flight champagne breakfast.

Some of the nation’s most celebrated chefs operate Wine Country restaurants, often using ingredients so fresh they’re grown steps from the kitchen. At restaurants like the Napa Valley’s The French Laundry and The Restaurant at Meadowood and Sonoma County’s SingleThread Farms Restaurant, the level of sophistication is so high that it’s worth the splurge to experience meals prepared with finesse and served with equivalent grace.

With the average price of a Napa Cab nearing $100 a bottle, it begs the question could the wines possibly be worth it? To find out for yourself, devote a day to exploring what makes Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon so unique, focusing on tastings at Cab powerhouses like Joseph Phelps, Nickel & Nickel, St. Supéry, Hall St. Helena, and Silver Oak, along with smaller producers like Acumen, Cathy Corison, and Venge.

That Cab, Chard, or Pinot tastes all the better sipped on a hilltop with valley vistas you’d have to book a balloon ride to beat. In the Napa Valley, head to Barnett, Pride, or Smith-Madrone for views from Spring Mountain, Cade for the scene from Howell Mountain, and PlumpJack and Long Meadow Ranch‘s Mayacamas Estate for mid-valley panoramas. An aerial tram transports guests to Sterling Vineyards‘ lofty Calistoga tasting room. Over in Sonoma County, book Kunde‘s Mountain Top Tour for Sonoma Valley (in season), Jordan‘s Estate Tasting and Tour for Alexander Valley, and Trattore Farms for dazzling Dry Creek.

BottleRock Napa Valley, the Wine Country’s hottest music fest and coolest outdoor party takes place each Memorial Day Weekend, with headliners like Bruno Mars, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Florence and the Machine, and a mix of several dozen indie bands and longtime rock, rap, and other acts. It’s like Coachella without the desert heat and hassles and way better food and wine. Many wineries host hospitality booths or tents surrounding the main stages—fun places to hang out (and with good sightlines) while enjoying the show.

It’s said that great wines are made in the vineyard—that grape growing is the most important element—but key decisions are made in the wine cellar. Guests at several wineries get to “play winemaker for a day” at entertaining and educational sessions that explore the art of blending quality wines. The format varies by winery, but in general, participants learn some of the basic principles a winemaker considers when crafting a wine, then set about blending several barrel-aged samples to create their own wines. At some wineries, you’re taken through the entire process, bottling, corking, and labeling your masterpiece.

Except in early spring when the Russian River turns frisky from rainy-season runoff, both it and the Napa River are relatively mild waterways. Several companies offer guided or self-guided kayaking trips on both rivers, with canoes part of the mix on the Russian River. Pack a picnic, and you’re ready to go!

A decades-old saying goes that to make fine wine it takes a lot of beer—many winemakers’ preferred beverage after a long day in the cellar. With established purveyors like Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Petaluma and the Russian River Brewing Company, whose state-of-the-art facility opened in 2018 in Windsor (between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg), you can learn how beer is made and toss back a few, too.

Work off the wine and rich food on a hike through the towering trees of Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve in Guerneville. The park’s namesake Colonel Armstrong Tree is thought to be more than 1,400 years old. It’s not the park’s tallest specimen, though. That honor belongs to the 310-foot-tall Parson Jones Tree.

The whole point of wine is to pair it with food declared the late chef Julia Child, and many wineries offer tastings that include small gourmet bites. The goal at many sessions isn’t to teach hard and fast rules about what foods go best with what wines, but rather to illustrate how wine can elevate cuisine and vice versa.

Old-timers wax nostalgic about the Wine Country of yore when it wasn’t uncommon for the owner-winemaker to be at the tasting room pouring wine and chatting up patrons. It’s rarer these days—but not impossible—to re-create that experience at small family wineries like Tres Sabores and Tom Eddy in the Napa Valley and Acorn and Loxton in Sonoma County, all of whose proprietors live on-site.

The olive oil trees at some wineries are merely ornamental, but at many the trees bear fruit that’s milled into extra virgin olive oil or used in soaps or other products. At McEvoy Ranch in Petaluma, Trattore Farms in Geyserville, and Round Pond in Rutherford, you can tour the on-site olive mills and double lubricate at combined olive-oil and wine tastings.

Pinot Noir lovers could tour Sonoma County for days and not hit all the top spots. To get a feel for the climate and terrain that produce great Pinot Noir, plot a pilgrimage that takes a few of the prime growing areas. Saintsbury and The Donum Estate sit amid Los Carneros, Keller Estate is a textbook Petaluma Gap winery, and Arista and Merry Edwards are two Russian River Valley stalwarts.

The Wine Country’s many valleys make for leisurely bike rides past gently rolling vineyards and sometimes even through them. Several companies offer day-long guided (occasionally self-guided) tours, with a van back-up should you tire of the experience.

Modern California winemaking got its start in the town of Sonoma. At three wineries here and three more in the Napa Valley you can explore the Wine Country’s fascinating history. Count Agoston Haraszthy got things rolling in 1857 when he founded Buena Vista, whose interactive wine-tools museum and other displays bring his story to life. The Sonoma saga continues at nearby Gundlach Bundschu and Scribe wineries.

In 1861, Charles Krug borrowed a cider press from Haraszthy and started making wine in St. Helena. An 1874 building at his namesake winery now holds a stylish hospitality center with exhibits. In 1876, brothers Frederick and Jacob Beringer established the St. Helena facility that bears their name; Gustave Niebaum began Inglenook a few years after that.

Instructors and guests chefs beguile students and visitors during one-hour cooking demonstrations at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone (St. Helena) and CIA at Copia (Napa) campuses. You can also take hands-on cooking and baking classes at the Copia location. The subjects for adults range from the art of making sourdough bread to the intricacies of spicing. On Family Fundays (always on Sundays), kids learn how to make cakes and cupcakes and mac and cheese.

Sparkling wine is the primary focus at only a few Napa and Sonoma wineries. Esteemed French Champagne houses established Domaine Chandon, Mumm Napa, and Domaine Carneros. It’s hard not to wax fabulous sipping bubbly on the outdoor terraces of any of these, particularly the one at Domaine Carneros’s French-style chateau. Well-respected Schramsberg began making sparklers in 1965 on a long-abandoned estate.

Over in Sonoma, family members of Spanish cava producers Freixenet oversee Gloria Ferrer, whose terrace perches above Carneros District vines. Sebastopol’s Iron Horse entices with vineyard’s-edge tastings in a delightfully rustic open-air setup that’s more sea shanty than chateau. Farther west in Guerneville, Korbel celebrates the immigrant brothers from Czechoslovakia who founded the company in 1882.

The romance of the rails and Wine Country views add up to a crowd-pleasing excursion on the Napa Valley Wine Train, which follows a track route that dates from 1864. Full-day trips include lunch and visits to three or four wineries. There are also rides to fewer wineries and some to none at all (just enjoy lunch or dinner and the view).

Authors Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London spent time in the Wine Country, and each has a state park named after him. North of Calistoga at Stevenson’s park you can hike to the top of Mt. St. Helena and view the entire valley north-south. A stone monument along the trail commemorates the then-impoverished author’s honeymoon in an abandoned miner’s bunkhouse with new wife Fanny. Stevenson chronicled their sojourn in his book The Silverado Squatters.

London lived his last decade on a hillside ranch above Glen Ellen. At the Jack London State Historic Park, a museum contains exhibits about his life and writings, and a short path leads to the ruins of a house he built that burned down before he could occupy it.

The Wine Country, especially Napa, is short on traditional campgrounds, but in Sonoma County, where there are more choices, you can glamp in style at AutoCamp Russian River. A mid-century-modern aesthetic prevails at this haven amid a redwood grove a mile west of downtown Guerneville. The superbly modified Airstream trailers have all the mod conveniences: down beds, hotel-style linens, audio systems with MP3 inputs, and flat-screen TVs with cable. The open-air clubhouse, which serves as the lobby, sells sodas, beer, wine, and trail mix and similar provisions, and there are several good restaurants and a gourmet market a short drive away.

If “California beach” connotes wide swaths of sand and bikinis and boardwalks, you’re in the wrong place—that’s the state’s southern half. Particularly along the stretches of Highway 1 north and south of where Highway 116 (aka River Road) dead-ends heading west, windswept beaches and craggy cliffs are far more the norm.

The descriptions of treatments sometimes read like parodies, and to old-timers who remember $20 mud baths the prices at the most expensive facilities can seem a joke, but for pure unadulterated luxuriating the Wine Country’s luxury spas rank among the world’s finest. The best facilities are affiliated with hotels, most of which welcome spa patrons not spending the night. The emphasis these days is on wellness as much as working out the kinks. Expect the latest in treatments and products.

Among the Wine Country’s charms is that it’s not overrun with cutesy gift boutiques and, at least in the small towns, chain enterprises, but if your idea of a vacation includes poking through shops, you won’t lack for options. The Napa Valley may take the prize for most luxurious spas and the fanciest wineries, but Sonoma County’s Healdsburg earns top shopping honors of its spots selling one-of-a-kind artworks, clothing, and household items.

State laws passed a few years ago made it easier for distilleries to open tasting rooms where you can sample spirits and learn about the production process and how it differs from wine and beer making. For tours, the Napa Valley Distillery, in Napa, and Hanson Organic Vodka of Sonoma are the two best options, but also seek out smaller producers like Alley 6 Craft Distillery in Healdsburg and Spirit Works in The Barlow complex in Sebastopol.

San Franciscans needing a break from city life often head to Glen Ellen, population less than 1,000, to bask in its small-town charm. Glen Ellen’s tree-lined downtown, just a few blocks long, contains a few restaurants (Glen Ellen Star is the star) and tasting rooms and not much else. Pastoral pleasures abound, though, at nearby Quarryhill Botanical Garden, a repository of rare Asian plants, and Jack London State Historic Park, where the famous author grew grapes and wrote books. On the fun tram ride through the adjacent Benziger Family Winery, guides explain the practices of this early adopter of organic and biodynamic farming principles.

Contemporary museum-quality art enhances a visit to several wineries, most notably Hall St. Helena, the Hess Collection in Napa, and The Donum Estate in Sonoma. At Provenance, the art is on the winery in the form of an exterior mural by the internationally acclaimed artist Heather Day. Wineries aren’t the only places you can ogle the art, either. On weekdays Napa resident Gordon Huether, whose large-scale installations can be seen worldwide, opens his studio to visitors. The collection at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art west of downtown Napa includes indoor galleries and outdoor sculptures.

The Wine Country’s foodie chops extend to outdoor dining—a picnic at a winery that allows outside food, perhaps, or a repast in a state park or downtown plaza. If money’s no object, get thee to Yountville’s Atelier Fine Foods, where under a ceiling inspired by the late-Rococo painter Fragonard you can select smoked fish, rare cheeses, and other tender vittles. (If you’re in need of wine, the atelier is attached to the JCB Tasting Salon.)

Picnics are the raison d’être of Frenchie Provisions, just south of Sonoma Plaza. The owners pride themselves on their astute collection of cheese, charcuterie, and prepared sandwiches, salads, and other foods. The shopkeepers will even sell you the picnic blanket or Frisbee you’re lacking.