Hi. My girlfriend and I are going to San Francisco for 4 nights over Labor Day weekend, and would like to spend one in Napa. I've been told incredible things about the are, but little concrete information about where to stay or what to do. Are there specific wineries that I should not miss? Any ideas on hotels or B&B's?
Thanks,
Rob

Start your search at www.napavalleyonline.com
Then do a search here for Fodorite opinions. If you still have questions, come back to the forum and post them. There are tons of information about Napa--and my recommendations might not be what you would like. Too difficult to know. Labor Day is fast approaching, though. Hurry up.

You may want to check out citysearch.com which has a great wine country guide. They highlight their favorite places to stay. There is a main drag in Napa where you could rent bikes and the wineries are fairly close together that you could bike from winery to winery.

Here are some of my favorite highlights:

Niebaum-Coppola Winery -owned by Francis Ford Coppola- has a collection from some of his movies
Robert Mondavi has a beautiful winery and great tour.
Cakebread winery
Downtown St. Helena is really cute with nice shops
One of the spas like Calistoga Hot Springs or Sonoma Mission Inn(high end spa)
Domaine Carneros-good sparkling wine
SilverOak-you may need to call and make a reservation
Hess Collection
Clos du Val
BV
La Famiglia-great view and picnic table-wine's ok
Grigrich Hills
Rutherford-great view
Prager- hole in the wall-but great port!

You probably would have time to head over the hill west to Sonoma to visit downtown and they also have more great wineries-Ravenswood, Shrug, Rodney Strong, Buena Vista etc

Good suggestion above about the Niebaum-Coppola winery. Historic building with Academy Awards on display. He bought the winery with earnings from the Godfather movie. Also has a guest book when Clark Gable and Carole Lombard visited the previous winery on the site...Inglenook.

Wine train in Napa is enjoyable way to have lunch. Takes about two hours.

Have stayed at the Vintage Inn in Yountville and really loved it. It's beautiful, the rooms are beautiful and unique, with a vineyard theme, the gardens in between the buildings are gorgeous!! They had a wonderful champagne breakfast included in the room rate. Yountville is a tiny quaint town right off the highway with a few very nice places to stay and some wonderful restaurants. We enjoyed Robert Mondavi & Berringer wineries, though they are some of the larger ones. We also hopped over to Charles Krug while waiting for our tour time at Berringer and liked it. We weren't there long, but they let us try whatever we wanted and gave us commemorative wine glasses from their winery. Other places may do this as well, but we thought it was nice.

I know there are many great B&Bs in wine country, but we just thought Vintage Inn was fabulous.

The Wine Spectator (magazine) has excellent articles on dining and lodging in Napa and Sonoma. They just had a major article 2 - 3 months ago on Sonoma - motivated me to plan a trip there in the fall. This article is probably online. DEFINITELY worth checking out. No, I don't work for Wine Spectator!!!

This is the URL for Napa (http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Sp...napafront.html).

I really dislike Coppola's winery. It's far too commercial--like wine tasting in Neiman Marcus food department. Mondavi is alway jammed with tourists. Try to get to some of the smaller ones. Trefethen, Silver Oaks, Clos Pegaus and our fav, Chateau Montelena. Beautiful picnic area--reserve ahead.