Napa Valley! How Does it Compare to the Fingerlakes?

For almost 60 years I have lived in the Finger Lakes Wine Country.  So many wineries, breweries, and cheese farmhouses. Rolling hills and moderate weather at times during the year (when it's not snowing!!).

This year we decided to visit Napa Valley mid-September to see what everyone was talking about!  To be fair...the farthest west that we have been is Las Vegas, so this was a whole new world for us!

As per usual, we planned this trip for about a year-so had plenty of time to tweak our trip, research fun things, and plan our time. We booked wineries, our 2 days of transportation as well as our rental car.  We did not make any dining plans-decided to wait to see what locals suggested.

Here is our story, with narrative on comparisons to Finger Lakes.

We stayed overnight Sunday in Syracuse, NY before our 6AM flight to San Francisco.  There are so many airports to use for Napa Valley-but we really wanted to see The Golden Gate Bridge, as well as connect with our niece who lives 10 minutes from SFO. The flight arrived perfectly at 11:15 AM, we grabbed a rental car from Alamo and took off for Golden Gate Bridge!

It was a perfect, blue sky day in San Francisco-and we felt very lucky to be able to see the bridge with such a gorgeous backdrop.  The traffic was much less than we expected on a Monday morning and we easily navigated 3 different parking lots (Vista Point, Battery Spencer, and Viewpoint) to take lot of pictures from all angles!

Golden Gate Bridge

Other side of the Golden Gate Bridge

The Finger Lakes are generally located in farm country with rural roads.  Although there are main highways, it is not the high amount of traffic that we encountered on our trip to Napa.  None of the traffic was bad-just a different vibe from Finger Lakes. 

After the Bridge we wanted to go to lunch.  Hopped on Trip Advisor and clicked "near me now" for lunch.  We found Scoma's Sausalito that was waterfront dining.  Oh my!!!  Lovely area, couldn't find street parking-but paid only $12 for a public lot-which we felt was great! The restaurant was wonderful, relaxing and our food was good.  Great beginning to our trip! Al drank a huge coffee to keep him going!!!

This was our view of San Francisco from our lunch table.

We had made a 4PM reservation at Domaine Carneros Winery.  The thing I liked about this winery is that they are open a bit later than most wineries, and we weren't completely sure on time, as with flights you just never know.  We ended up arriving at 3:30.  This castle is flat out gorgeous, with lovely gardens everywhere.  Still a blue sky day, so that was awesome.  The wine...meh.  This was an outdoor tasting on the lovely patio. We tried the sparkling flight and the red flight.  The red was better than the sparkling, but nothing that was anywhere near as good as Finger Lakes wines.  So far...not too impressed with the wines, but the venue was fabulous.  Tasting was $45 each. 

Domaine Carneros is gorgeous!!

  

Red Flight tasting $45

15 minutes later we were checking into our hotel-Napa Winery Inn.  The neighborhood that this is in is serene.  The hotel itself is great-with staff that goes out of their way to make everyone feel welcome and happy. Breakfast was included! We originally were going to stay in Napa proper, on the river.  The cost would have been 3X (and no breakfast) what we ended up paying at Napa Winery Inn, and we were so happy with our decision.  Dinner that night was at Galpao Gaucho.  Hubby likes meat, and I have been to places like this before and ordered the salad bar only.  The staff was great!  It was  a quiet Monday night-so we had lots of time to chat with them.  The place is very expensive...but 10 steps from our hotel worked great for a night that we had been up for hours and hours already!!!

Our beautiful hotel for 3 nights

Platypus Bus that transported us to 3 wineries!

The following day we had booked a tour with Platypus Group Tour.  The best part of this tour is that it has only 12 people, and our van was set up so that we sat in horseshoe seating.  The goal was to socialize.  Al and I are very social people-so this was a great choice for us.  We have also done group tours for the Finger Lakes-and this one was so much better.  We visited 3 wineries-all small wineries that have tasting fees in the $20-$25 range.  All wineries on this tour refund the tasting fee if wine is purchased.  We did not purchase any wine on this day-but the wine was MUCH better than our first day of tasting.  

Benessere  Vineyards was our first stop.  It is an Italian varietals winery.  Very beautiful outdoor tasting area that was set up for our group of 12. Here we paid $25 and $40 for tasting.   We learned how to test grapes to see if they are ready to pick-since it was the beginning of harvest season.

                                                                    

Stop #2 was at H.L.R Cellars. This winery is very small, and the owner has a degree from Cornell (Finger Lakes Wine Country). We had a picnic lunch here provided by Platypus and tasted and learned about wines. Tasting was $25 per person.  The tasting was inside. We really liked this wine a lot, but did not buy. He also does olive oil that was great! We have all of the info to buy online at any time...and we may!

Steve Heller, the owner and winemaker from H.L.R. Cellars

Our final stop was Merryvale. Very upscale, beautiful place that has a cask room that is stunning.  It was the first winery built in 1933 after prohibition.  I think that we paid $25 for tasting...original price is $50, but discounted since we were traveling with Platypus. This was also an inside tasting.  Our Platypus tour was $129 each, with of course tipping to our driver as well as to each winery.

The set up for our group of 12...very elegant

Ireland, Switzerland, NY, Ohio, Michigan, 

and Florida...all having a great day!!!

For dinner that night we walked to Fume Bistro...locally sourced, and our favorite dinner of the trip.  The tables are very close together, but by fortunate luck we ended up next to a couple that own a winery.  They no longer make wine, just sell grapes.  That is currently not going well at all-as people are not drinking as much wine as they were, so wineries are making less wine, thus buying less grapes.  We know that some Finger Lakes wineries do source grapes from California...We felt so badly for the vineyard owners (they were in late 70's or 80's) as they watch their livelihood shrivel on the vines. They are also having trouble getting people to harvest-when the grapes are ready, it sometimes does not match up with the ability to get workers. We do not hear these stories in the Finger Lakes, as the vineyards are MUCH smaller, and many times a family is able to have the ability to pick their own grapes.  In Napa-harvest is a huge time of large groups of workers going from vineyard to vineyard and picking overnight with lights on the field when it is cooler. 

Wednesday we hired Laura from My Napa Valley Driver who drove our rental car and took us to 3 wineries. Such a perfect day with Laura. She was very sweet, and knew so much!! We started with the touristy "Welcome to Napa Valley" sign.  Although individual wineries in the Finger Lakes have signs appropriate for pictures-we do not have huge Finger Lakes Wine Country signs.

 Our first winery was  Reverie II which was our favorite winery that we went to of the 7 that we experienced.  Our tasting was outdoors in a space surrounded by couches and comfortable seating.  The view was breathtaking, and the wine was excellent.  Joshua was our sommelier, and he took us by ATV up the hill to the top of the mountain for another taste of wine-complete with even more spectacular views.  In 2020 there were very bad fires that edged their property.  No vineyards or buildings were burned, but all grapes had to be tossed due to smoke taint. Although it used to be $85 to taste-they are no longer charging a tasting fee.  We tipped him well, and bought 3 bottles of wine that are being shipped to our home.  

Tasting area...with gorgeous views all around

Top of the hill serenity

View from the top!

Stop #2 was Rombauer. It's a nice winery-large, nice views and gardens.  We had a reserved outdoor table, but needed to go up to the serving station for each wine taste.  We did walk thru the gardens, and went into the cave but could not explore the cave.  This is a large winery, that has a presence in the area.  I would say they have a fairly large overhead. Laura brought us a charcuterie tray that we ate here with our wine tasting. You are able to bring in food from outside, and many were having picnics on the grounds. 

View from Rombauer

Charcuterie tray created by Laura!!

Our final winery was Pride Mountain Vineyards.  Amazing!  This winery is located in both Sonoma County as well as Napa County, and when they bottle wine they must indicate what % of grapes comes from each area.  The views are incredible here, and we had a picnic lunch overlooking the hills and vineyards.  The tasting took place in the caves-and that was really fun.  We walked thru the caves, and randomly stopped to taste.   We bought wine here and brought it home in our checked luggage.  The wine was absolutely delicious and we paid way more than double what Cab Sav would be in Fingerlakes...but this was that much better and worth the cost.  We also bought a fantastic Merlot for our niece.

This was our incredible  view as we ate lunch.

Listing the % of where grapes were sourced on every bottle. 

One more stop before going home was taking Laura to Gott's Roadside for ice cream and milkshakes.  It is a cute place-popular in the Napa Valley.  It is a James Beard award winning restaurant with organic ice cream!!

Dinner that night was at Don Giovanni's.  Wonderful Italian Restaurant about 1 mile from our hotel.  The outside dining area was gorgeous...with a jungle feel.  Good food!!

The last day of our vacation was a Thursday, and we got up early at 5AM to go on a Hot Air Balloon ride!!  We booked last minute on Tuesday with Aloft, as Al was really not wanting to go for the entire year that I had been asking him!!! At the last minute he changed his mind-and off we went for a sunrise balloon ride.  Amazing...10 in our basket with Farrell as the pilot who had 40 years under his belt. We were in the air over an hour watching the sun rise.  This was our favorite part of the entire time in Napa Valley-and in my opinion (and Al's) something that is a must do in Napa. Had coffee and pastries at Bouchon Bakery.

I'm overdressed.  It's 10 degrees warmer up in the sky...who knew??

One of the other balloons floating around with us

Sunrise was incredible being 2300 feet up in the sky

We checked out of our hotel, and headed to Oxbow Public Market.  We were there about 10:00, and quite a few places hadn't opened yet.  We ate at Loveski Deli...which is a Jew-ish Deli.  It was only OK...

From there we drove over the Bay Bridge (very crowded) and  went to see our niece in Burlingame, very close to the airport.  We had a red-eye home at 10:45 PM.

We always buy towels from our vacations-easy to pack!!

We absolutely loved our trip, and learning about the Napa Valley.  I think we did a good job of trying out all of the touristy things that one should do when in Napa.  We were blessed with amazing warm, sunny, blue sky weather the entire trip-which did not hurt at all!! We were sad to see a lack of tourists.  Although we traveled during the week when it is expected to see less travelers, all of the wineries told us that their foot traffic is definitely down. They remained optimistic...but eventually things will have to get better for them to stay in business. 

Both Napa and the Fingerlakes are wonderful places to visit and experience good wine.  Each area has wine that they do very well-and we feel strongly that both areas have a place on each coast of our nation. Napa does red better, the Fingerlakes do white better. After thinking about comparing the two areas, I do need to give the nod to Fingerlakes for a couple of reasons.  It is much easier to drive around to wineries.  Since some wineries have small vineyards there might be 3 wineries in a 5 mile stretch of a country road.  Napa had vineyards everywhere that you could see.  It was absolutely beautiful...but makes it trickier to drive from one to the next.   The other thing is that Fingerlakes overall are much cheaper than Napa. Hubby and I can share a $15 tasting, then have a glass of wine in that same winery in the Finger Lakes.  In Napa, only some wineries can do tastings as well as serve a glass of wine.  We enjoy tasting, then having a full glass.  The only winery that we could do that at was Rombauer. But...wine is amazing wherever you get to experience and we were very glad to be able to go out to the west coast to see what people have been talking about!!

Most places mentioned here were reviewed in detail by me on Trip Advisor.  Travel tip: arriving early (11AM) and departing late on a red-eye (10:45 PM) gave us 4 full days in Napa with only a three-night hotel stay.  For us, it was the right amount of time.  Also, traveling during the week avoids any crowds at all, if you enjoy talking with the locals and learning about an area!