From the first pour to the last course, savoring the valley from morning to night
By Jody Robinson
There are weekends when you want to see and do everything, and then there are weekends when the real luxury is having nowhere you absolutely need to be.
For my husband Tim and me, a recent getaway to Napa Valley with friends was a little of both. We came for the wine, of course, but also for the food, scenery, conversation and the simple pleasure of lingering over a glass of Cabernet without watching the clock.
Our home base was the newly reimagined Casa Mani Resort Napa Valley, Curio Collection by Hilton (Hilton.com), a seven-acre resort just a mile from historic downtown Napa.
From the moment we arrived, Casa Mani felt less like a hotel and more like our own little Napa retreat. The property combines a polished, contemporary design with an easy wine-country sensibility. Its 203 rooms and suites offer warm, earthy interiors, teakwood accents, spa-inspired bathrooms, espresso machines and sommelier-style wine coolers. Select accommodations even have private patios with fire pits – exactly the sort of detail that encourages you to pour one more glass and stay awhile.
Our group quickly fell into the rhythm of the place: coffee and conversation in the morning, exploring during the day, then returning to Casa Mani to relax by the resort-style pool or meet for a drink. There’s also a fitness center and a full-service spa, complete with five treatment rooms, a relaxation lounge and hydrotherapy. The co-ed thermal circuit, with sauna, steam room and cold shower, makes a particularly tempting post-wine indulgence.
And then there is dinner.
An Evening at BOA
One of the best parts of staying at Casa Mani is not having to get back in the car after a day of tasting. We simply changed for dinner and headed to BOA Steakhouse, the resort’s candlelit steakhouse.
The atmosphere strikes just the right note for a friends’ weekend – upscale without feeling overly formal, with lantern light, intimate tables and the kind of setting that makes you want to settle in. BOA specializes in dry-aged prime steaks, thoughtfully chosen wines and classic steakhouse accompaniments, with the Napa Valley providing a particularly appropriate backdrop.
The menu goes well beyond a conventional steakhouse: think the tableside Caesar salad, one of BOA’s signature preparations, followed by a substantial steak such as the 15-day dry-aged bone-in ribeye or one of the Japanese A5 Wagyu selections. The menu also includes more distinctive starters such as Hokkaido scallops baked in the shell with garlic butter and breadcrumbs or the Wagyu meatball with pomodoro and crostini. For a memorable side, the “Boujee” twice-baked potato with crème fraîche, chives and Royal Select caviar gives the meal an appropriately indulgent Napa feel.
Dinner here became one of those meals where the food almost takes a back seat to the conversation. Almost.
Napa by Rail: Gourmet Express Lunch
There are plenty of ways to experience Napa Valley: settle into a tasting room, wander through a vineyard, linger over lunch beneath an olive tree. But there is something wonderfully nostalgic about seeing Wine Country from the window of a moving train.
The Napa Valley Wine Train (WineTrain.com) turns that nostalgia into a full-fledged experience. Departing from downtown Napa, the train travels a 36-mile round trip toward St. Helena and back, threading through vineyards, historic landmarks and some of the Valley’s most recognizable wine-growing landscapes. Rather than simply transporting passengers from one destination to another, the train makes the journey itself the destination.
And then there is the food. A welcome glass of sparkling wine sets the tone before the train eases out of the station and the first course arrives. Meals are designed as an integral part of the journey, with seasonal, locally inspired dishes served at a decidedly unhurried pace. The result is less like grabbing lunch between winery appointments and more like spending an afternoon at a restaurant whose dining room happens to be moving through Napa Valley.
Below the Vineyards at Rombauer
The Rombauer tour and tasting experience offers a unique opportunity to step into one of Napa Valley’s enduring family wine stories.
Rombauer Vineyards (Rombauer.com) traces its roots to 1972, when Koerner and Joan Rombauer moved their family to Napa Valley in search of a more agricultural, small-town way of life. The connection to food and wine was already part of the family story. Koerner’s great-aunt was Irma Rombauer, author of The Joy of Cooking, while his German ancestry reached back to the Rheingau wine region. In 1980, Koerner and Joan established their own winery, eventually releasing their first wines – Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay – in 1984.
Rombauer’s Napa Valley property sits on a knoll along Silverado Trail in St. Helena, with views toward the Mayacamas Mountains and gardens containing more than 100 varieties of plants and flowers. Our cave tour and tasting took us underground to see where the wines are crafted before concluding with a lovely portfolio tasting and chocolate pairing.
What makes Rombauer particularly memorable in the context of our earlier Wine Train experience is the contrast: one day is spent watching Napa roll past the windows of a historic railcar; the other is spent standing among the vineyards, barrels and gardens that give those wines their sense of place. Together, they transform wine tasting from a checklist of pours into a fuller understanding of Napa – its families, its landscape and the generations of winemakers who have helped shape the valley.
In the end, it was less about checking places off a Napa itinerary and more about savoring the Valley together. Long lunches stretched into lazy afternoons, glasses were raised, stories lingered a little longer, and the beauty of the landscape seemed to invite us to slow down. Napa has a way of making even a short getaway feel like a true escape – and sharing it with good friends made the experience all the more memorable.
