{"id":1203,"date":"2019-02-27T18:25:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T18:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1203"},"modified":"2019-02-27T18:25:39","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T18:25:39","slug":"visiting-st-helena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1203","title":{"rendered":"Visiting St. Helena"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re out wine tasting, travelling from winery to winery and taking the vineyard views, it\u2019s easy to forget that real people live there, buying food and hardware, getting their clothes cleaned and generally living ordinary American lives.\u00a0 When we go to Wine Country, we always try to see some of the local life as well as the wines.\u00a0 That\u2019s true overseas in places like in the city Bordeaux and the village of Montalcino, though those are tourist destinations in themselves.\u00a0 In Napa Valley, it\u2019s St. Helena.<\/p>\n

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The Richie Block.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Noe Hill Travels.<\/em><\/p>\n

St. Helena has a unique charm.\u00a0 We have found it a worthwhile to interrupt our wine tasting adventures to take an hour or two to look around this town.\u00a0 A portion of the only street of note (Main Street, also known as Route 29 and also Route 128) is a registered Historic District.\u00a0 There are several restaurants, a few tasting rooms (which we have never tried), and then the usual: a few grocery stores, clothing shops, a movie theater, jewelers and some offices.\u00a0 In other words, St. Helena is just like everywhere. \u00a0Except there\u2019s this architecture, with 34 buildings of note.\u00a0 Particularly notable are the Richie Block, a fine Victorian structure built in 1892 and the St. Helena Star building, from 1900.<\/p>\n

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The St. Helena Star Building.<\/em>\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Noe Hill Travels.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s this really neat hardware store (Steve\u2019s, no relation) where we\u2019ve often found something or other that was just what we needed and couldn\u2019t find at home.\u00a0 There was a nicer than usual champagne preserver, a salt grinder, some random cookware all at lower prices than at fancier cookware stores.<\/p>\n

Many of the \u201cdowntown\u201d restaurants are quite good.\u00a0 We have enjoyed lunch at Market, which specializes in the classics of American cuisine with a bit of a Wine Country twist.\u00a0 Sure, they have a burger, but the beef is from an \u201call-natural\u201d butcher and the cheese is from a special farm in Modesto.\u00a0 In fact, that summarizes St. Helena: It\u2019s just like everywhere, except it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

There is one eatery in St. Helena that is a must for visiting wine tasters.\u00a0 Just south of the commercial district is Gott\u2019s Roadside, the place<\/em> for burgers and fries.\u00a0 Oh, they have other things too, but stick with the Americana.\u00a0 You sit outside, under umbrellas, and order from a window.\u00a0 It\u00a0\u00a0 If you want to feel like you\u2019ve gone back in time for a great burger, this is your place.<\/p>\n

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Photo courtesy of Gott\u2019s<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>One nice thing about stopping in St. Helena is that you are very near to many of the wineries you might want to visit.\u00a0 Beringer<\/a> is just five minutes away by car (20 on foot).\u00a0 Markham and St. Clement are just a bit further.\u00a0 The grand buildings give evidence that St. Helena has long been an important town, even before wine became a major business in itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re out wine tasting, travelling from winery to winery and taking the vineyard views, it\u2019s easy to forget that real people live there, buying food and hardware, getting their clothes cleaned and generally living ordinary American lives.\u00a0 When we go to Wine Country, we always try to see some of the local life as … Continue reading Visiting St. Helena<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1207,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions\/1207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}