{"id":2438,"date":"2023-08-29T17:42:12","date_gmt":"2023-08-29T17:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2438"},"modified":"2023-08-29T17:44:12","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T17:44:12","slug":"napa-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=2438","title":{"rendered":"Napa Town"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you travel up the Napa Valley, you drive through several small towns, including Yountville<\/a>,\u00a0St. Helena<\/a> and Calistoga.\u00a0 They are charming, but they are generally one main street, four or five blocks long, that feature restaurants, tasting rooms and galleries.\u00a0 They are not small cities.\u00a0 But at the bottom of the valley there is the town of Napa.\u00a0 With a population of nearly 80,000 people, Napa is a small city with all the plusses and minuses the term implies.<\/p>\n

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The view from the Napa River.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Hotels.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Napa has a distinct downtown of about thirty square blocks.\u00a0 Unlike the other towns mentioned, there is a definite urban feel to Napa.\u00a0 At one time, not so long ago, there wasn\u2019t much to interest the visitor.\u00a0 Those days are long past.\u00a0 Today there is a vibrancy there that owes a lot to wine tourism, of course, but also to some civic decisions to make the town more attractive to visitors.\u00a0 Alas, this has resulted in nearly impossible parking near places you might want to go, although valets and large parking lots have eased the situation.<\/p>\n

In 2015, we wrote about wine tasting at Napa\u2019s in-town tasting rooms<\/a>.\u00a0 The overall tone was, well, less than exultant.\u00a0 There weren\u2019t many places to go and the quality was spotty.\u00a0 At last count, there are now about thirty places in downtown Napa where you can have a tasting.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t visited all of them by any means, but we can say that there are some fine wines to be tried there.\u00a0 Some of the better known labels are Alpha Omega, Buena Vista and Mayacamas.<\/p>\n

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The Oxbow Public Market.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Candlelight Inn.<\/em><\/p>\n

We have written before about the Oxbow Public Market.<\/a>\u00a0 It falls somewhere between a tourist attraction and a local food and wine resource.\u00a0 A bit away from the downtown area (or maybe now an extension of it), the market is certainly worth visiting, both for wine tasting and dining or both together.\u00a0 And the views of the city are superb.<\/p>\n

Napa is the seat for the county.\u00a0 Therefore, there are all the public services there such as the county government, police and fire departments.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0In that same vein, it\u2019s where you will find doctors, dentists and barbers.\u00a0 It is unlikely you will need them and they aren\u2019t among the reasons for which you would visit Napa, but it\u2019s good to know where they are, just in case.<\/p>\n

Much of the renaissance of Napa Town has been led by the restaurants, of which there are many.\u00a0 We have long had our standbys, including The Bounty Hunter<\/a> and Cole\u2019s Chop House.\u00a0 We also like to experiment with new places, and as with all experiments sometimes we have been happy and sometimes not.\u00a0 As with much of California, there is a large Mexican population in Napa, so there are now several Mexican restaurants.\u00a0 In fact, as you drive into town along Soscol Avenue, you will see truck after truck selling Mexican fare.<\/p>\n

If you are touring Napa Valley, you ought to include some time in Napa Town.\u00a0 As we have previously counseled, it is often a good idea to avoid Route 29<\/a> on weekends and spend time doing in-town tastings.\u00a0 For that, Napa should definitely be on your list.<\/p>\n

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As you travel up the Napa Valley, you drive through several small towns, including Yountville,\u00a0St. Helena and Calistoga.\u00a0 They are charming, but they are generally one main street, four or five blocks long, that feature restaurants, tasting rooms and galleries.\u00a0 They are not small cities.\u00a0 But at the bottom of the valley there is the … Continue reading Napa Town<\/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":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2442,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions\/2442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}