Barry's Life in Napa Blog

It seems that I have three basic states of consciousness lately: Mildly dissatisfied Fully peevish Overly sentimental Oh, and I guess there is one more plane of existence for me - inebriated. Today I seem to be trending toward fully peevish, and it was all set off by what I overheard while on a lunch run yesterday. But let me start at the very beginning, that's a very good place to start. (Cue the music.) Having heard about the newest wine bar/tasting room to open in downtown Napa I popped in to check it out. (It's Gustavo Thrace in the Oxbow District, and you will be hearing a lot about Gustavo in the next few weeks with the opening of the new movie Bottle Shock . It's a movie about the 1976 Paris tasting, and he is portrayed in it.) After my visit I went to their website and noticed they had a blog, so I clicked over to that, too. It's not a real high energy blog - the most recent post is from December 2007 - but what I read was interesting: "Things we hate abou...

About three days ago, a restaurant by the name of Taylor's Automatic Refresher opened in Napa. This is the third Taylor's in the world - the original is about 20 miles north in St. Helena (that's the original in the photo), and the second one is about 45 miles south in San Francisco. The original Taylor's was a classic old roadside drive in burger joint. They probably had car hops back in the day. In 1999, these two brothers, Joel and Duncan Gott, bought the old place and restored it. (The Gott name is big these days. They have Palisades Market in Calistoga, and there's Joel Gott wine , too, which is a great value, and Joel is part of the Three Thieves label as well.) When they took over Taylor's, the menu was reworked to reflect a contemporary Napa Valley food and beverage perspective. What that means is, you can get a chil cheese dog for $4.99, or you can get the Ahi Burger with ginger wasabi mayo for $13.99. You can get a $3.99 grilled cheese sandwich (Amer...

Yesterday was a big day in little old Napa. We had the long-awaited opening of Whole Foods, and Bill Clinton was in town. I made the scene at both events, and personally speaking, the former was more exciting than the latter. It's Whole Foods 25th store in California, and it's been a long time coming. For years there have been stores in towns 25, 30, 40 miles away, and Napa had yet to feel the love and was developing an inferiority complex. (For those who aren't acquainted, Whole Foods is like a Wal Mart Super Center for patchouli-soaked people who wear Birkenstocks AND for tennis-playing second wives who drive a Lexus. Kind of a big deal.) So apparently we finally got the hippie-yuppie balance just right now, enough to bring the WF circus to town, and a foodie frenzy is underway. This new store is gigantic - a combination drug store, grocery store, wine shop, bakery, cafe, deli, coffee shop, even a music section. There's probably some aisle in there that has medicina...

We came to Napa in 1986. It was three years before the Berlin Wall came down and the Mare Island Shipyard was still a major employer, keeping our subs in shape to patrol for the Ruskies. Nobody had heard of base closures, and nobody could imagine that Napa Pipe would be closed down in less than a generation. There was still a tannery in business on Coombs Street back then. Napa had no Target stores and no In and Out Burger, let alone any high end restaurants. Brewster's Army-Navy Store was one of the downtown's star attractions, in fact, and people were just starting to get serious about restoring the Opera House. Fast forward a couple of decades, and you'd hardly recognize some parts of the downtown, and particularly the Oxbow district. The town the New York Times calls a "community of diners and bowling alleys" has passed the tipping point and the times they are a changin'. There are now 17 Zagat-rated restaurants in the downtown area alone, and 13 wine ba...

There's some kind of dolphin convergence going on in Napa this week. In my Google News Alert, I saw these two headlines: Dolphin spotted in Napa , CA river Former Dolphin spotted in Napa Story one is about appearance of one or more harbor porpoises in the river in the center of town, a good 3 or 4 miles inland from the Bay. I don't recall ever hearing about any porpoises in the Napa River before, although we do get the occasional sea lion, lots of yachts, and a dead body now and then. Story two is from the sports page, and something to do with somebody named Russell who plays football. The Oakland Raiders have their summer training camp in Napa, so that means for a couple of weeks each year we get a lot of sports media, silver and black looky-loos, and a dead body now and then. Having a porpoise in the river has gotten a lot of people excited. The Napa Valley Register even embedded some video on their site, which I believe is a first for them. The line between print and broa...

You might have heard Conan O'Brien was in the Bay Area last week, and his visit included a trip to Napa Valley. Does the premium wine business still have a problem with being perceived as snooty?You tell me after you watch these videos.

Back in about 1987, KRON-TV discovered the delicious irony of a homeless problem in Napa. (Great in-depth story here on the days when KRON had a real newsroom.) Imagine! Homeless people in Napa, where each and every citizen receives a volcanic mud scrubdown and bathes in milk each morning, and breakfasts on Beluga caviar and truffles before being carried in a litter to their chateaus, where they oversee the production of their $100 per bottle boutique wines. (That's really the way it was back in '87. If you weren't living here then you really missed out.) Sylvia Chase, who was the star of Bay Area TV news at that time, oozed with indignation. "Some people here have so much, and you let these poor wretches live in the gutter - how I pity your souls." I am paraphrasing here. So flash forward 20 years and guess what? We still have the same problem, only there seem to be more of the them. And we have the same debate points - the homeless are local people, they grew ...

About once a month, I run across a news story about some place that may be "the new Napa." This means a place that has beautiful vineyard views and great wine, I guess, but also maybe spas, incredible restaurants, ballooning? I'm not sure what criteria writers use when coming up with the proposal that a place may be "the new Napa." Maybe by looking at some of these stories we'll understand. The New Napa Valley? Idaho wine region receives national grape-growing designation "Marketing wine works fine for southwest Idaho vintners, but will work better as word spreads about the area’s new nationwide designation. “The name Snake River Valley gives us that distinction,” said Neil Glancey, winemaker and general manager at Carmela Vineyards near Glenns Ferry. Carmela Vineyards has won national awards for its wines. Some people at the competitions would express surprise when they find out the wine was grown in Idaho, Glancey said." Mendoza, Argentina: The N...

In honor of one of my favorite days of the year, I invite you to join me in the Wayback Machine for a trip to the land of April Fools' memories. Back in the radio days, I learned that "funny phone" was an activity that could consistently yield results. Get somebody on the line, get them talking, and it might turn out good. April Fools Day was an opportunity to get some funny phone action going with a broader purpose - pranks. One way to do it was to ask the listeners to give me a setup - somebody they wanted a joke played on. The best of those came from some people at the local Fish and Game office. I called the victim and told him I was from PETA, and we had heard there had been a wine spill into a local creek. I got gradually more outraged as I told him about how all the wildlife was drinking from this creek and getting sloshed. He was so professional and sincere, he didn't even bat an eye when I mentioned "reports of drunk skunks and tipsy squirrels." The...

The Chronicle gave the Sunday front page above the fold to a story on how foodie bloggers are impacting restaurants with their reviews. If I were a restaurant owner or a chef, this trend would give me the willies. Here's why. I took a look at yelp.com as a test. There are pages on pages of restaurants listed and all the places have a 1 to 5 star rating. If you're looking at San Francisco, you will see many places that have 30 to 100 reviews posted. I would place some value on the collective rating of 30 people, whether we were talking about food, a movie, or a website, so if one of those places has 4 stars, I imagine it must be good. On the other hand, search for Napa and you find another long list of eateries, and they all have their star ratings. The difference is, many of them have been given this rating based on 3 reviews - some have only 2 reviews. Therein lies the rub. Imagine pouring your heart and soul into a restaurant and having your fortunes shaped by 3 anonymou...

Without doubt the harshest comments yet on the KFTY-TV "citizen journalism" experiment can be found here . (Warning: disturbing photo included in the post. At least it gave me the willies.) These people at KFTY have taken a sound beating since they announced their ploy. But it has lots of people paying attention to the outcome. If they somehow make it work, which is not likely, there will be a lot of unprofitable TV stations giving it a go. I suppose it's a little better than infomercials. Maybe. There's something a little disturbing about being served a cocktail by someone you once coached in Little League. That happened last evening, as I was enjoying a libation with members of the local cult I belong to. Turns out the barkeep there at n.v. (which has an excellent happy hour) looked familiar for a reason. And he does a fine job with the beverages. But still, I wanted to say "Weren't you 10 years old just the other day?" A little later, we ankled on ...

Recent news stories have noted that Napa County is statistically the scam capital of the US and A. The Napa Valley Register reported on it , as did the CoCo Times , CNN Money , and countless others. Not only did we have the highest per capita rate of reported identity theft ("We're number 1! We're number 1!") but Napa was third in per capita fraud cases. The stats are from reports to the FTC. (There's a fresh fraud story in today's Register . ) Consideration #1: anytime you see a statistic, peek under the hood. With this one, keep in mind it is a tally of reports to the FTC. There may be places where more fraud occurs but people don't report it. Consideration #2: despite skepticism of statistics, I think it may in fact be possible that Napa is home to a disproportionate number of wide-eyed, slack-jawed, just-fell-off-the-turnip-truck rubes who have safe deposit boxes stuffed with deeds to swamp land in Florida and WebVan stock certificates. (By the way, d...

This may look like just a big hole in the ground, but it's really a sign of the times and a sign of the future in downtown Napa. The old Wells Fargo location is becoming "Napa Square" - offices and retail space. They're digging out for the underground parking. That's City Hall in the background. Across the street from here the Inn at Town Center hotel will get underway in the spring. Half a block east the Zeller Building project is framing up. Over by the Wine Train depot they're going full tilt on the Westin hotel project, and the Oxbow Market is moving along. The big "Riverfront" project south of Third along the river will start this spring. After a prolonged adolescence, Napa is growing up.