Forbes Dream Vacation To Napa Valley

Napa Valley is one of our favorite Forbes dream vacation places to visit. The Napa Valley is a food and wine treasure trove but it offers a lot more than just wine and food. One of our last trips to Napa we took a hot air balloon ride over the valley, and had a relaxing spa treatment. For all the golfers, Napa Valley has great golf courses. Elena and I am are not good golfers, but my son Kenneth is, and we did have a great time golfing at the Chardonnay Golf Club.

We love visiting the big wineries for there beautiful architecture and gardens, but our favorite wineries are the small family wineries. The small wineries offer intimate tastings without the large crowds. These small wineries typically require you to call in advance and make reservations.

Our last visit to the Napa Valley was focused on some of our favorite wineries along the Silverado Trail. The Silverado trail runs on the east side of the valley and is outside of most of the towns and is therefore much quieter than Hwy. 49. The Silverado trail has a lot of bicycle riders, so be on the watch for them.

One of our favorite wineries to stop at is Del Dotto. There are two Del Dotto wineries in the Napa Valley, but our favorite is the original one off the Silverado Trail. This is one of the best places to do a cave tour. You will taste wines from different barrels, while walking through the dimly lit caves, and learning how different barrels effect the wine flavor. The cave tour may seem expensive at first, but is well worth the price. The pours here are very generous, and my best advice is to visit the caves with a limo driver.

Rutherford Hill winery has great tasting wine and beautiful picnic grounds. The winery is on Rutherford Hill and offers beautiful views of the Napa Valley. Rutherford Hill has many varietals but my favorite is their Merlot. They also have extensive caves with a great cave tour.

Some other great wineries along the Silverado Trail are, Duckhorn, Miners, Cuvaison, ZD and Harrison.  

With our Global Resorts Network membership we are able to use our travel club and stay in the Napa Valley at substantial discounts. When we were looking through travel clubs we found Global Resorts offered us the best deals with HUGE savings on travel deals. Now whenever we want to go on a Forbes Dream Vacation we check our travel directory for the hot travel deals finding the best travel deals.