Toward the bottom of Oakville Grade as it approaches Highway 29, on Acacia Drive, a curving allée of a hundred gold-blooming ginkgo trees herald Far Niente Winery. The words, dolce far niente, are Italian for “the sweetness of doing nothing.”
Tucked into a hillside on the west side of Oakville, the winery was founded in 1885 by John Benson, a Gold Rush-era entrepreneur and uncle of the American impressionist painter, Winslow Homer. To design his monumental stone, gravity-fed winery, Benson hired his vineyard manager, a Scottish sea captain, Hamden McIntyre, who later became famous for creating the impressive Greystone, Trefethen and Inglenook wineries. Today, owned by the Nickle family, cloaked in Virginia creeper and wrapped in luxuriant gardens, the three-story building is a jewel of dormered windows, thick, sandstone block walls, arched vaults and massive oak doors.
Garden fanciers will enjoy the footpaths, where specimen trees
such as Lion's Head Maple, century-old redwoods and cork oaks,
saucer magnolias, feathery willows and several varieties of dogwoods
are on view. In the spring, thousands of bulbs and more than eight
thousand red and pink azaleas leap into bloom.
Guests at Far Niente are led through part of the 40,000 square-foot
aging caves, and into the Carriage House to see the classic automobiles
and motorcycles collected by the late Gil Nickel, from a Ferrari
500 Superfast and a 1961 Corvette roadster to a one-off, 1951 Ferrari
340 America.
Samples of the award-winning Far Niente wines––Chardonnays, Oakville Cabernet Sauvignons, and Dolce, a sumptuous, late harvest wine––are the final treats on the winery tour. Ask to see the oldest intact bottle of California wine in existence, a Far Niente Sweet Muscat, vintage 1886, enrobed in its original bottle, cork and label.
From here, you can plunge more deeply into the pleasures of the Napa Valley, or take the serpentine Oakville Grade over the mountain, west, to the Sonoma Valley.
The article on this page is adapted from the book, Backroads of the California Wine Country by Karen Misuraca (www.karenmisuraca.com), published by Voyageur Press.
Photo Credit: The pictures on this page are by Lisa Moore. www.studioponderosa.com