Napa's emerged as a new center for winetasting

By KEVIN COURTNEY
Register Staff Writer

In the blink of an eye, store fronts devoted to lingerie, deli sandwiches, sports memorabilia, household lighting, and yoga classes have disappeared from Napa’s downtown.

And in their place? Wine tasting, wine tasting, wine tasting. Downtown has become as almost as grapey as the Upvalley.

Craig Smith, executive director of the Napa Downtown Association, can’t quite believe downtown’s makeover as a place for tourists and locals to taste some of the best Napa Valley wines.

“I’d never have guessed 17 wine tasting rooms. I just didn’t realize that’s how it would work,” he said.

“By the time all this shakes out there will be 20 tasting rooms downtown,” predicts Thrace Bromberger, a partner in Gustavo Thrace winery and the operator of Napa Wine Merchants on First Street. “This is not the Napa we grew up in,” she said.

When all of the announced tasting venues are open, some 250 wines will be available for sampling each day within greater downtown, often for no charge or as little as 10 cents a taste.

Napa Valley wine tourism has taken a dramatic turn. Instead of making the obligatory drive Upvalley to the name wineries on Highway 29, Silverado Trail and the country lanes, visitors are now increasingly willing to forego inspecting the fermentation tanks and spiels about terroir.

Instead, they head right to the tastings rooms springing up in decidedly non-bucolic settings within a stone’s throw of Mervyn’s, the Salvation Army thrift store and the county jail.

“It’s urban, but it’s still Napa Valley,” said Garrett Murphy, who founded the Vintner’s Collective, a decidedly upscale tasting room on Main Street five years ago.

Why this influx? It comes down to economics, county restrictions on public tasting rooms in the unincorporated areas and downtown’s new luster as a tourist destination, Murphy said.

Many new winemaking ventures don’t have a building to call their own, he said. Even if they could afford a palatial winery amid vineyards, they wouldn’t be able to get a county permit for public tastings.

One alternative is to open a tasting room in the central business district, either stand-alone or as part of a cooperative venture with other wineries.

Adding to the critical mass of wine-themed venues are wine lounges and tasting bars run by non-winery retailers who want to tap a growing tourist market.

How things have changed, said Meryll Cawn, a sommelier at JV Wine & Spirits. Fifteen years ago, JV Wine & Spirits began offering wine tastings a few days a week from a small cart. Today, JV is preparing to debut an expanded wine bar at First and Silverado offering 35 wines by the glass in a store now selling 3,500 wines by the bottle.

After five years of scatter-shot marketing, Copia on First Street is striving to be THE place in wine country to taste and learn about wine. A visitor can now choose from a shifting array of 50 wines daily and experience match-ups with food.

When the Oxbow Public Market, a specialty retail marketplace, opens next-door this fall, one of its tenants, Oxbow Wine Merchant and Wine Bar, will be offering 25 wines by the glass with a deck overlooking the Napa River.

Three wineries will have already opened tasting rooms on the next block of First, hoping to capture part of the Copia-Oxbow Public Market vibe.

“For five or six years we were sort of the lone soldier on the island,” said Peter Marks, Copia’s senior director of wine and food. “I think the whole area has been galvanized as a true tourist destination.”

Tourism’s new frontier

“I think the stigma of downtown Napa is waning,” said Mark Pope, owner of the Bounty Hunter restaurant and wine bar on First.

The tourist hordes have not yet found downtown, but everything is moving in that direction, said Pope, citing the massive amount of flood control and private construction that has torn apart the downtown riverfront and is transforming vacant lots into hotels and office-retail centers.

“Similar to the Gold Rush, I think people are anticipating great things to come once this construction is done and people might have a place to park,” Pope said.

“We’re no longer on the wrong side of the tracks,” said Mary Jane Stevens, owner of Talley’s Decorating Center at the northwest corner of First and McKinstry streets, opposite the construction for Oxbow Public Market.

Talley, who owns her building, recently rented space to Mason Cellars for a wine tasting room and moved her decorating business off First to make room for a joint tasting room by Waterstone Winery and Mahoney Vineyards.

“I get pretty good rent on the First Street side of the business,” said Talley, explaining why she relocated to McKinstry.

It might behoove her to leave the neighborhood altogether and rent her current space to another wine operation or eatery, Stevens said. “I have a list of people wanting to lease my space,” she said. “Maybe I should have decorating with wine tasting.”

Buying her building 11 years ago was “the best investment I ever made,” Talley said. What was once a rundown neighborhood is now being transformed into the tourism’s new frontier. Her investment has more than quadrupled in value, she said.

Megan Mason of Mason Cellars said she and her husband considered locating their tasting room in Yountville, then decided on Napa’s Oxbow. “I just felt it was the next place” for tourism, she said.

The success of downtown’s restaurants, which buzz nearly seven nights a week, demonstrates that tourists can find downtown Napa when they have reason to, Mason said.

The new Westin hotel on McKinstry, the prospect of a Ritz-Carlton opposite Copia and a five-story hotel next to McCaulou’s department store bode well for wine-themed businesses, said Eric Gordon, who opened Stave wine lounge on First 17 months ago.

“I don’t look at ourselves as part of the downtown wine tasting movement. I look at ourselves as part of the downtown night life movement,” Gordon said.

Stave stays open until 10 p.m., which gives tourists a place to go after the sun goes down, Gordon said. Locals who stop in after work or as part of dinner out are a mainstay of his business, he said.

Despite the profusion of tasting rooms, most operators concede that crowds are thin most days, with spikes near the weekend. On a slow day, some tasting rooms get only a handful of customers.

Shahin Shahabi, owner of Stonehedge winery, will open his tasting room at Main and Clinton streets next month with the expectation of modest foot traffic at first.

That’s OK, said Shahabi, since the back of his store front doubles as his business office, which defrays his investment.

“Our business plan fully expects that the first couple of years will be difficult,” said Peter Granoff of Oxbow Wine Merchant and Wine Bar, who calls himself “a big believer in the long-term trajectory of downtown Napa.”

“My guess is in five to seven years we’ll look back and say ‘wow,’” Granoff said.

“All the energy used to be Upvalley,” said Al Jabarin, owner of Calwines at First and Silverado. “It’s due for Napa.”

Because he expects to be displaced by the Ritz-Carlton, Jabarin has bought a building on Main Street, just north of Stonehedge’s tasting room, for his retail operation and expanded wine tasting.

Will tourists venture that far north on Main? “I’m betting on that,” Jabarin said.

Just as the restaurants are drawing wine tasting venues, in time downtown’s will have more stores, said Smith of the Napa Downtown Association.

Although wine tasting sites are occupying prime real estate, planned commercial developments on Main and First streets will be creating a significant amount of new retail space, he said.

“Downtown is becoming hospitality,” said Jim Henry, a commercial Realtor who will be working to lease new commercial space on Gasser Foundation land in south Napa.

Downtown will be the place where locals and tourists eat and drink and do specialty shopping, he said. Napa’s other centers will meet residents’ everyday shopping needs.

Gary Van Dam, a commercial Realtor with Coldwell Banker Commercial, said he knows of two or three wineries that are looking to establish tasting rooms in downtown.

“I think it will be five to 10 years before downtown is really a booming, thriving place,” said the Vintner’s Collective’s Murphy. A downtown doesn’t transform itself overnight, he said.

“We may lack the vineyards,” said Mark Jardarian, manager of the Wineries of the Napa Valley tasting room in Napa Town Center, “but once they’re in the tasting room they have a quality time.”

“My independent feeling is that downtown Napa can really kick butt,” he said.

17 wine tasting venues in Downtown Napa

Backroom Wines, 974 Franklin St., wine store. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The Bounty Hunter, 957 First St., restaurant and wine bar. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to midnight.

Calwines, 1215 Silverado Trail, retail store. Tastings on Friday-Saturday, 2-6 p.m. Calwines will be opening a tasting room at 1317-1323 Main St.

Copia, The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, 500 First St. $5 admission. Every day but Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

JV Wine & Spirits, 301 First St., retail store and wine-beer tasting. Tasting bar currently closed for remodeling.

Mason Cellars, 714 First St., winery tasting room. Thursday-Monday, 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Napa General Store, 500 Main at Napa Mill. Wine tasting daily, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Napa Wine Merchants, 1146 First St., winery tasting rooms. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Robert Craig Cellars, winery tasting room, 880 Vallejo St. Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Oxbow Wine Merchant and Wine Bar, 610 First St. Opening this fall in Oxbow Public Market.

Rocca Family Vineyards, 1130 Main St., winery tasting room. Monday-Saturday, 1-6 p.m.

Stave Wine Lounge, 1149 First St. Monday-Saturday, 3-10 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.

Stonehedge Winery, 1004 Clinton St., winery tasting room opening in September. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Vintner’s Collective, 1245 Main St., shared winery tasting room. Wednesday-Monday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday by appointment.

Waterstone Winery/Mahoney Vineyards, 710 First St. Winery tasting room to open this fall.

Wineries of the Napa Valley, 1285 Napa Town Center, shared winery tasting room. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

X Winery, 1405 First St., winery tasting room. By appointment only. 204-9522.

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