Napa Valley in November: Why Off-Season Is the Best Time to Go

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Napa Valley in November is the valley with the crowds gone and the winemakers back in the tasting room. Harvest wraps in late October, the vines turn red and gold along Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail, and the hotels that were turning people away in September start quoting rates that would have been unthinkable eight weeks earlier. The trade calls it Cabernet Season, a name Visit Napa Valley attached to the stretch from November to April, and the only honest argument against it is the chance of rain.

That chance is real but manageable. November is the month the valley’s weather turns, with daytime highs typically in the low to mid 60s and the first serious rain of the season arriving at some point, often late in the month. Mornings are cold and foggy; afternoons are clear more often than not. Pack a proper coat and the trade-off is a valley that works better in every other respect: quieter tasting rooms, better tables and the chance of an unhurried hour with the person who made the wine.

What Napa Valley in November actually looks like

By early November the fruit is in and most of it is through fermentation. Cellars are busy with pressing and barrelling down, which means a visit then shows you the part of winemaking most tourists never see. Ask when booking whether the winery is still working; several will walk you through the cellar when a September visit would have kept you on the terrace. The vineyards themselves are at their most photogenic from about the first week of November to Thanksgiving, after which the leaves drop and the rows go bare.

Fall is also release season. Many Napa producers ship their new Cabernet vintage to mailing-list members in September and October, and by November the tasting rooms are pouring it. This is the month to taste the new release next to a library vintage.

The week of Thanksgiving is the exception to the quiet. Thursday 26 November fills the valley’s restaurants with family bookings, and Yountville’s holiday lights go on that weekend. Book the holiday week well ahead or, better, come the week before or the first two weeks of December.

Wineries worth booking in the off-season

Appointments are the rule in Napa, and in November they are easier to get and longer. These are the visits that reward a quieter calendar.

• Schramsberg Vineyards, Calistoga: the cave tour through hand-dug tunnels dating to the 1870s is cool and damp whatever the weather, and the sparkling wines are a good antidote to a day of Cabernet.
• Chateau Montelena, Calistoga: the stone château of the 1976 Judgment of Paris, with the Chardonnay and Estate Cabernet that are still the point; the grounds and the Chinese garden are quieter in November than at any other time.
• Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Stags Leap District: the other Paris winner, and a tasting of Fay and S.L.V. side by side is a lesson in how two adjacent vineyards differ.
• Frog’s Leap, Rutherford: organic, dry-farmed and relaxed; the Rutherford Cabernet and the Sauvignon Blanc are the ones to taste.
• Inglenook, Rutherford: the Coppola family’s restoration of the 1879 estate, with Rubicon as the flagship and the Niebaum history on the walls.
• Smith-Madrone, Spring Mountain: a drive up the mountain to a family winery whose dry Riesling is one of the valley’s quiet secrets.
• Larkmead Vineyards, Calistoga: a century-old estate making some of the valley’s most restrained Cabernet; the tasting room looks straight onto the vines.

Pace it at two visits a day. A November tasting runs long because nobody is waiting for your table.

Where to eat and where to stay

The restaurants are the other half of the case for the off-season. Reservations at the French Laundry in Yountville are released on a rolling basis and remain hard; they are less hard in November than in October. Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc down the road serves a set family-style menu that suits a cold night, and Ciccio, in a converted grocery on Washington Street, does the Napa trattoria idea better than most. In St. Helena, Press has one of the deepest Napa wine lists in the country, and The Charter Oak cooks over a wood hearth that earns its name in November. For lunch between tastings, Gott’s Roadside in St. Helena and the Oakville Grocery are the valley’s answer to the question of where to eat without a reservation.

Hotels are where the season shows in the price. Auberge du Soleil, above Rutherford, keeps its terrace lunch going in November and the view across the valley is clearer in cold air. Solage and Four Seasons Resort Napa Valley, both in Calistoga, put the town’s geothermal springs to use, which is the right idea for a wet afternoon. Alila Napa Valley in St. Helena, Bardessono in Yountville and Stanly Ranch at the southern end of the valley round out the top tier. Rates fall in November, but Thanksgiving week is priced as high season.

How to plan around the weather

Build the itinerary so that rain does not ruin it. Cave tastings at Schramsberg and the underground cellars at several Stags Leap District wineries are rain-proof by design. Calistoga’s mud baths and hot springs are better in cold weather than in warm. And a wet day is the day to sit at a bar in downtown Napa or St. Helena with a flight and a plate of oysters, for which our guide to oyster season wine pairing has the right bottles.

Drive yourself if you can hold the line at two tastings a day; otherwise a driver is worth the cost, and in November the drivers are available. Fly into San Francisco or Oakland; the drive from either is about an hour and a half without traffic.

Bottles to bring home, or order ahead

Most wineries will ship to states that allow it, and a case ordered at the tasting room will usually arrive before you do. These are the Napa wines from the producers above that are widely distributed and worth tasting before you go.

• Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Artemis Cabernet Sauvignon: the house’s entry Cabernet, supple and cedar-scented, and a fair preview of the Stags Leap District style before you taste the estate wines. Shop it at Wine.com
• Chateau Montelena Napa Valley Chardonnay: the wine that won in 1976, still made in a leaner, less oaky register than most Napa Chardonnay. Shop it at Wine.com
• Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs: traditional-method Chardonnay from the Calistoga house that put California sparkling wine on the map; dry, citrus-driven and the right opener to a November dinner. Shop it at Wine.com
• Frog’s Leap Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon: dry-farmed Rutherford fruit, moderate alcohol and a savoury edge that makes it one of the valley’s more food-friendly Cabernets. Shop it at Wine.com
• Smith-Madrone Riesling: bone dry, mountain-grown and built to age; the wine that most surprises visitors who assumed Napa was Cabernet only. Shop it at Wine.com

For what to do with the Cabernet once it is home, our guide to stocking a cellar for winter covers storage and drinking windows. Go in November, bring a coat and book the cave.