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THEPRESS.NET
EAST COUNTY LIFE
APRIL 8, 2011
Rails from page 1B If at first glance the Wine Train strikes you as an amusement ride for tourists, join the club. As one who doesn’t need to be railroaded into the veneration of Bacchus, I considered the Wine Train a potentially pleasant but existentially unnecessary feature of the Napa landscape – right up to the moment I stepped aboard. It didn’t take long to arrive at the glaringly obvious: the Wine Train is way too much fun to be monopolized by tourists. That the Wine Train team doesn’t miss a step is best demonstrated by my lone complaint about the trip: I couldn’t find anything significant to complain about. Having hung around food and wine in the fine-dining industry for a couple decades, and now as a journalist on constant lookout for muck to rake, I assumed the inevitable chinks in the Wine Train armor would give me something to carp about. So curmudgeons beware: the following is an exposé. But what’s getting exposed is embarrassingly upbeat. And in case you’re wondering – no, it wasn’t the alcohol. My Wine Train experience was underway long before I set foot on the platform. From the comfort of the phalanx of couches in the station’s main room, Leia and I were served an appetizer of inside info by wine educator Mike Delacy, who imparted facts about the geological marvel that is Napa Valley (boasting 120 soil types scattered throughout several microclimates) plus tips on maximizing our experience of wine – tips we more than dutifully observed while swirling, sniffing and sipping the real thing. Delacy’s bottom line: we should “simply feel good about ON THE COVER: Splendid cuisine and wine served in an elegant setting enhanced by panoramic vineyard vistas are standard rail fare aboard the Napa Valley Wine Train. Photo by Trenton McManus
Photo by Ger Erickson
From his post in the dessert/wine tasting car, Wine Train educator Larry Dougherty pours a dessert wine to perfectly complement a grand-finale crème brûlée. having a glass of wine.” FEAST FOR THE EYES Our lunch train got rolling at 11:30 a.m. sharp, crept through downtown Napa and swept gently into the silver and black of bare vines counterpointed by the gold and violet of cover crops – some only 50 feet from my window in the Le Gourmet Express car. I’d driven the northerly route into the valley many times, low to the ground along the main drags of
Route 29 and Silverado Trail. Now, as a passenger perched high above the track bed, I seized the opportunity to savor the scenery. Fog laced the pine-spiked hills behind Dominus and Cosentino wineries. Below, a sea of vine rows in uniform waves lapped the shores of archipelagos of architecture enclosing presses, tanks, crushers and barrels. The Wine Train’s interior is a study in the opulence of late 19th-century luxury
rail. Our dining car was paneled in Honduran mahogany accented with brass. The deep gold of velveteen curtains and valences framed the windows. We sank into embroidered armchairs at a table dressed in white linen and topped with a white-shaded, silver lamp and silver vase embellished with long-stemmed flowers. Behind my chair rose a glass partition see Rails page 3B