My daughter found it before I did.

She is a serious wine enthusiast, and when she was researching Napa, she went looking for the old places rather than the famous ones. Larkmead is among the oldest in the valley, and that was enough to make her curious. She went. She came home and told me I had to go.

She was right, and I have been going back ever since.

You Arrive Through a Garden

The path up to the tasting room meanders, and it takes longer than it needs to, which is the first sign that somebody understood the assignment.

It is planted and beautifully kept, and it is alive. Bees everywhere. Monarchs. Hummingbirds working the blossoms without much concern for you. Lavender, and rosemary you can smell before you see.

I have walked into a great many tasting rooms in Napa. I have never walked into one through something like this. By the time you sit down you have already slowed to the pace of the place, and you did not have to be told to.

What Makes It Different

Photo - Mary Madore-Hickey - Remarkable wine tasting experience.

I had spent enough time in Napa by then to know the rhythm of a valley tasting room. You book, you arrive, you stand at a bar or sit at a long table with strangers, you are moved along kindly but firmly, and an hour later, you are back in the car. The wine is often wonderful. The experience is a queue.

Larkmead is not that.

We sat outside on a patio, on soft couches and chairs, with the vines in front of us. It was just the person pouring and us. No bar, no crowd, no one waiting for our seats. The vines we were looking at were nearly ready to harvest, which is the sort of thing you notice only when you are given enough time to look at anything at all.

Photo: Mary Madore-Hickey - This is where we had our wine tasting. It was super comfortable and unrushed.

That is the whole difference, and it is not a small one. The valley has a great deal of excellent wine and very little unhurried time. Larkmead has both.

The Wine

I had been drinking a good deal of Paso Robles wine, and Paso reds are their own animal. Heavy. Earthy. Dark and rich and complex. I love them. But you know exactly what you are getting when you lift the glass.

Larkmead surprised me. The reds were lighter than I expected, and beautifully balanced. Less weight, more structure. They ask something different of you.

The variety is what kept us. There is a real range in what they pour, which meant the tasting kept moving rather than settling into a single note. We loved that.

By the end of the afternoon, we had joined the membership.

The Pickup Parties

This is the part nobody tells you about, and it may be the best thing they do.

Members come for the release pickups, and they are not a formality. Rows and rows of food and wine to taste. Music. Casual seating scattered across the property. People stay for hours because there is no reason to leave.

If you are the sort of person who joins a wine club and then feels vaguely obligated to collect your allocation, this will reset your expectations. It is a party on a beautiful piece of land, and it is one of the genuine pleasures of the year.

If You Go

Photo: Mary Madore-Hickey - Just steps away you can take a look at what is growing. These are Cabernet grapes ready to harvest.

Book ahead. This is not a place you walk into, and the small scale that makes it lovely also makes it limited.

Give it more time than you think you need. The point of Larkmead is the unhurriedness, and if you schedule it between two other wineries you will have paid for the experience and then declined to have it.

Wear something you can walk in. The ground is uneven and you will want to wander.

And if you have a single day in Napa and you are choosing between the famous names and this one, choose this one. The famous names will be there next time, and they will be crowded then too.

Photo: Mary Madore-Hickey - Gorgeous relaxing scenery

The day we visited, we saw hummingbirds, monarch butterflies, and much more.

Photo: Mary Madore-Hickey - Meandering gardens where saw numbers of monarch butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees.

““A perfect destination to slow down and be in the moment” ”

Photo: Mary Madore-Hickey - These are Cabernet grapes ready to harvest.

Photo: Mary Madore-Hickey - A lovely covered pergola on the grounds.

““Wine rejoices the heart of man, and joy is the mother of all virtues.””

— Anonymous

There is a kind of place that gives you back the afternoon you spent on it, and they are rarer than they should be. Larkmead does that. You arrive through the garden, you sit down in front of the vines, and somewhere in the middle of it you stop checking the time. My daughter found it and I have been going back ever since, and I suspect I will keep going back for as long as there is a reason to be in that valley. It is not the wine, though the wine is very good. It is the hour it gives you, and how quietly it hands it over.