Napa Valley, California

San Francisco International Airport is 90 minutes from Napa Valley by private car (the preferred arrival method). Yountville, in the heart of the valley, is the epicenter of Napa's restaurant scene and one of America's most extraordinary small towns — a single mile of main street with more Michelin stars per capita than any place on earth. Check in and take a late afternoon stroll through the Yountville vineyards as the valley turns gold. For the first evening, a glass of the property wine on your hotel terrace at sunset is the correct orientation —kat the specific quality of evening light in Napa, with the valley floor vineyards and the Mayacamas Mountains behind, is one of California's great landscape experiences. Dinner at Bouchon Bistro (Thomas Keller's French bistro in Yountville) for a first taste of the culinary standard.

A hot air balloon flight over Napa Valley at dawn is one of the quintessential Napa experiences — the valley in the early morning, with the fog lingering at the valley floor, the vineyards in their rows, and the morning light on the Mayacamas and Vaca Ranges, is extraordinary from above. Napa Valley Balloons and Balloons Above the Valley both operate from various launch points; the 60-minute flight typically includes a post-flight champagne breakfast in a vineyard or at a winery. In the afternoon, visit Opus One Winery —kat the prestige joint venture between Robert Mondavi and the Baron Philippe de Rothschild, producing one of America's most celebrated and most expensive red wines in a spectacular modern building designed to disappear into the hillside. The tour and reserve tasting at Opus One is one of California's great wine experiences.

The French Laundry is America's most celebrated restaurant and one of the world's best — Thomas Keller's three-Michelin-star kitchen in a stone cottage in Yountville, where the 9-course tasting menu changes daily and the precision, creativity, and produce quality represent the peak of American fine dining. Reservations are available online 60 days in advance via Tock and sell out in minutes — book the moment the window opens. The experience: arriving at the white picket fence, the herb garden visible through the window, the extraordinary sequence of small, perfect courses over 3-4 hours. Even if The French Laundry is unavailable, Yountville's restaurant mile includes Per Se alumni Bouchon Bakery (the best coffee croissant in California), Ad Hoc (Thomas Keller's fried chicken restaurant), and the Râ&G Lounge team's Maïa. The Napa Valley Museum at Yountville fills the morning with wine country context.

Rutherford and Oakville in the center of the Napa Valley produce the most concentrated and celebrated Cabernet Sauvignon in California. Beaulieu Vineyard (BV) has been making Napa Cab since 1900 — the Georges de Latour Private Reserve is a California icon. Inglenook Winery (formerly Rubicon Estate, owned by Francis Ford Coppola) is a magnificent restored Victorian-era stone winery with an extraordinary tasting room and tour. Quintessa Winery in Rutherford is one of Napa's most artfully designed estates, a semicircular stone building in the hillside with a tasting that emphasizes the terroir philosophy of its winemaking. Lunch at Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch in St. Helena — a farm-to-table restaurant using ingredients grown on the estate itself, with a vegetable garden visible from the dining room and one of the most honest and delicious lunches in Napa.

Sonoma County, neighboring Napa to the west, produces America's finest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast appellations. The town of Healdsburg (90 minutes from Yountville) is Sonoma's answer to Yountville — a beautiful central plaza surrounded by tasting rooms, boutique hotels, and restaurants of the highest quality. Williams Selyem Winery in Healdsburg — the cult Pinot Noir producer whose waiting list for membership lasted a decade —kat now offers reservation-only tastings. Hirsch Vineyards on the Sonoma Coast produces some of California's most dramatic Pinot Noir from windswept hilltop vineyards above the Pacific fog. Single Thread Restaurant in Healdsburg (three Michelin stars) is the best alternative to The French Laundry for a world-class tasting menu experience.

Calistoga at the northern end of the valley is Napa's spa and geothermal town — the volcanic activity that enriches the valley's soils also creates the hot springs and volcanic mud that have been the basis of Calistoga's spa tradition since the 1860s. A volcanic mud bath (Calistoga Spa Hot Springs or Indian Springs) is uniquely available here — immersion in warm volcanic mud mixed with peat and hot spring water, followed by a mineral bath and massage, is one of the most deeply relaxing spa experiences in North America. Indian Springs Calistoga, around the oldest thermal pool in California, is a National Historic Landmark. The northern valley's Howell Mountain and Diamond Mountain appellations produce some of Napa's most structured Cabernet Sauvignon — Reverie Winery on Diamond Mountain and Beatty Ranch on Howell Mountain for small-production mountain fruit.

SFO is 90 minutes from Napa Valley for international connections; OAK and SJC are closer for domestic US flights. A final morning walk through the Yountville vineyards — the Oakville Grocery on Highway 29 has been the valley's best wine shop and gourmet provisions store since 1881 and is the correct place to stock up: a case of mixed Napa wines from different producers at different price points, a jar of the Oakville Grocery's house-made olive tapenade, local artisan cheese from the Cowgirl Creamery, and the memory of a valley that produces the world's greatest Cabernet Sauvignon in a landscape of extraordinary beauty. Napa Valley is an entirely American success story and one of the world's great wine destinations.