Hello, welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Monday the 7th of July. You, like me,

might have a vague idea about the Napa Valley. It's one of those wine regions that is in California,

but many of us aren't entirely sure where it is, and furthermore, we don't know what we might see there,

and indeed much about the wine.

All that could change with the publication of Napa Valley, the Smart Travelers Wine Guide.

And to find out more about it, I'm joined by the publishing director of the Academy Duvain Library, Adam Lechmere.

Welcome, Adam.

Thank you very much, Simon.

Hello.

What is this book about and who is it for?

All the books in the series, The Smart Travelers Wine Guide.

This is a book for the wine tourist, the wine traveller and the wine

curious. So really it's a book for wine lovers and wine affinados and people who don't know

that much about wine but love to taste wine when they go to wine regions on holiday.

Now tell us about Napa Valley because it's just north of San Francisco over the other

side of the bay inland and what's so special about it. It's a small, contained valley. It's about

30 miles long and about five miles wide, with mountain ranges on either side. So the west,

you've got the Maya Camus range,

and over the other side of that, you have the Pacific Ocean. So Napa is about 20 miles away from

the Pacific Ocean. And crucially, yes, it's about two and a half hours north of San Francisco.

One of the crucial things about it is that it's cooled by the breezes that come up north

and are funneled up north from San Francisco, from San Pablo Bay.

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