Twenty years ago, on our first family holiday to a wine-producing region, we visited Limoux in the south of France. La Maison de la Blanquette, a restaurant on the main street, was then run by the wives of the winemakers but, during harvest, it was closed. This was no time for feeding visitors as everyone devoted themselves to the more immediate and physical demands of helping out in the vineyards and cellars.

Such annual rituals have changed, initially through the introduction of mechanical harvesters and then due as a result of growing popularity of visiting vineyards during harvest. I was reminded of this as I met chef/restaurateur Cindy Pawlcyn at the farmers’ market in St Helena in California’s Napa Valley.

One of Cindy Pawlcyn’s three restaurants in the Napa Valley

Pawlcyn has been cooking in Napa for the past 30 years and divides her time between three establishments – Mustard’s Grill, Go Fish, a restaurant and sushi bar, and Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen. Harvest, or “crush” as it’s known in North America, which usually lasts for a month from the end of September, is a particularly busy time for every restaurant in the valley.

Pawlcyn says, “It’s not just the growing interest in wine that makes these four weeks so hectic, it’s also a period when the kids are settled and back at school and the parents feel that they can get away for a night or two. It’s exciting for the chefs, too, as there’s the beginning of the autumn produce with wild mushrooms, pumpkins and peppers in abundance.” But, as Pawlcyn warns visitors: “Early in the morning at this time of the year the valley smells like a dirty old bar, as the grape skins and stems are composting in a location at the south end of St Helena.”

Of all the wine regions I have visited, Napa Valley has struck me as the one where the restaurant and wine industries are most successfully linked. Most restaurateurs operate, for example, a sensible corkage policy of $10 to $20 per bottle so those in the wine trade are encouraged to come in and use their restaurants for business.

While the influx of businessmen with fortunes made outside the wine trade has definitely made a distinctive contribution to what is on offer, most conspicuously at the resorts Meadowood and Solage with their well-known restaurants, what hit me on this visit was quite how successful chefs here are at integrating the valley’s distinctive history into their restaurants. This is certainly the case at Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, set in a charming old wooden building that has been a restaurant in various guises for more than 50 years. When we visited recently the highlights of a relaxed menu included a refreshing salad of watermelon, feta and chipotle; deep-fried squid with fennel, okra and lemon aioli; and duck cooked in the wood oven with fresh cherries.

The affinity with history has now been extended by Michael Chiarello, who last December opened the restaurant Bottega in Vintage 1870, one of the very first wineries but now a retail complex in Yountville.

Bottega occupies the space that in the 1970s was home to the Chutney Kitchen, whose owners then went on to open the French Laundry. They sold the latter to Thomas Keller, who made it one of the world’s leading restaurants. In the 1970s, Chutney Kitchen was the place where grape growers and winemakers would meet in the late afternoon to discuss mutual problems.

Although no stranger to the area (he was the chef at Tra Vigne in St Helena for many years), Chiarello has returned to the stove after nine years in management and more than 250 appearances as a television chef. “It’s great to have such a big audience on TV,” says Chiarello, “but after a while it’s strange not to be able to see who you are cooking for.”

The Italian-influenced menu at Bottega is polished and flexible. Our table of five began with shared salads of grilled octopus and burrata; moved on to excellent gnocchi and lip-smacking polenta cooked in a kilner jar topped with wild mushrooms; and then various pasta dishes, sockeye salmon and a vast plate of slow-cooked short ribs.

Chiarello’s other distinction is that he also grows grapes, with plots of old-vine Zinfandel and Petite Sirah that produce fascinating and reasonably priced wines.

Our final stop was Zuzu, in Napa itself, now a magnet for food and wine lovers, thanks to the Oxbow Market, which sells artisanal foods and local wines, and the fact that many of the more far-flung wineries have cleverly opened tasting rooms there.

The restaurant was pretty quiet one Friday lunchtime but by the early afternoon it had filled with winemakers, wine sales staff and others connected with the business who had come to enjoy the cool interior, food and hospitality provided by Mick Salyer, its genial proprietor. Highlights included crostini of anchovies and remoulade; a Tunisian pastry with tuna and peppers; and a sauté of fresh corn and broad beans. It was also fun to overhear others gossiping about the wine business, at a time when the old saying that to make a small fortune you have to start with a large one seems more true than ever.

nicholas.lander@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/lander

........................................

Details

Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, 1327 Railroad Avenue, St Helena, CA, tel: +1 707-963 1200; www.cindysbackstreetkitchen.com
Bottega, 6525 Washington St, Yountville, CA, tel: +1 707-945 1050; www.botteganapavalley.com
Zuzu, 829 Main St, Napa, CA, tel: +1 707-225 8555; www.zuzunapa.com