What happens when six women and two men plan a last minute weekend in wine country to celebrate a wedding?

There were six of us women perched around the soaker tub with cream masks spread over our faces and limbs. Charisse, the bride-to-be, was giving us orders on how long to leave the cream on before rinsing; her fiancé was on the terrace just outside the glass door of their room at Bardessono Hotel, chopping vegetables for a snack, his face also covered in the greenish mask.

From Vancouver, L.A. and London, a total of eight of us – six women and two men –converged just before spring began at the elegant (and one of only three hotels in the world to be LEED Platinum Certified) Bardessono Hotel in Yountville for a last minute stagette in the Napa Valley. Our first task? A group spa!

After scrubbing ourselves clean, the two men joined us for a lesson in wine tasting at Alpha Omega Winery in Rutherford, a really basic introduction to sniffing, swirling and sipping. I’m not sure if it was our boredom at the fundamentals or our eagerness to dig into our first wine in the Napa Valley, but the sipping quickly turned into gulping as the poor instructor tried to keep us from free-pouring the carafe of red. (He was unsuccessful.)

As it should be in this part of the country, ours was a food- and wine-fuelled weekend. The bride- and groom-to-be are both allergic to gluten (a match made in dietary heaven), so we chose restaurants with gluten-free dishes, and themed our wine tasting around biodynamic vineyards – a process of using things like medicinal herbs, minerals and cow dung in the soil; using the astronomical cycle to time harvests; and excluding synthetic fertilisers and chemical plant protection agents – in our quest to eat and drink organically.

Our Saturday morning started out as any Saturday morning usually does on the West Coast: with a yoga class. We hand painted t-shirts before leaving using bold pinks, purples and blues, and way too much glitter. These we rocked into the hotel’s weekly yoga class, thinking we’d have the session to ourselves, save for a few other tourists. Not so.

The crowded room was already full of regulars, having staked out their spots with their mats, and were breathing deeply before their first pose. In we burst, giggling like schoolgirls in our sparkly tops (the men had magically disappeared outside the door), stopping dead in our tracks as a room full of yogis’ eyes looked up at us in disbelief. This class was clearly part of the regular practice for locals and the instructor actually had to say, “Please make room for our new friends. Yogis can always open their hearts to a few more.”

We slinked in as coolly as we could and unrolled our mats wherever we could find space. But for those who had found their way to the back, once the giggling had started, it was impossible to restrain. Somehow we squeaked through the class without ruining anyone’s day.

Somewhat refreshed, we gathered the boys and packed into the big black Yukon van we had rented and headed to Napa for some lunch. With promises from our yoga instructor that the restaurant we were going to had some sort of rubber yoga room, we made our way to Ubuntu Restaurant.

This retreat of calm had couples chatting quietly at tables along the walls, the two-storey high ceiling drowning out their words (and ours, thankfully for them). A long, wooden communal table was set up for us in the middle, so we took our seats and debated the one Michelin starred menu: dishes were based around the current crop grown off-site in their biodynamic garden.

Shall we go for the arbuckle grits with whipped chicken egg and crispy “skin,” or the stewed chickpeas a la catalan with sauce romesco? The vine cured Hudson ranch “zolfino” bean and fermented green fig ribollita or the beet leaves as borscht? The favourites ended up being the simple but brimming salad of leaves, flowers, roots, truffles and herbs lightly dressed in lemongrass oil, and the shockingly flavorful shot of squash soup.

As we waited for one of the guys, who was getting some man pampering back at the Bardessono spa, we scanned the restaurant for the rubber yoga room. Up a flight of stairs above the kitchen we found what we were looking for and begged our server to allow us up there. I’d like to think our snazzy, hand painted t-shirts helped us win him over.

Up the stairs the six of us women trampled, not sure what a rubber yoga room would look like. It turns out, the loft-like space has a natural latex rubber floor (I was picturing a rubber room where you can bounce off the walls…), but was otherwise a regular studio. We still gave it points for being extra comfortable and for its location inside a prestigious restaurant.

After playing around for a few minutes, we joined the guys, one shiny-faced after his facial, and delved into our gluten-less meal. Other than a miscue from our server – “Well, there’s only a little gluten in this dish,” he said while putting it down in front of us, before getting a verbal slap in the face about the danger of being casual re: allergies – our lunch was divine.

Stomachs full of nutritional goodness, our afternoon was split between two biodynamic wineries, Frog’s Leap (certified organic, but using biodynamic techniques) and Robert Sinskey Vineyards. Although the tastings at each were pleasant, we didn’t learn much about the biodynamic process. Next time we would definitely book a vineyard tour to make it worth while.

The last Napa Valley meal we would have was a recommendation from our concierge when we got back to Bardessono. She assured us that Farm would have gluten-free options and a good “Saturday night vibe.”

Back into the Yukon we piled after a change of clothes, and back to Napa we headed. Farm is part of the Carneros Inn, with amazing outdoor “fireplaces” that are actually rectangular glass boxes with chairs placed around them.

The night was pretty chilly, so we joined the rest of the diners inside. Our server, dubbed “favourite server of the trip” by the end of the evening, was a hip mother-like figure from somewhere in Brazil who took our group under her wing.

Anything was possible here for our gluten-free friends, who ended up customizing their own meals from some of the suggestions on the menu. The rest of the table was sprawled with roasted chestnut soup with Brussels sprouts and black winter truffles, lobster risotto with lemon and watercress leaves, scallops, Scottish salmon, duck breast and suckling pig.

Stuffed to the rafters with another outstanding meal, we hit salsa night at Bistro Sabor. With all levels of Latin dance experience between us, we barged into what felt like a house party, the small room jammed with people from young teenagers to their youthful grandparents: we quickly found out that, here, Spanish was the vocabulary of the lips and salsa was the language of the body.

We danced our own version of Latin moves, some of us jumping right in with the group, others sticking to the beer and sidelines. We wrapped up our Napa Valley weekend sweaty and smiling.

On Sunday morning we packed up to leave, the men going their way, the ladies driving onto San Francisco for one more night of celebration. The story from San Fran? That stays between us girls.

IF YOU GO
California Travel and Tourism Commission, 1-877-225-4367
The Napa Valley Destination Council; 707-226-5813