My recent visit to Napa Valley coincided with the Flavor! Napa Valley festival, a celebration of all things food and wine. The event hosts tons of different events in conjunction with local wineries and well-known chefs. For chefs to participate, they must either run an area restaurant or be a Culinary Institute of America (CIA) graduate. Due to flight schedules and other obligations, I didn’t get to enjoy as many of the events as I would have liked, but the few I did attend were well-organized and really enjoyable. First up was a cake-decorating class with Ace of Cakes’ Duff Goldman. From there, I attended a blind tasting with Andrea Robinson, Delta Air Lines’ master sommelier. This was wildly informative; I learned more about properly tasting wine and the art behind it than I ever could have imagined. Watching sommeliers blind taste wine — to the point of guessing the grape, region and year — was fascinating. Another session brought me front row to watch Todd English cook. English cracked open an ostrich egg and made a version of an omelet that sells for more than $200 in his restaurant. These were culinary and wine experiences I never expected to participate in. The highlight was the Appellation Trail, where 100 local wineries and restaurants gather at the CIA to offer samples of their wine and food to attendees. The CIA is a beautiful setting, and all the tastes I enjoyed that evening were exceptional — from sparkling rosés to tripe tacos and tuna tacos prepared by Morimoto himself. For a Napa newbie, attending during this time gave me a feel for the region and the chance to see an overview of all it had to offer. It helped me narrow down the very wide field of options for a return visit. Hard decisions, as each winery and restaurant are really on par or well above. — Kim Krol, managing editor