What's with Mount St. Helena? The town takes its name from the mountain that stands at the head of the valley — Mount St. Helena, a 4,340-foot peak that closes off the upper Napa Valley to the north. (It is not, despite a century of confusion, the volcano: that's Mount St. Helens, a different mountain and a different spelling, a thousand miles up in Washington.) Mount St. Helena is the quiet giant of wine country — the cool night air that slides down off it is part of what makes the grapes here what they are — and, as you'll see, it has its own literary ghost.
Our St. Helena logo carries the same emblem every Merlin Classics California place wears — the grizzly bear and lone star of the state flag, above "California Republic · Est. 1850," the year of statehood, printed in a worn, hand-pressed black and white. The bear is California's mark, the through-line that ties St. Helena to every other California town we make. What makes this one St. Helena is everything around it: the mountain at the head of the valley, the old stone cellars, and the vineyards running off in every direction. On a tee or a cap it reads less like a souvenir than a small piece of the Napa Valley itself.
Why People Visit St Helena
St. Helena offers Napa Valley at its most walkable and unhurried — a real town in the middle of the vineyards, with deep wine heritage, a literary past, and the mountain overhead. Visitors come for the tasting country and the scenery and stay for the small-town stone streets and the easy pace. It is refined without being precious, and beautiful in every season.
