Culinary Institute of America

The Napa Valley takes food very seriously, so it’s fitting that the West Coast outpost of the Culinary Institute is housed in one of the grandest old winery buildings in California, the fortresslike former Greystone Winery just north of downtown St. Helena (2555 Main St., St. Helena, 707/967-2320). Built in 1890, it later found fame as the Christian Brothers winery until a new corporate owner put it up for sale in the late 1980s. The institute bought the building in 1992 and spent $15 million renovating it to its former glory. It still makes some wine under the Greystone label from a small estate vineyard nearby.

Chefs and sommeliers are busy being trained behind the imposing stone walls, but you don’t need the dedication they have to learn a secret or two from the Napa Valley’s top chefs. Hour-long cooking demonstrations are open to the public Friday–Monday (1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Mon. and Fri., 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. weekends, $12.50, reservations 707/967-2320) and include a tasting of the finished dish, so the fee makes it worthwhile, especially at lunchtime. Don’t expect to go more than once over a weekend though, because the same demonstration is given on all four days.

A small exhibit just beyond the huge, carved redwood entrance doors illustrates the history of the Greystone Winery with some of the original Christian Brothers barrels, casks, and brandy-making stills. Most intriguing of all is a display of over a thousand corkscrews, some of them hundreds of years old and miniature marvels of engineering, all collected by Brother Timothy, a wine chemist and renowned winemaker at Christian Brothers 1935–1989.