The reason to come to St. Helena is wine. The town sits at the geographic and gastronomic centre of the Napa Valley, with several hundred tasting rooms within a fifteen-minute drive. The historic estates of Charles Krug, Beringer, and Spottswoode are within town limits or just outside; the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, housed in a 19th-century stone winery, anchors the food side of the valley's reputation.
The town itself rewards an hour or two of walking. Main Street — a stretch of about eight blocks — has no chain businesses, only independent restaurants, wineries' tasting salons, the small Robert Louis Stevenson Silverado Museum, and a few good shops. The handsome stone Pope Street Bridge at the north end of town and the 1868 Saint Helena Catholic Church mark the older fabric.