Culinary Institute of America at Greystone

A vast three-storey stone winery building from 1889 that now houses the West Coast campus of America's premier cooking school. The grey-tuff masonry exterior — quarried from a hillside in the valley — is impressive on its own, but the interior is also open to visitors: a ground-floor restaurant, a teaching kitchen that runs public demonstrations, and a small museum of antique corkscrews and wine artefacts.

The Gatehouse Restaurant, staffed by advanced students, serves a daily-changing menu drawing on Napa produce and is one of the better-value meals in the valley. Above it, the herb gardens and the terrace look down the valley. Free to enter and walk through; tours and classes need booking.

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A story
The Greystone Cellars building was completed in 1889 as the largest stone winery in the world — a single massive structure built to centralise production for Napa's growing wine industry. It survived Prohibition by becoming a fruit-packing plant, then was bought and restored by the Christian Brothers in 1950, and finally by the CIA in 1995.

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