Michael Cuffe

Date night has many forms. This is a fun one. ❤️✨ @jessieprohaska

La Vie en Rosé was the official launch party for Rosé All May at Auberge du Soleil, and they brought the Napa Valley industry in to celebrate it properly. All month long, Auberge is running one of the most elegant seasonal programs in wine country. A three-course prix fixe lunch on the Restaurant Terrace paired course by course with curated rosés. Complimentary afternoon tastings in the Courtyard daily from 4 to 5:30 PM. A France vs. California Vin Versus rosé flight at The Bar. Rosé and oyster pairings. Specialty rosé cocktails at La Plage. And a Rose Quartz Facial at The Spa for anyone who wants the full immersion. The industry mixer was the opening toast to all of it. The people who make this valley run, gathered on the finest terrace in Napa, pouring through some of the best rosé bottles in the region to kick off a month built entirely around the glass in your hand. If you missed the party, the program runs all May. 📍 @aubergedusoleil in @californiasnapavalley 🎥@mikecuffe #RoséAllMay #AubergeduSoleil #NapaValley #NapaWine #WineIndustry

This flower growing in Napa Valley right now is 100 million years old. It was here before bees existed. Before butterflies. It had to evolve with beetles because that was all there was. Every petal is structural armor built for a world that no longer exists. It often blooms on bare branches before its own leaves show up. Before winter is over. Before anything else is brave enough. This specific variety is called Little Gem. A dwarf Southern Magnolia. It starts blooming young, often within a few seasons of planting, then keeps the show going through the warm months in intermittent waves. The undersides of its leaves are covered in a velvety bronze fuzz that catches the light. It is small, precise, and relentless. Scientists have found magnolia fossils on every continent. It survived every extinction event that wiped out everything around it. One hundred million years later it is still here. Still blooming. Still the most elegant thing in the room. Welcome to Napa Valley. ✨🥂 📍 @californiasnapavalley 🎥 @mikecuffe #NapaValley #Magnolia #Napa

🐐🫶✨ 📍 @hudsonnapavalley in @californiasnapavalley 🎥 @mikecuffe #napa #napavalley #babygoats

We know you wanted a second Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, but life is a journey in retail rental spots. 😂✨ The Office Depot on Soscol Avenue closed July 2025 after nearly 30 years at the South Napa Marketplace. After months of speculation, the replacement has been confirmed: a second Ross Dress for Less is moving in. Napa will now have two. 🛍️ 🤷‍♂️ 📍 @californiasnapavalley #NapaValley #Napa #SouthNapa #NapaRetail​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

You know that bottle of bubbles that shows up at every party you have ever been to in California. The one somebody always walks in with. The one that gets opened first. That is Schramsberg. 🍾 It is not Champagne. It is better. Made right here in Napa Valley since 1965, when a couple from Los Angeles named Jack and Jamie Davies drove up to Calistoga with no winemaking background, fell in love with a piece of hillside land, and decided to build California’s answer to the great sparkling wines of France. They had no idea it would end up on the table at every U.S. presidential state dinner for the next fifty years. Nixon used it for his historic Toast to Peace with China in 1972. Every administration since has served it at official state functions. In Napa it is simply the local standard. The bottle people who actually live here reach for without thinking twice. Davies Vineyards is the tasting room of the Davies family, sitting right in the heart of Saint Helena. One sitting gets you the full Schramsberg sparkling lineup plus Davies’ own small production Cabernets and Pinot Noirs. You can walk to lunch after. If Schramsberg up in Calistoga is booked, this is exactly where they send you. Same wines. Different address. ✨🥂 📍 @daviesvineyards & @schramsberg in @sthelenaca in @californiasnapavalley 🎥 @mikecuffe #DaviesVineyards #Schramsberg #NapaValley #SparklingWine #SaintHelena

In recent history more than a third of downtown San Francisco’s office buildings sat empty. The waterfront was quiet in the way that feels wrong for a city that used to hum. This April a sculpture arrived, bringing with it a new energy, and a revitalized Embarcadero. She is 47 feet tall. She was built by hand on Treasure Island by a self-taught sculptor named Marco Cochrane using a medieval enlargement tool and 55,000 individual welds. The same Bay Area woman, Deja Solis, posed for years to give her this form. Every evening at dusk sixteen motors in her chest make her breathe for exactly one hour. Then the lights come on. People came back to see her. Then they stayed. Then they came back again. You can have complicated feelings about how she got here. The process was imperfect. The city never asked. But standing at her feet watching the light change off the bay and her chest rise and fall in the last hour of the day it is very hard to argue she does not belong here. She stays through October. Go at dusk.✨ 📍 Embarcadero Plaza, San Francisco in front of the @ferrybuilding with @sfrecpark in @californiassanfrancisco 🎨 @marcocochrane and @building180 🎥 @mikecuffe / @warholian #SanFrancisco #Embarcadero #PublicArt #REvolution #FerryBuilding

Ask anyone in Sonoma where to have breakfast. They all say the same place. That place is Sunflower Caffé. Has been since 2007. Locals, visitors, wine industry people, weekenders from the city, people who have been coming every Sunday for a decade. The consensus across nearly two thousand reviews and eighteen years of packed mornings is essentially unanimous. The garden patio in the back is stunning. The espresso is serious. The sourcing is entirely Northern California. And the line out front most mornings is the most honest signal of all. Thirty minutes from Napa on the historic Sonoma Plaza. Open daily 8am to 3pm. 📍 @sunflowercaffe in @sonoma_valley in @sonomacounty just over the hill from @californiasnapavalley 🎥 @mikecuffe #SonomaPlaza #Sonoma #SonomaValley #WineCountry #Breakfast

Whole Foods. Trader Joe’s. Target. The parking lot of a thousand near-misses. Bel-Air Plaza on a Saturday is a full contact experience that no one warned you about when you moved to Napa. Wine country is supposed to be relaxed. Nobody told the guy in the Sprinter van doing a three-point turn in front of Peet’s. If you survive the lot, you earn the acoustic guitar guy outside Whole Foods and a frozen yogurt at Yobelle. It is the circle of Napa life. 📍 @belaireplaza in @californiasnapavalley 🎥 @mikecuffe #NapaValley #Napa #NapaLocal #BelAirPlaza #NapaLife

The St. Helena Chamber of Commerce and Calistoga Chamber of Commerce came together Thursday night for the Full Bloom Mixer at Alila Napa Valley, and the room delivered. One of Napa Valley’s most celebrated retreats, Forbes four-star and named among the top three resorts in Northern California by Condé Nast Traveler, Alila Napa Valley was the perfect home for an evening like this. Some of the valley’s finest poured throughout the evening: Beringer, Far Niente, Bella Union, Storybook Mountain, Clif Family, Spring Mountain Vineyard, Grgich Hills, and Picayune. Singer/songwriter Nate West set the tone all night, bringing exactly the kind of live music talent an evening like this deserves. Alila brought its cult-favorite Mexico City Margarita with salt foam. The community brought the energy. This is what happens when two chambers, two towns, and one extraordinary valley decide to bloom together. 🌺✨🥂🫶 📍 @sthelenachamberca @calistogachamber @alila.napavalley @beringervyds @farnientewinery @storybookmountain @bellaunionwine @cliffamily @springmountainvineyard @grgichhills @picayunecellars in @californiasnapavalley 🎸 @nateplayslive 🎥 @mikecuffe #AlilaNapaValley #StHelena #Calistoga #NapaValley #Napa

Janet Fletcher is not just a cheese expert. She is the most decorated cheese and wine writer in America. Three James Beard Awards. Author of more than 30 books including Cheese & Wine published by Penguin Random House. Her weekly newsletter Planet Cheese is read by enthusiasts around the world. She lives right here in Napa Valley. This Saturday May 9th from 3 to 5pm she leads an exclusive guided Wine and Cheese Pairing Experience at Hudson Ranch, a 2,000-acre working estate in Carneros whose grapes supply 27 of Napa’s most celebrated wineries. You will be tasting wines from an estate Wine Spectator named one of the most important Chardonnay sites in California and the San Francisco Chronicle called the best overall winery in Napa Valley. This is not a tasting room pour and a grocery store cheese plate. This is one of the most knowledgeable people in American food on one of the most extraordinary properties in wine country for two hours on a Saturday afternoon. Don’t wait on this one. Tickets at the link in @hudsonnapavalley bio. ✨🥂 📍 @hudsonnapavalley in @californiasnapavalley 🧀 @janetfletchernv 🎥 @mikecuffe #HudsonRanch #NapaValley #Carneros #Napa #JanetFletcher

This is Billionaires’ Row. Homes here trade for $30 million, $45 million, $71 million. Tech billionaires, oil heirs, Silicon Valley royalty. And for five years in the 1960s, one of these mansions was secretly the largest private weapons cache ever discovered in America. The owner was William Thoreson III. Charming, handsome, dangerous. He inherited money, moved to San Francisco, found his way to the Haight. Hosted underground parties at the Pacific Heights mansion. Then the crates started arriving. Automatic weapons. Munitions. Contraband arms purchased across the country. In 1966 federal agents raided the house and found 70 tons of weapons inside. He never answered for it. The family relocated to Fresno while the case worked through court. His behavior grew more erratic. He refused psychiatric help. On June 9, 1970 he told his wife: “If they use truth drugs on me they will never let me out.” He died the next day. His wife was charged in his death, pleaded self defense, and was acquitted. In 2014, forty four years later, he became the prime suspect in the 1966 disappearance of a U.S. Senator’s daughter. The case remains unsolved. The Gilded Age built this block. Every era since has added its own story to it. 📍 Pacific Heights, San Francisco 📲 @californiassanfrancisco 🎥 @mikecuffe #SanFrancisco #PacificHeights #BillionairesRow #SFHistory #HiddenSF​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​