In California’s Napa Valley, winter is a season that really cuts the mustard

Convertible or no convertible? That was the critical question.

I was booking a rental car for a January trip to California’s Napa Valley, while simultaneously checking the wine country weather online. Something I’d been doing for days. As if I could affect climate change by hitting “refresh.”

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The forecast called for highs in the measly low 50s with a likelihood of rain. No convertible.

Where to go and what to know in Napa.

Time to revise my wine country daydream. In my mind, the scene played out like one of those teeth-whitening commercials — convertible top down, wind-whipped hair, warm rays of golden sun bouncing off lush vineyard leaves. I laugh, step on the gas and flash a gleaming white smile (commercial smiles are impervious to repeated tastes of jammy zinfandels!) as I ride off into the vine-covered hills.

I’d actually lived that fantasy — and driven that convertible — a few times. My first trip to the region about six years ago was during the climatic perfection that is October. I fell in love, hard. Autumn in the Napa Valley casts a strong spell, with its amber-hued vineyards, 80-degree days and cool nights warmed by ubiquitous fireplaces.

Since then, I’ve made an almost yearly pilgrimage to eat, drink and soak in the scenery — always in the glorious warmth of fall. So when a business trip called my husband to San Francisco in mid-January last year, and he asked whether I’d like to tack on a few days at our favorite spot in the region, my first reaction was “Of course!” My second was “Brr.”

To my East Coast brain, January means barren landscapes with nary a touch of life, save for prickly, persistent evergreens. There would be good wine, no doubt, but visions of leafless, dormant vines, gray skies and that infamous bone-chilling California fog clouded my excitement.

Then I arrived and met the mustard.

After pointing our non-convertible north out of San Francisco, over a mist-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge and into wine country, we cruised up Napa’s well-trod Route 29 and ran into a most welcome and breathtaking sight: The valley floor was blanketed in a vibrant carpet of bright yellow mustard flowers.

Despite many visits, I was ignorant to the winter phenomenon known as mustard season in the Napa Valley. As locals tell the story, Spanish friars who established missions up and down the state in the 1700s sprinkled mustard seeds as they went, leaving a canary-colored path in their wake. Better than bread crumbs, I suppose?

Thanks to winter rains, the hearty wild mustard starts populating the valley floor with blossoms in January and blooms until about March, when many winemakers plow it back into the soil, where it adds nitrogen.

The showy display can stop cars in their tracks. Literally.

Rounding a bend in the road, we avoided a near pileup as cars swerved onto the shoulder to ogle a particularly stunning vineyard teeming with mustard. We hopped out to join a handful of tourists wading through the knee-high blooms for photo ops.

The winter sun hung low in the sky, casting dramatic rays on the field. Gnarled black vines stretched up from the sea of yellow like witches’ hands. A professional photographer, set up deep in the flowers, snapped away at a family kneeling in the buttery glow.