The valley itself, about a 20-minute drive inland from the coast, is idyllic in a fruit-crate-picture sort of way, with gentle spruce- and fir-topped slopes, and vineyards contoured over swelling knolls.
It looks like the fantasy countryside on afruitcrate, but this one comes alive with pungent smells--a scent of apple flowers in the spring dawn, scythed hay, piles of cow dung drying for fuel on top of the walls (my first thought: climbing cows?).