wine-o's

We headed into Napa Valley for some wine-tasting. Not really my thing, but Greg loves his red wines! Our last time in CA we went to Sonoma, so this time we thought we'd goto the more popular wine valley.


These are just a few of the places we stopped for tastings. Most of the Napa wineries charge $10-15 per tasting, and Greg and I didn't feel like spending $20-$30 at each location, so we stopped at a couple local tourist information centers, and we were given numerous buy one, get ones, and even one for two free tastings. woohoo!! I've decided that I prefer the smaller wineries, the more intimate ones. It's more likely that the person you talk to might be the owner, or even just someone who actually knows what's going on with the winery.

Now this was amazing - a castle in Napa Valley. So this was the winery that we decided to tour, rather than just stop for the tasting. The guy who built it wanted it to look and feel as authentic as possible, so he had a lot of the construction materials brought over from Europe. In fact a lot of the brick, iron work, etc., are actually from old castles and other buildings there! This thing is HUGE. It has 8 levels, of which only 4 are above ground. There is a torture chamber with real instruments of torture (the rack, the iron maiden, you name it - they got it) - because what kind of castle would not have a torture chamber?! He even had the castle built in different period styles, just like a real castle would have been - the chapel would be first, then later an addition, then another, etc. Castles were rarely (if ever) built quick enough to be in one style. Anyway, the tour rocked. The four underground floors are pretty much all storage of wine barrels and bottles. WOW - lots of wine!!