The Roman Blog: Napa Day 2

We got to Napa on Wednesday around 11:00. Joel had a full day of meetings so me and a couple of the wives had a delicious lunch at Mustard's and hit a couple of wineries. I don't know that much about wine so I'm just along for the ride really. We went to Peju and Cake Bread. We had an early dinner at Bottega--one of Michael Chiarello's restaurants. I thought it was delicious, but a couple of the other folks weren't that impressed. We were a party of about 20 so they set up a table in the store and served us there. It was really neat. By the time we got the main course, I was already stuffed, but I felt like I needed to at least try everything.

Yesterday, I slept later than I've slept in ages. It felt so nice. Then I went down for a nice relaxing breakfast. After breakfast, the wives and I hit Castello di Amorosa, an authentically-styled, 13th century Tuscan castle and winery--complete with an armory and torture chamber. At first I thought it was going to be super cheesy, but it was actually really cool. The castle took about eight years to build and attention was paid to every detail. Dario Sattui used both local materials and had certain materials brought in from Italy. He also brought in Italian craftsmen to build the beautiful cross-vaulted ceilings because there wasn't anyone in America that could do it. The ironwork for the sconces, chandeliers, railings, etc. was hand-forged in Italy and imported to this American castle. The wine was also quite delicious. Unlike some of the massive wine operations, Castello di Amorosa only produces about 50,000 cases of wine a year and much of the production of the wine is manual. The grapes are picked and sorted by hand instead of being harvested and sorted by machine. The tour lasted about two and a half hours so we only had time for one on Thursday.

After Catello di Amorosa, we had a great lunch at Brix. We sat on the amazing patio that overlooked the produce garden and vineyards beyond that. The weather here is AMAZING--relatively dry and about 80 during the day and about 55 at night. Apparently this is what makes Napa such a good place to grow grapes for wine. Perfect weather and perfect soil.

For dinner, we went to Etoile at Domaine Chandon. It was delicious as well. I'm quite certain that I've gained 10 pounds here, but it has been worth every single bite. Below are a couple of pictures from my Day 2 adventures.

The Castle