Chateau Montelena - Calistoga {California 2012 Recap}

After filling ourselves with delicious burgers at Downtown Joe's in Napa, we continued our drive up north to the first of four wineries that we had planned to visit over the weekend while in the Napa/Sonoma area.  (PS - Attempting to pick out just a handful of wineries to visit out of thousands is seriously hard.  Since pretty much every winery in the area has great wine, we tried picking a few places focusing on wineries that seemed to have a cool/unique atmosphere and overall good visitor experience.)

Unfortunately, the first winery we visited was last on our list of favorites...

We picked Chateau Montelena as our first winery to visit because it seemed to have really cool grounds and a beautiful building where their wine is housed.  And while their grounds were impressive, the whole visitor experience was lacking.  While there, we partook in a tasting of five wines outside of the main building.  We assumed we would be able to walk through the building afterwards since it was such a cool looking place, but no no.  We weren't allowed to do that.  It seemed this winery was more interested in the "Club" members than the average visitor on vacation.  Which seems silly to me because the Napa area is one of the largest vacation areas in the country.  So I feel like most people visiting the winery are from out-of-town...  So, instead of getting a cool experience, we walked out with a $50 bottle of mediocre wine (on top of the $40 we spent for the tasting) and a crappy visitor experience.

But I guess you can't win 'em all!

At least the grounds were pretty!

One good thing about having a crappy experience with the first winery you visit...

it can only get better from here!