Castello di Amorosa - Calistoga {California 2012 Recap}

After our less than stellar experience at Chateau Montelena, our faith in wine country was totally restored with the next winery we visited!  We headed down the road to Castello di Amorosa, one of the highest rated wineries in the area.  As we made our way up the winding hill to the property, I knew this place was going to be so much better than the last.  The winery was designed after an authentically-styled 13th century Tuscan castle, complete with a draw bridge, moat, over 100 stone rooms, and even livestock that roam outside.  Um, AWESOME.

We started off with some tastings in the "dungeon" and then were free to roam around the castle.  This was one of our favorite experiences during our time in wine country.  I am so so glad we decided to go here.

I'll let the pictures do the talking for this place.

So awesome...

Awesome, right?

(Slowly making my way through these California recap posts...

there are just so many awesome places over there!)

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!