We drove up to Castello di Amarosa to check out the winery after our lunch at Mustards Grill. I’m making a mental note that for all future Napa trips I’m going to try to avoid driving through St. Helena since the traffic on weekends is horrendous.
We caravan-ed up to Castello, found parking and made our way up. I snapped a quick group picture of the guys on the entrance steps.
The entrance fee here is $17 per person which includes the tasting. For the people who don’t drink (ie, ME!), make sure to “forget” your ID at home or in the car so they charge you the “childrens” entrance price of $7.
The entrance fee also allows you to walk around the grounds and be silly. Per the drinkers, the wines weren’t TOOO impressive. It seems like they spent more time building the gorgeous grounds than they do with their wines. Not too much of a surprise since the Castello is owned by the same owners as V. Sattui and I’m not a fan of V. Sattui. I am however a HUGE fan of the muscat grape juice that they served the DD’s here. It was like candy. I had about 4 glasses of it and was bouncing off of the walls from my sugar high.
We walked out and found a mini farm on the side of the castle. Complete with peacocks, sheep, hens, and a rooster. Sam and I petted the sheep. I managed to pry its wool open to find that it had a 4 inch sweater on. When I made my way past the wool to its skin, it was sweating. YUCK. And it smelled bad. Sheep BO = Gross.
We made our way over to Alpha Omega which had pricey but yummy wine. Picked up a few bottles and then we split up. The non drinkers went to Bouchon Bakery and the drinkers found themselves at Chandon drinking bubbly. I picked up 21 macarons from Bouchon. And a baguette. And found myself drowning in a carb induced ecstatcy.
We had an early dinner reservation at Brix and walked around their gardens after dinner. (Brix food is getting a separate entree that will be posted tomorrow).
I like the idea of Brix serving fresh organic veggies grown in their backyard. We came across one of Sam’s favorite veggies – Garlic Chives!
I found the coolest cucumber ever!
I love how the days are finally getting longer. We finished dinner around 8:30 and it was still light outside; light enough to catch the sunset before we piled into our cars and headed back home.
Bye bye Napa! Until next time! 