Castello di Amorosa opened in 2007 and took 14 years to build. It has 8 floors, four of them underground cellars, 107 rooms and is officially 121,000 square feet (not counting cellars). The stone was quarried locally, supplemented with 1 million bricks from Italy and entirely hand-squared. In the hills behind it there is a system of wine caves that go back nearly a quarter of a mile. It even has a proper torture chamber, presumably for those who insist on drinking Chardonnay.

Built by a member of the Sattui family, who are 1880’s era San Francisco vintners and who got shut down during prohibition, the current Sattui patriarch got started again in 1976. He built his first stone winery in 1984. The family celebrated 130 years of winery operation in 2015, minus prohibition of course, (plead the fifth).

Napa county has a bit of a troubled relationship with this tourist powerhouse and has issued cease and desist orders saying they can’t hold a Catholic mass (what unlawful transubstantiation? srsly?), that they can’t hold weddings or wedding receptions (they can hold corporate retreats and fundraisers...), and has generally exhibited the sort of Calistoga hissy-fit towards new buildings that the county is famous for. Napa is apparently unbothered by the chickens and emus that roam the grounds though. Go figure. Amorosa has quickly become one of the most popular wineries in the area, which should give you an idea of why the local machine wants to keep it in check.

The castle caught on fire in 2016, allegedly due to an unattended candle in the torture room. I would have liked to be the firefighter writing up that report. Being, you know, stone, the castle suffered minimal damage.

The other interesting tidbit that I found was that they make a botrytised Gewürztraminer, among the usual array of reds. This is the ‘noble rot’ and it’s very rare for a California winery to be moldy enough to manage it. Terroir is the name for localized climates in wineries. It has unique terroir.

Xander thinks it’s small and unimpressive, but what does he know?

