Castello di Amorosa

When we said we were coming to wine country for our vacation, everyone said to be sure to visit The Castle.  The people at Drew's work, Abby, Centsational Girl.......okay so I guess that's not everyone, but they were all unanimous in their suggestions.  We made our reservation for a Friday tour and it did not disappoint!

Coming up the drive.  Don't let my lame photography skills fool you - 

the place was huge!

One man built this - Dario Sattui.  His family has owned the V. Sattui winery since the dawn of time, apparently.  Like Kesha likes to say, the man has goo-gobs and goo-gobs of money.  The castle is built entirely of Italian stone and marble brought over from Italy and was over fifteen years in the making.  Everything is authentic or an authentic replica, meaning the original materials may not have been available, but they did exhaustive research to come as close as possible to the real thing.  Yet, they have the best of both worlds in that it's fully operational with plumbing and electricity, albeit with no modern touches, like the radiant heat in the flooring which allowed for no visible thermostats and things like that.  It was fascinating! 

Our tour started in the chapel, which was still in operation and open to the public for Mass every Sunday in Latin!  The women even have to wear head coverings!

The courtyard - all of that stone was placed by hand!

The great hall - all the paintings were done by hand

and were reproductions of actual murals found in castles in Italy.

The chandeliers were custom and followed medieval iron-forging techniques.

Check out those hand-carved ceilings!

Our tour guide Cindy, was very knowledgeable and was full of random facts about the castle and wine.  Did you know that the average bottle of wine is opened 32 minutes after it's purchased?

They would shoot their arrows and cannons through these holes

in case of a castle onslaught

When we were coming back through the castle to head underground, we got a glimpse of the man himself!  Dario Sattui!  Cindy said that although he was very hands-on with his winery, it's a pretty special treat to catch a glimpse as he stays pretty busy.

He's on the left.  He was giving an interview to some Italian tv show.

I seriously wanted to ask him how in the HELL he got so rich!
Do wineries really make that much money?

The dude brought over more than 8 tons of rock from Italy!  TONS!

And that was just the rock!  

Just before we headed underground, she took us through the nuts and bolts part of the winemaking, complete with the ultra-modern stainless steel vats they use to cure? age? clean? the wine.  You'd think I would have asked more questions.

Juxtaposed with the modern vats were these giant German Ovals, also 

used to age the wine.  I can only guess how much one of these things

cost, and dude had four of them!

It was much cooler underground and this place went on forever!

Just one of the zillion arms of the cave.  Cindy said it was super 

easy to get lost down there.

Random room recreated.  Castles were self-contained cities back in the day and they did everything for themselves within their four walls.  If it was needed, 

they made it on site.

Some of the original bottles from the Sattui's first yields

Some of the new ones.  The bottle on the top right is a regular size wine bottle.

Reserve wine - they keep some for themselves from every yield.

They call it their library and if you got it like that, you can pay to do a library

tasting which is super exclusive.

Drew continuing with his aggression against knights.

He didn't like them in Paris, either.

An authentic Iron Maiden. 

The castle even had its own torture chamber, complete with a 

Pit of Despair, some stretching device and a chair of nails.

Cindy said they had awesome Halloween parties!

This was an underground hall where we did a barrel tasting, which is where

you taste wine that hasn't been aged.  I was in awe of the ceilings - 

this was all done BY HAND y'all!

Right before it all went to shit

Cindy poured glasses for each of us and talked about aging the wine and how what we were going to taste was rough around the edges and not good and all that.  Then she wanted us to swirl the wine, which I can barely do when the glass is on the table.  I gave it a try, which is when I spilled wine on my white sweater.  In front of the whole tour group.  I wanted to die.

I could feel myself starting to sweat, I knew everyone was looking and laughing but I couldn't be sure because I didn't look at anyone except Drew.  And he was laughing at me.

You know how people say I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you and you want to punch them because you're not laughing?  Yeah, like that.  I was mortified and I wanted to run out of that stupid hall with these stupid wine snobs and their stupid wine.  I felt even more isolated when I looked at Drew and yet again, he was making light of it.  Unfortunately, that soured me for the rest of the tour which thankfully was almost over.  But not until I was further humiliated when we went to the main tasting room and I was spraying the Wine Away on my stains and the lady next to me was all If you're going to spray that can you move over there because it reeks.  It smelled like lemons!  But I guess her stupid delicate wine snob nose was offended, so I silently switched place with Drew and tried not to cry.  At that point, it wasn't even fun anymore.

I wish I could say I just let it roll off my back and we went on with our day.  But it didn't - the day turned into an epic battle because I was mad at Drew that he laughed at me, he was mad at me that I was over-reacting, I was mad that my fertile window was closed, I was mad that I didn't know anything about wine, he was mad that I was not as enthusiastic about the wine as he was, and that I was ruining the day for him.  Then, as it usually does, other stuff, deeper stuff came out.  We had it out in the car at the V. Sattui winery, didn't go in, fought some more by the side of a road (in the car - I'm not completely ghetto) and by the time we'd gotten it all out, we were both spent.  The day was shot at that point so we just gave up and crawled back to the hotel.


The drive was long and silent and by the time we got back we'd calmed down but I was still sad and raw.  We both kind of laid in bed and just licked our wounds.  Some time later, we started talking.  No yelling, just talking.  I finally told him how uncomfortable and intimidated I was and that I could no longer put on my brave face and act like it was fun for me when I was just feeling stupid around all those wine snobs, him included.  Of course, he was oblivious to that but promised to do better.  I told him that even if his reaction is to laugh off uncomfortable situations, it's not mine and that I'd like him to respect that.  He agreed and asked me what he could have done better in that instance.  Half-serious, I said "Well, when I spilled wine on me you should have spilled some on you so I wouldn't feel dumb by myself."


Without a word he got up from the bed, went to the refrigerator and got out the Two Buck Chuck. He uncorked it and standing in front of me with a smile on his face, he poured the wine over his head.


I laughed, a big real laugh, for the first time since we arrived.  He came over, kissed me, apologized and then we made up.  We spent the night snuggled in bed, watching tv, eating In N Out burger, and it was just right.  It finally felt like we were on vacation.