California Wine Country

After our stay in the Redwoods, we headed south towards one of our favorite places – wine country!

Our first stop was Mendocino County, which is just north of Napa and Sonoma.  We used our Harvest Hosts membership again, and stayed at Jaxon Keys Winery.  Not only was the scenery beautiful, we loved the wine and ended up joining the club and buying a case of wine!  We spent two nights there and enjoyed some of our newly purchased wine sitting on the porch of their tasting room, which is a lovely old farm house.

Next we drove south towards Napa.  We stayed at the county-run Skyline Park.  It was a great location, but the full hook-up sights were ridiculously tight.  The water/electric sights had slightly more room, but the whole park seemed a little run down.  If we go back to Napa in the RV, we’ll stay at the Napa Expo Center.  We drove through and the sites were much larger and very well maintained.

We spent our first day doing tastings around Napa.  We started out at the Castello di Amorosa, which is a modern-day castle.  It was a labor of love by winemaker Dario Sattui, who built it over 20 years and, according to the guy in the tasting room, at a cost of $25 milllion dollars.  He used an architect who specialized in medieval architecture and stuck to medieval processes and materials as much as possible.  The castle is over 120,000 square feet, and there are 107 rooms on 8 levels.  It has a moat, a drawbridge, towers, a chapel, and even a torture chamber!  It is quite a site to behold.

Since the castle was built by a winemaker, it does have one feature most medieval castles probably did not – a tasting room.  The tastings are included in your ticket price.  We didn’t purchase any but we did enjoy touring the castle.

During our visit in Napa, Deas hit a major milestone birthday – the big 5-0.  We spent the weekend touring Napa and Sonoma, enjoying the beautiful weather, and drinking some delicious wine.  I didn’t really take a lot of pictures, but we had wonderful weekend.

My college friend Mike Drash lives in Napa, and has a winery – Tallulah Wines.  We had dinner at his house one night and we had a blast hanging out with him, his wife Tracy, and their adorable daughter Tallulah.  Plus we got to drink his amazing wine all night!  Of all the wine we sampled that weekend, Deas and I both agreed Tallulah was our favorite.

My iPhone did something crazy with their patio lights!

Napa was such a great stop for us, and I really wish we could have stayed longer.  We’ll be back next year and will hopefully get to spend a week or two there next time.  We left on Monday, and on Tuesday we met up with my mom’s cousin and her husband who live in San Jose.  We had a great lunch with them and our dogs enjoyed running around in their nice backyard.  And on Wednesday, we hit the road again!