Napa

On a recent trip to Napa Valley we discovered an amazing winery called Castello di Amorosa located on North St. Helena Hwy, Calistogo, California. This winery is 121,000 square foot castle with 107 rooms that took 14 years to build. This castello has everything you would expect to find in an authentic 12th century tuscan style castle winery. The castle produces 15,000 cases of wine which are only sold at the winery.
We of course did a wine tasting and had the pleasure of meeting Michael Skylar who works at the winery. Michael served us well in the wine tasting with great conversation about wine and the winery but in addition his knowledge of music was extensive. It happened to be 9-08-09 and the Beatles re-mastered CD’s was to be released on 9-9-09 and my business partner (John) was wearing a John Lennon t shirt. All this lead to the discussion on music. Michael Skylar had a musical background introduced to him by his father Sunny Skylar (check the internet). Sunny Skylar had an amazing career in music. So while we were in Napa on a business trip (TwistedCorkscrew.com) we discovered a great new winery and enjoyed an interesting and informative conversation with Michael Skylar. This is a must for anyone going to Napa, make sure you stop by and say “Hi” to Michael.

NAPA Valley

On a recent trip to California we were lucky enough to spend a day in NAPA Valley. We stopped at a number of wineries including Robert Mondavi on the Silverado Trail. We had an excellent wine tasting conducted by a very knowledgeable Wine Educator (Doug Nanfria). Doug took time to show us where the reserve wine was stored and let us take a number of photos (John & Jim from TwistedCorkscrew). Mondavi has 56 oak vats each containing 5000 gals of reserve wine……very impressive. In addition to the excellent wine tasting and great photos we learned some very interesting facts from Doug, some of which I have already forgotten. We noticed many vineyards had roses growing around the perimeter and Doug explained that the rose bushes were placed there because roses are more susceptible to disease and therefore would warn the vintner that some action needed to be taken to protect the grape vines. If you want to learn more about wine you need to go see Doug Naufria at Robert Mondavi Winery and get an education on wine. Check this blog in the future for more information on wine education from http://www.twistedcorkscrew.com/