Napa Valley Wine Tasting
A few years ago, while travelling in Southern California, we had the opportunity to visit the Napa Valley. We toured a number of wineries and tasted many, new to us, wines. We found the drive between wineries to be a fair distance (unlike the Okanagan Valley) and many of the wineries don’t even grow their own grapes, just a building on the side of the road providing tastings and selling wine. It was an average experience and now that it is checked off the bucket list, we can continue to annually frequent the Okanagan Valley wineries. The Napa Valley is known world-wide for it’s wines but we actually felt it was very underrated for it’s food, which was excellent everywhere we went in town.
Castello di Amorosa 
The highlight of the wineries we visited had to be Castello di Amorosa. This winery was impressive, probably more so than any we visited in Italy a couple of years ago! Although Castello di Amorosa is only about 25 years old the building was unbelievably fascinating, I think we might have spent almost a half day walking around inside the castle. It was a great experience! As I was doing some research for this blog I came across a blog (3 part series) written by the owner and visionary of the Castello di Amorosa. Take the time to read the story, it’s available here. We also had written a blog about our visit and the 2011 Sangiovese that we also purchased there.
Il Baron
e Reserve, Cabernet Sauvignon
We tasted a number of wines, but the one we purchased was the 2011 Il Barone Reserve, Cabernet Sauvignon. It was pretty expensive at $75 US when we purchased it. It is listed on the website for $115 US right now. It has big bold flavours that reminded us of Italian wines. Castello di Amorosa produced 2,117 cases of this vintage. The wine had a meadow like smell, cherry and darker fruits to taste and just the right amount of spice in the finish make this a winner! At that price, I’m glad we bought one and saved it but it’s not likely we will purchase another.
We, Jeff & Tara Ciecko of CK Golf write two blogs, one is our 19th Hole Blog where we share personal experiences and the other an Industry Blog where we comment on general business and internet marketing best practices, sales strategies and give golf industry related opinions. We have owned CK Golf for 9 years and provide marketing, social media and business services to the golf and other industries. As of August 2016 our life and our business will be ‘location independent’. Our 19th Hole Blog is about the places we visit and the things we do. You can also follow our road trip at foodwinetravel.ca/roadtrip. If you have any questions or comments, or happen to be in the same location as us please reach out and contact us anytime.
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