Napa: Sutter Home and Castello di Amorosa

A Special Event

For Kyle’s 25th birthday, we decided we would go to Napa! Only 2-3 hours north of us, it was something we thought we should do for a while and this seemed like a great excuse.

I was pretty close to Napa as a kid and had in the area, but was not old enough to enjoy the alcoholic part of it. The aesthetics are very appealing, though. Rows and rows of grapes you know are going to be turned into wine!

Where to Go?

The big decision was, where in Napa? Which wineries?

There are many different wineries which offer tastings but ultimately, we opted for just two. The places we thought were within our price range for additional tastings (aka free to cheap) required that we set up appointments in advance with specific times and we didn’t like that idea. We didn’t know if we would be affected by traffic and wanted to be able to go at our own pace. Something like that is probably a better option for those who are staying overnight in Napa.

If you’re going to be there longer or plan to visit more wineries, you might be interested in something like this which is supposed to offer discounts at various wineries in the Napa region.

Wine and?

Because we were driving up, we thought about adding on one of the non-wine activities in the Napa area but we ended up deciding to skip them.

Here are some of the things we considered doing, though

The Petrified Forest,
Old Faithful Geyser of California
di Rosa Art

Sutter Home

We were already familiar with the Sutter Home brand and were happy to find it was a place that offered free tastings.

We began our day in Napa with free tastings at Sutter Home. They had a menu which allowed us to choose the wines we wanted to taste. We thought they were all good.

Sutter Home also had some pretzels and sauces out to try in their gift shop. The little grounds area outside of the tasting area was nice as well, and so we walked around them for a little bit afterward.

Castello di Amorosa

We had a hard time deciding between Castello di Amorosa and Sterling Vineyards. Sterling had a gondola while this one was a castle. We also considered doing both but ended up only choosing Castello di Amorosa. The castle was not free but we had some good wine and beautiful views. General admission is $25/person and includes 5 wines but there are all kinds of other packages which include things like tours, cheese, more wine, and chocolate. An alternative way to see this area, with a little more than us would be to do this wine train.