The Napa Valley Castle - Castello di Amorosa

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to spend some time catching up with my folks over dinner. My father, quite the amateur wine enthusiast, wanted to know just about everything we had covered in this class. When discussing themes covered by guest lecturers, the concept of the three-tier distribution system sparked quite the extended conversation. My father was under the impression that the wine we were drinking that night (La Castellana by Castello di Amorosa) had been imported from Italy and sold at the family's Napa Valley "sister" vineyard, without the use of a distributor.

Though made in the Italian style, the wine was actually produced in the Napa Valley and was sold primarily onsite compliments of the relatively new direct to consumer legislation discussed in class. After clearing up the confusion and reading up more on the history of the winery, it turns out the most interesting component of this story was not the wineries' (lack of) importing capabilities, but rather the grandness of the winery structure itself.

Castello di Amorosa started as a passion project of its owner, Dario Suttui, whose grandfather emigrated from Italy in the late 1800s and established a winery in the San Francisco Bay Area, V.Suttui. Dario purchased the hundred-seventy acre plot of lot in Napa Valley that became Castello di Amorosa in the early 1990s with the intention of re-planting vineyards to support existing operations at V.Suttui.

Compliments of his Italian heritage and penchant for medieval architecture, Dario Suttui quickly changed his mind and set out to build something unique to his family – an authentic Italian winery in the Napa Valley. To inform his designs, he spent months surveying structures across the Italian countryside, including castles, vineyards, and wine cellars, some dating back to the early 12^th and 13^th centuries. As his travels increased, so did his ambitions with the project. What was originally intended to be an 8,500 square foot Tuscan winery quickly ballooned into a 121,000 square foot castle.

Over the span of thirteen years, Suttui imported master builders, architects, and craftsmen from the Old World to design the structure in partnership with American contractors. The cellars, which occupy the majority of the square footage of the structure (roughly 80,000 square feet), took up the majority of this construction time (10 years), as Suttui sought to create production and aging facilities as authentic to the Old World style as possible. 

Additions to the castle’s façade, including a full dry moat, fortified walls, towers, and loggias, though not impacting the winemaking processes themselves, were added to complete the unique feel of the structure and property.

Though Dario at times had to sell cheap vintages of his wine to fund some of the construction efforts, strict authentic Italian winemaking processes have been re-enforced since completion of the winery project that have led to incredible ratings (>90) on the vast majority of their vintages.

I highly recommend checking out Castello di Amorosa on your next trip to the Napa Valley if you're interested at all in the Old World Style of wines (the 2012 Cab was fantastic). If you share Suttui's passion for craftmanship, check out the full history of the project here.