Raymond Vineyards Napa Valley

Raymond vineyards may not have the historic winery surroundings like some of the iconic wineries of Napa Valley, but it has some excellent wines and some neat tasting rooms. The rooms I was allowed to get into we're the Barrel Room, The Crystal Cellar. The Red Room was off limits to me as it is a members only room, but I got a quick peek through a window and it was draped with gorgeous red velvet curtains on the ceiling and fancy red velvet couches. This place is all about high end luxury. I felt like I was on a James Bond movie set.

We came here after a recommendation from Mumm Napa because I love cabs. This place had cabs from the different regions of Napa Valley, so you can compare what the soil does to the taste. Tasting was $25 but I got a 2 for 1 tasting coupon. The bottles of cabs I tried ranged from $75 to $100 with the high end being call the 2008 Generations. I highly recommend their can flight if you like cabs.

The crystal cellar, where I spent most of my time, had chandeliers and mirrored tables along in with seductively dressed mannequins, one even hanging on a trapeze. The mini barrels used to serve wine were lined with tiger and zebra skin covers. Lots of fancy crystal jewelry on display, all of this surrounded by their huge fermentation tanks.

Additional winery visits in Napa Valley

With so many wines to drink and so little time in the Napa Valley, we decided just to view a couple of wineries, in what i like to call a drive-by. After all, there are over 400 wineries in Napa Valley. it would take you years and large paychecks to get through all of them.

Here are a couple more that we visited:

Duckhorn cellars
Beringer Bros
Robert Mondavi

Beringer Bros has the awesome Rhine house. What a beautiful old house. It is on the location where the former Hudson House resided. The Hudson House was moved over nearby. At the time the Rhine House was built it was considered state of the art. The Rhine house has beautiful stained glass windows.

There is part of a tree behind the house that was there during the signing of our constitution. This winery has a lot of history and worth a visit.

Robert Mondavi, I only wanted to visit because it is a wine I see a lot at restaurants and I just wanted to see where it came from.

Duckhorn is a very nice setting in a pretty old house. Beautiful wood floors and covered tasting rooms with views of the vineyard and a small garden.

Castillo di Amorosa Napa Valley

Of all the vineyards to see in Napa Valley, Castillo di Amorosa has one of the coolest tasting rooms I have ever experienced out of any winery I have ever been to so far. It is straight out of a 13th century castle in Tuscany.

The castle interiors, which include 107 rooms on 8 levels above and below ground, cover approximately 121,000 sq. ft. Among many other features it has: a moat; a drawbridge; defensive towers; an interior courtyard; a torture chamber; a chapel/church; a knights' chamber; and a great hall. The great hall features frescoes painted by two Italian artists who took about a year and a half to complete and showcases a 500 year old fireplace.

The surrounding area outside of the castle has several sheep and goats to complete the authenticity.

The tasting rooms are beneath the castle in a beautiful dungeon-like setting with arched doorways. The tour includes a 5 sample tasting for $18. The servers of the tasting room all speak Italian and with the accent too. Our particular server was Emilio and he actually lived in Portland for a short time, so we talked about Portland during our tasting. Well, that's it for this blog post. Ciao Bella!

Mumm Napa Winery

Today's Travels In Moby brings us to Napa Valley, California, Specifically Mumm Napa winery. Mumm Napa winery is known for their award winning sparkling wines. They aren't allowed to call them champagnes because they have to come from the Champagne region of France.

Mumm Napa is the only winery offering a free tour at only 10 am, their first tour of the day. Our tour guide, Carlee, was very friendly and Informative. We got to see the whole process from harvesting the grapes to bottling the wine.

The grapes are hand picked in late August and are filled 2/3 of the way in insulated microbins so they do not get crushed by their own weight or affected by temperature.

The grapes are mashed by a machine with a bladder that fills up and mashes the grapes until pink or purple juice is squeezed out.

The juice is stored in large fermentation tanks and mixed with yeast that eats all the sugars and leaves alcohol. The fermentation takes a few months and usually ends in December or January. The CO2 off gas is vented directly from the tanks to the outside.

The wine is then stored into glass bottles and using a robot arm and stacked inside wooden boxes and left to sit for a few more months. This process is known as tirage.

After the tirage, more yeast is added to the bottle thus starting the second fermentation in the bottle. Because the yeast will settle on the side of the bottle, it must be turned 1/4 every day for 4 to 6 weeks. This will work the yeast up to the neck on a process known as riddling. In the old days this was done by hand and a good riddler could do 30,000 to 50,000 bottles in a day. Now, they have an automated machine.

When the yeast was in the neck it was flipped upside down and the neck was frozen. This only takes a few minutes now.

When the bottle is open back up the gases built up with come out at 100 psi and the frozen yeast will fall out. This process is known as disgorging.

As soon as disgorging is done, a sugar mixture is added to the bottle as well as more of the original batch of sparkling wine. This process is known as dosage.

Finally the bottled is prepared with the cork and labelled and then goes to a warehouse to cool down before being ready to consume.

We were surprised to find that the winery also hosts a large collection of Ansel Adams original and signed photos on permanent loan from Adams's family.

One other note is musician Carlos Santana has visited the winery 3 times now, actually picking his own dosage, thus created a limited edition Santana sparking wine.

We managed to taste this plus 6 other flutes of sparkling wine using a 2 for 1 coupon. They offer generous pours too. I would highly recommend this iPhone app that gives you discounts of tastings, tours, and purchases:

Winery Finder & Tasting Pass Finder: Napa Valley – Sonoma - Wine Country - San Francisco by econcierges
http://itun.es/us/SgIaz.i.

I believe there is a similar app for Android too in the Google Play store. You need to have a social media app like Facebook or Twitter to use it.