We were able to take in a few wineries throughout the week after work like Ashes & Diamonds, Etude, Chateau Montelena, Davis Family and Palmaz. Kat loved Davis with it’s beautiful views and luscious reds.
I have to admit that the views were phenomenal and the setting beautiful. Excellent wines as well. Kat liked it so much that she joined the club so we’ll be getting more wine throughout the year. Yay!
We took the couples suggestion when we were at Hall and booked Palmaz. So glad that we did! Loved the setting, loved the technology and loved the wines. Dr. Palmaz invented the heart stent and invested in a vineyard as well as other ventures. The winery is carved 18 stories into the hillside and the wine is all pressed using gravity. The walls of the structures are hand carved from the rocks extracted during the creation of the “cave”.
In fact, they keep two full-time stone carvers on staff to complete other buildings like the guest house that burnt last year during the Napa fire.
Inside the carved silo, grapes are brought into the top floor where they are de-stemmed and sorted. Optical scanning eliminates the undesirable grapes and the rest fall into the stainless steel vessel. There are 24 vessels below on the next floor that are on a conveyor belt that rotate around a circle. Each vessel has a probe in it to measure a number of different attributes during the fermenting process. Software projects these measurements to the roof of the dome over each vessel so that they can continually monitor the process.
The next level down is where they store the barrels for the long stay. After that, the next level is for bottling and then the lowest level is shipment. Having both an architectural and computer background, I can tell you that this place is truly unique and special. Can you tell that I really enjoyed it? Guess what? I joined the club. Can’t wait for the shipments to come rolling in!
The other wineries that we visited were beautiful as well:
I think that wineries are a lot like casinos, they say they don’t make money but then you see the actual buildings and grounds and you know they must be raking it in. They got some of ours….
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