Sometimes I really don't care much for real life. Particularly that horrible truth that just about everyone seems to run into eventually - if I don't have a job, I don't have enough money to do all the things I want to do. But if I get a job, and I do earn the money, then I don't have enough time for those things anymore. And I definitely don't have enough money for everything. But if I get a better job with more money, than I have even less time...the circle of real life would continue. Ugh.
That was basically just a long winded excuse as to why I haven't updated my blog in a month...I was doing it at work (my computer and internet speed are both faster there), but now that I have been there a couple of months, they have discovered that I am decently competent and have started assigning me more work and training me for different work. Work that requires actual thought, instead of just mindlessly organizing data. So I haven't had time there like I used to. And the rest of life was already busy.
However, during the past busy month, I obviously still found time to eat and eat well. That is one thing I refuse to give up. I don't care much for instant and fast food, so I have been compromising on other things I would normally do to make time to cook full meals or eat at delicious restaurants.
Or, in the case of today, to go well out of town in the hope of finding something delicious to eat or drink and somewhere fun to explore. Today Matt and I went with his parents to Napa Valley to celebrate the birthday of one of their long time family friends. I had met these family friends over last Thanksgiving dinner, so they were nice enough to invite me as well. We all got up early this morning to take one of those wine tour charter buses all the way up past Napa onto Calistoga and finally stopped to tour and eat at a winery called "Castello di Amorosa."
I've only ever been to a few standard wineries before, but if you can guess from the first Italian word in the name, this one was very different from a normal winery in California. Very, very different.
That's the entrance.
There's one of its towers. And even a moat.
According to our energetic tour guides, this winery was built by an very successful Italian American winemaker to replicate, as closely as possible with modern California building codes still kept in mind, an Italian castle from the 13th century. I have yet to go to an authentic Italian castle, so I cannot say if I felt if he succeeded or not, but this still made for one heck of a unique experience. I did not expect to find a Renaissance style castle in Napa Valley, California, let alone one used for a vineyard, storage and bottling facility.
I took so many photos, but since this is a food blog and not a castle blog, I will just include a few more of them before getting to the main course.
View from the castle.
Main dining hall. We didn't eat here, but I guess the Governator and some other famous politicans have.
17th century replica of an Iron Maiden in the castle dungeon.
Okay, here is the room we ate in for lunch. Long tables, gigantic wooden chairs, and lots of Renaissance era styled art. The food was served as main course buffet style, and after a dessert, and of course, with however much red or white wine from their two chosen estate wines that you wanted. The wine, as hoped, was really good. I don't have any photos of it specifically because I was much too busy drinking it. While none of our party of four (Matt, myself, and his parents) bought any of the red or white served with dinner, we did spring for some of the delicious dessert wine we had sampled during a wine tasting earlier as part of the tour.
This food looks delicious right? Well, actually it was kind of a disappointment, considering how accommodating everything had been up to this point. All of the food was cold. Really, really cold. I guess it was for effect and to be gourmet, but as the room was already rather cold from a lack of utilities (the builder was going for authenticity remember) I found this aspect of the food less than appealing. Add that to my personal preference for most of my meat (aside from certain fish and tapas) to be warm, and also the opinion that I thought a lot of the dishes tried to be overly gourmet by loading on the variety of seasonings, and I wound up mostly eating the rolls and drinking wine.
I guess next time I want a really good meal in Napa or Calistoga I should go to a restaurant instead of a winery, but as this was all prearranged for the birthday party and also completely paid for, I probably shouldn't complain too much. The food wasn't bad; I was just expecting better.
Dessert by contrast was absolutely delicious. Chocolate and hazelnut cake from a local bakery and small but exquisite fruit tarts.
While I was worried this would be an awkward event considering I had met the hosts only once, it is always amazing how social people can become after the wine starts flowing...but even without that I actually had a really good time. I definitely want to go back to Napa and Calistoga in the future, and maybe even go on more winery tours, though I wonder if any of them can live up to the experience that was the Castello di Amorosa.
(oh, and if anyone was wondering about that last random post of a photo of a cat...seems my cat, Anna, got a hold of my phone/the phone became possessed and was posting stuff to Blogger via one of the applications I have installed. I did not eat her, will not be eating her ever, and hopefully that will not happen again)
