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We Took Three Kids to Napa. One Joined the Wine Club.
Everyone warned me about bringing three kids to wine country.
They weren’t wrong, exactly. Pull up to Stag’s Leap or Mumm and you’ll find gorgeous scenery, serious sommeliers, and approximately zero reason for a child to be there. I love wine. My kids do not. We needed a plan.
The plan turned out to be a medieval castle.
Castello di Amorosa sits at the end of a long drive through vineyards in Calistoga, and when it comes into view you genuinely stop breathing for a second. The stones are too old to be in America. The walls are too thick. The whole thing looks like someone lifted a 13th-century Italian fortress out of Tuscany and set it down, inexplicably, in Northern California wine country, surrounded by crimson and burnished bronze grapevines. Which is, more or less, exactly what happened.
The man behind it is Dario Sattui (he was born Daryl, which tells you something). Fourth-generation vintner, ardent Italophile, and a person with a vision so large it took twelve years and over a million antique bricks – salvaged from dismantled Habsburg palaces–to realize. The hinges, the locks, every chain link carefully assembled. And he did it with his wine profits. No tech billionaire money here. Sattui had already built one of the most profitable wineries in Napa at V. Sattui, reviving his great-grandfather’s tradition. He could have stopped there. Instead he built a castle, shipped a million bricks across an ocean, and created something so specific, so committed, so genuinely joyful that on a Friday afternoon a family from New York stood in his courtyard while their 11-year-old joined the wine club.
That part requires explanation.
We did a seated tasting in one of the outdoor courtyards, golden light coming through the arches. What I didn’t know: Castello has a kids’ flight. Three glasses, yes, a flight of grape juice, each one poured and presented by a sommelier with complete, genuine seriousness. My kids tried a Muscat Canelli, a Gewürztraminer, and a red blend. The sommelier explained each one as thoroughly as she explained ours. Terroir, tasting notes, the whole thing. My children, who last week argued about whose turn it was to feed the dog, suddenly had opinions about stone-fruit-forward profiles.
The atmosphere was nothing like the hushed reverence of some tasting rooms. It was joyous. Everyone around us — families, couples, the staff — seemed delighted just to be there as if the place gave everyone permission to find it magical, and everyone accepted.
My 11-year-old was the leader. After finishing his third grape juice flight, he turned to the sommelier and asked to join the wine club.
They said yes. He’d receive grape juice only. He is now, they informed him, the youngest member in the history of Castello di Amorosa.
I don’t know what we’ve started …
After the tasting, my kids insisted on the torture chamber — genuinely, historically detailed — and I recommend letting them lead you through it, because their enthusiasm is infectious.
But here’s the thing about this corner of California that nobody briefed me on: it’s not just a castle. Within about 20 miles of Calistoga, Atlas Obscura will take you on a tour that defies all expectations of what “wine country” is supposed to mean.
There is a geyser in Calistoga, California’s own Old Faithful, powered by an actual subterranean volcano, that erupts regularly while people are a mile away getting mineral mud baths, apparently unbothered. There is the Monticello Dam, home to the largest drain hole in the world, sitting serenely in a Napa reservoir, looking perfectly pleasant until you look directly into it. There is a hill in Sonoma that you have stared at for years: it’s the photograph called “Bliss.” The default Windows XP wallpaper, shipped on over a billion computers. The hill is real. You’ve seen it every day. You just didn’t know where it was.
And then there’s Safari West, a wildlife preserve just outside Santa Rosa where giraffes walk past your open-air vehicle and rhinos graze in the distance and you think: I was in a medieval castle four hours ago. Napa does not care about your expectations.
This is what using Atlas Obscura as your travel companion does to you: you start out looking for something to do with your kids while the adults drink wine, and you end up somewhere you never could have planned.
There’s a sister property too — not a castle, but equally kid-friendly. We’re already planning the return trip.
My youngest would like it noted that she found the torture chamber first.
-Louise
PS — Have you found somewhere that completely defied your expectations — somewhere you almost didn’t go? Have you brought your kids somewhere that turned out to be magic, or taken a chance on a detour that changed the whole trip? Write me at ceo@atlasobscura.com. I want to hear about the places that surprised you.
