Castello di Amorosa Review

It's a copy of European Style castles. Be sure to pay for a tour to see it all. The wine tasting waiter was only after selling wine instead of doing a proper wine tasting...

Incredible attention to detail in this wonderful castle. Tour was fun, and wine was delicious. Highly recommended.

Went here a few years back, okay so 7 years ago, the place was amazing , and wine was superb. At the time I was a broke college student with little to no money. But had been in the area tasting wine. It was magical and their wine just as amazing. I have yet to taste any wine that I loves so much. Their dessert wine is to die for.

Castle of Love...in the sky. A delightful fantasy, rich in textile applications. A feeling of old and modern. Or old carefully crammed and situated into the modern with a quick brush of paint.
A NAPA Disney.. Or dizzy if you find yourself down in the catacombs alone, say with ..JOE K. our tour guide, bring your ear plugs and some roller skates! Joe did not only make jokes, point his finger at you when he thought you should take a picture of your spouse, or how he owned his fat and the rest belonged to the bank, he SPOKE so LOUDLY it was seriously deafening!!! Slowly, as I tried to siphon this groveling & grating voice in small increments, he seemed to get louder!! Especially when we hit the basement with the echo bouncing off the 15th century bricks. At one point I thought I would either lay a brick...or throw one at him. But we liked him...until we were rushed through that TOUR like cattle! He reminded us 25 times he had to leave promptly this being his last tour. This was also PRICEY...of course it was...and we were hoping to get a little vino and relax a little. That was just it--TOO LITTLE! Thank Goodness I had my blue ticket or he said he would kill me.
Beware of ANXIOUS TOUR GUIDE! I think I would of liked it if I could actually relax and take pictures and......oh yes...enjoy myself....oh yeah, that.
I love the magic of the place...and yet something is missing......the soul of it.

Great service and experience. Hard to drive after this.

Love this place! Amazing atmosphere. Funny animals!

This is a beautiful winery, the grounds are immaculate, the castle is stunning, and they even have goats and ostriches on the grounds that are cute and friendly.

We booked the wine tasting, when we first arrived, we had the last reservation spot, and the person who was supposed to show us the 1st level essentially forgot about us, we had to remind the host just to get seated. Our server Tysha was fantastic, she was funny, had a great sense of humor, and gave us a great time. The wine was pretty good, a little expensive, I know they are to trying paint themselves as exclusive by not selling to stores, but it s nothing astounding. The owner essentially bankrupted himself building the castle, so I get why it s so expensive and why they charge just to come onto the grounds. All in all, it was a nice experience and we had a good time. The atmosphere is really what made this place.

Some things to note: Over the phone they told us if we didn t get there by 3:30, the doors closed and we wouldn t be able to get in, this simply was false as many people came as late as 4:50pm and were still seated and allowed to taste. They have a chocolate upgrade on the tastings for 6 bucks which we didn t get but we received chocolate anyway, I suspect it s a tactic to try to butter you up to buy wine. We each did a wine tasting for two which I assumed meant each wine we tasted was a glass/pour for each of us, but it was only one glass/pour, meaning me and my wife had to essentially share a tiny amount of wine, I ve done wine tastings in Italy and France and we always got our own glasses. This was just strange to me. Also, when we got our pours, sometimes they did 3 different reds at a time and would walk away with the bottles while we tasted, being lightweight and drinking on an empty stomach, I would not remember which was which, two many at one time.

Well worth the cost of either tour. You can see about half of the castle with general admission. Spent $90 for a tasting nearby. This venue was fun without the wine and the wine was better. Really impressive place to visit.

Jason Meyers made our day! He was fun, bright, knowledgeable and lovely. Thank you for the memories!

Great experience just wish there were dining options and more snacks available for purchase

It is an experience that transports you and also gives you the pleasure of savoring the different wines with a dignified attention towards people

Skip the trembling weather.. Conscience is a great winery, the castle is beautiful, and the liqueur is delicious. Both la fantasia and grape juice love it! But generally speaking, the Napa winery trip or the hot air balloon are places that you haven't wanted to go to the second time.

three Of us went to the wine tasting over the Labor Day weekend. It was a choice of 5 from their wine menu and after we tasted the first wine, Pinot Grigio, wine server(or receptionist) asked how we liked the wine. We thought that the wine was too acidic and told him we didn t really like it because it was too acidic to our taste. Very rudely, he rolled his eyes and gave us a disgusting facia expression in front of us then he turned around and with the tone of complaining to the other wine server in front of us again that we said the Pinot Grigio was too acidic and his co-worker said of course it does, it s Pinot Grigio . Yes, I heard their conversation loud and clearly and so do other tourists who stood by the corner. I am very shocked that he was so rude and has no tolerance to customer s thoughts. We don t drink wine in a daily basis and we were there wishing for some education not discrimination. We were treated with no respect and talk down to us. I really hope someone from the business saw this post and can retrain their staff how to respect people better. On the other hand, The castle was a great visit though.

So this place is great, however their turn over in customers is crazy. We paid $50 per person yesterday for this inclusive tour. No more then 8 people we thought. 16 ended up on our tour. Hubby had questions to many people to ask any questions, rushed rushed rushed. Our guide had to stop the tour several times back track to find people. It was not worth the money. Wine was good castle was really awesome but honestly do the tour by yourself. Oh oh the most irritating thing was.... We were told they were out of Barbara. Which we really wanted to try this one in particular. Guide said they were out, but the main tasting room has a better variety of wine. WTH why did we pay son much then. Save your mula.

Nice winery even it was established only several years ago. Their sparkling wine is very good and suitable for the parties.

The whole experience was amazing. You really get that medieval times experience while roaming Halls of this winery. Wines there were very tasty. Very picturesque location for events!

Not a wine person but this place was a lot of fun. Went with friends to get a private tour of the place but, unfortunately, they ran out of space for us. Really wide selection of wones and other goodies. Loved the Fantasia wine!

Only giving it four stars becuase they ran out of space for the private tour and place can be packed with people

i had very good experience here.....the tour guide was awesome.....she walked through the history of the vineyard, its architecture and wine tasting.....wine tasting was awesome experience ....i liked la fantasia wine very much....

The wine here is very good and the architectural style is also very unique.

Great wine and wonderful 1 hour and 45 minute guided tour! My husband and I highly recommend it. Learned a lot about the history of the architecture and how the wines are made. Great experience overall.

Really good sommelier, great wines and a beautiful venue

Place-
Tour guide- he s amazing
Wine- I hope they can offer a better for wine tasting

Parking could be tricky on weekends. There were so many cars on the Sunday we went that we ended parking way down the street and had to walk back uphill. There is a $25 fee just to enter the castle and another fee for the tour. The Castle is picturesque but their wines are not up to par.

Very cool place! Wish I could live there! Lots of parking and friendly staff. Gorgeous architecture!

Absolutely loved the place! Nice place to try out different kinds of wine. Though I do not take alcohol, I was impressed by the patience of the host. The guy patiently explained each and every type of wine to our group even though most of us preferred non-alcoholic drinks. There is a family room as well if you have a big group. I suggest you take the guided tour to get a complete perspective of how wines are made. And grapes in the vineyard is sweet as sugar though not all of them!

Michael P was fantastic and the wine was delicious!

This is a fun castle in Napa to visit. You can get great pictures and also view all the historical monuments inside the castle. They have a wine tasting room under the castle. It is a little pricey but the wine is pretty descent. Definitely more on the most expensive wine to buy in Napa. I would recommend it for those seeking the experience more so than tasting wine.

This was such a wonderful and romantic experience, the place is stunning and our server Claire was amazing at keeping us entertained and showing us about the wines we tasted. I absolutely loved including this place on my weekend visit to San Francisco, a must see!!

The only reason it deserves the 2 stars is because of the wine and views. Otherwise, spend your money elsewhere. Before reviewing, I went down to read what some others have posted for their reviews of the winery and quite frankly, none of them are wrong when it comes to customer service. I am not sure what these "experts" look for in their customers before deciding on how much energy to spend on them (note: everyone pays the same price as per my knowledge). My group and I were told to move to make space for others- twice and not in a nice manner on two separate occasions, as though we somehow were a waste of their space. Had to practically beg for our tastings (which they kept forgetting and mixing up). Wouldn't go there again, and definitely wouldn't recommend. We ended up buying a few bottles of wine though, but no thanks to the servers.

It's a very fairytale kind of place, but sort of over oraganized. The group I was with just got to wander, that's what I would recommend

I love this castle! I had such an incredible experience visiting Napa because of this place. The wine tasting was a little expensive but worth the experience. I ended up liking some of the wines that I sampled and purchased a case to give to family & friends.

Great selection of wine! Informative tour around the winery with a video elaborating on the history, types of grapes, methods of preparation and exports. They also exhibit different equipment used in the fermentation process. The staff at the tasting room guide you through the flavours/ingredients in the wine and the art of wine tasting.

The castle is very nice looking for sure, it's very impressive. Amazing someone spent the time and money to build something like Castello di Amorosa. I didn't really care for it as a winery visit though. It was like the disney world of wineries in Napa in that it was a factory of just working people though on a schedule. I've never seen so many people at a winery. The tour guide didn't seem very knowledgeable to me, or maybe she just didn't relay her knowledge well. She spent most of her time laughing and telling us about bricks and tiles and very little about the wine. Even though we paid for two reserve tastings, we were encouraged to taste the non reserve wines, and forced to share tastings and the same tasting sheet verses having our own. It would be similar to splitting a tasting at other wineries is the best I can describe it. We didn't learn very much about the wine at all, we were just told the names and the description for each was that "it is very good" then laughter. It's hard to deny this building is unbelievable. However be prepared that even on a rainy day this place will be packed with people and it's more about the tour of the building verses a tasting (we did the reserve tour/tasting). At the end of our tasting they were pushing people to buy the wine, which is very normal for sure, however I was slightly put off when we answered no, we were told "ok, you can exist by turning right then right then left", as she pointed to the door. We left with very little to no knowledge about their process, decisions, selections, their winery, etc. I would say the only thing they wanted us to depart with was knowledge they had a torture chamber (since they spent a lot of time on that), and knowledge that we couldn't buy their wine except from them. In my opinion the building is amazing, and if you want to take a tour to see what it looks like they will shuffle you though like sheep though the tunnels, but if you want a more traditional winery visit, this likely isn't the best choice. I did not have a uniquely bad experience that I'm sour about, I think I had the experience they wanted me to have. Its just its not what I expected, and it's not like any other tasting or tour you will get in Napa in my experience. It's almost as if they are making more money of tours and tastings than they are selling their wine, it's just different. For a winery and tasting? two stars is generous, for a castle? 4.5 swords

It's amazing to visit a castle in the US. The tour is very informative and the tour guides are very friendly and open to answering any questions. The wine is ok and if you enjoy dessert wines, try La Fantasia.

We found the Castello wonderful, even if the entrance with the included wine tasting was not cheap (I mean $ 30 per person). However, we were happy to pay the price for this extraordinary location. The landscape blends in well. This extraordinary castle is not expected in California.
It was a pleasure for us, the wine tasting was very nice. Definitely a special visit

Amazing! Austin from Houston was an amazing guide.

What a wonderful experience! Our guide was Jason. Extremely knowledgeable, fun guide.

Excellent experience in such of incredible place.
The wine tasting is excellent.
We went on one of the tours and the guide was extremely knowledgeable and very friendly. Will be back soon.

Beautiful place, great wine, and even better staff. Stephen N. was our group tour guide and he was the best, super friendly and knowledgeable. It was definitely busy since it was a Sunday but overall had an amazing time!

Do not join their wine club or add your credit card information on their files. This company fraudulently charged me $1400. I have been working with a customer service rep over for 2 weeks, and no one can provide an invoice for the charges. A dispute has been filed. Horrific experience, stay away from this place!

The castle is very cool but it s very commercialized. There s admission cost to enter the castle, around $30-$40 for either self guided or guided. If you are paying that much you might was well do the food and wine pairing for twice that. We did the food and wine pairing and Mary is the lady for that. She was very knowledgeable. It s not your normal food pairing (don t think courses) this was more of small finger foods/appetizers. It was good and she cooked everything herself. But probably not worth it if you think you ll have like a 4-5 course tasting menu (like St Francis).

It s my favorite winery in the area. Beautiful scenery with a cool castle.

Castillo de amoroso is one one the more expensive tours but worth seeing the history, building of the castle, love the animals and scenery but wines aren't as memorable as the experience itself. They are good but not as wow as the castle. Needless to say do this tour once.

Stephen was a great guide and we really enjoyed our tour and the wine tasting. Gorgeous castle!

Amazing!!! We got more than the sampling wine limit. Thanks to my friend he knows Alfredo. Look for Alfredo! Make sure to pet the goats.

We went on the diamond tour and had Savana as our guide and she was very up beat and amazing!!! She really made the experience top shelf and we dont think it would have been the same with anyone else. We will definitely request her when we come back with more people!!!!

Please note, I am not reviewing the wines here as I was the driver this time.

Unfortunately, I have to give this one a bad rating due to the over commercialization and extreme overcrowding. I understand the need for profit, but it really does seem like they are sacrificing the charm and interest of the place in the name of the almighty dollar. Thirty dollars to enter - for kids too! The wine tasting is actually secondary it feels, although you get five separate tastings per ticket which is pretty standard. This place had construction start in 1993, finished in 2007. It s not old or historic at all - just looks that way!
If you want something they looks interesting, you can t deny the fact this is very different in wine country. We will most likely never come back here, maybe visiting Beringer up the road next time.
My score has been raised by one due to the very nice sommelier that gave my family their tastings. She added a nice personal touch and very thoroughly explained each wine.
Did I mention it s super crowded? I would personally visit this place once, max.

Oh, get used to having to pay extra for a tour to see the interesting stuff. Get ready to see that sign a lot.

Will definitely come back!! Great service and tasty wines. Ask for the Voyager Sangiovese!

This estate/castle is absolutely magnificent. The architecture is astounding and it really makes you believe this castle was built hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The wine was also good. It would be nice if they had a deli, but it might take away from the castle feel.

My wife and I love Italy. The building wasn t as bad as I feared, and the employees were lovely. But place was totally slammed (crowded) on a Sunday. Crowds were impenetrable at the tasting room, so our $30 tickets went unused. They need to somehow limit attendance or vastly expand facilities or sell castle only tickets. Avoid!

I hate to give this vineyard a 2 star, but that s about all it really can earn. The Pros are singular, this vineyard has simply the best view in Napa Valley. By far the most gorgeous scenery out of ANY of the vineyards in Napa or Sonoma, hands down. It s worth the drive just for that.
The Cons are multiple. While the property is absolutely stunning, it s a good 45-60min drive from downtown Napa. If you re into scenic views, that s great! If you re looking for a quality wine tasting, well this property isn t it. The wines are good, but not fantastic and definitely NOT worth the cost (even if you purchase the reserve tasting . They don t pour half of the bottles on their price list either. Very overpriced and while it has a gorgeous atmosphere, it s useless because you can t buy a bottle or two and drink it on the property. The owner s more friendly property is V Sattui and there you can actually sit on the grounds and enjoy wine and even an Italian deli.
Worth seeing and taking pictures, NOT worth spending any money.

Gorgeous Castle, the drive from Napa to there is beautiful and about half an hr long ..... it s always crowded but worth your time and wait .... our tour guide was very Charming Italian with great sense of humor, the whole tour was 1 and half hours , very interesting one , one of its kind but the wine was average , didn t like at all our underage kids enjoyed their grape juice , which was actually tastier than their wine ..... but enjoyed looking around the Castle and taking pics in their beautiful property, they also have goats to take pics with and on your way back to Napa , do stop to take pics on the famous Napa hoarding if you are not into serious wine tasting but like exploring, this is your place

Castello Di Amorosa is absolutely gorgeous!! It's a must see for anyone coming to Napa for the first time. We did the trolley tour and this was our first stop. It was amazing!!

The best wine toasting and the place where the stone castle art tastes

Hated this experience. This is going to be a long post. It's a castle -great, but it's so commercial. Tons of people on the day we visited. We were treated very badly by the staff. They made us stand in front of the bar table for the wine tasting. The bartender at the first bar table said -"this spot is reserved, go check if there are more spots available in the other bar table" . After a long wait, we found a spot for the 3 of us to stand. Due to the large number of people, bartender kept going back and forth between us and other groups, with long gaps in between the serves. While we were touring the castle, we sat down in one of the churches and within a minute, a tour guide came and said, "you guys need to clear out, we have a group coming". We may not have taken a guided tour but we did pay for the self tour and that's no way to treat us! There was another tour guide who said to her group when we entered the cellar that she was giving the tour in - guys let's head to this other "chamber" (or whatever) and this is exclusively for you guys since you opted for the guided tour. In all, terrible experience, commercial, will never ever go back to this place

By far the best winery experience. My wife and I did the tour with the wine tasting. Very interesting in the history of the property. Plus the wine was set apart from others. Ask for Jamie as the tour guide. He was great. He was the Robert Downey Jr of the Winery experience.

This has always been one of my favorite wineries in Napa. The tour is fantastic and their wines are delicious! Definitely not one to miss! The Napa trolley tour includes the castle in the price of you decide to do that during your time in Napa. :-)

Second time here but this time with kids. Was a bit skeptical of going with kids but they are very well set to accommodate you. Great views and the architecture is amazing. We did the wine tasting and they have family rooms to accomadate the family with crayons for the kiddos to play with while you get to sample their amazing wines. Highly recommended even with the family.

We went here twice and both times the server was incredibly rude and impatient with us for not knowing what we wanted. They make you feel very pressured to upgrade at every turn. Would not have gone back the second time were it not for friends wanting the castle experience.

Great place to visit even with our toddler. It s a shame we could not do the full tour since our child is less than five years old. Anyways, a great place to visit. The tasting room experience even good for children where they handed us grape juice for our daughter, colors and coloring sheets to distract her while we tasted.

We wandered in the lounge during our first visit, where the pourer gave us an upgrade so we can stay there to taste the wine. IL Barone was not on the tasting menu but he brought that out so we can try it. I loved the 2011 so much that I bought 2 bottles of that one :) They ended up pouring us 10 tastings although the flight was for 5-6. Such warm hospitality and love for wine!!

BTW the regular tasting was not as impressive - they literally give you just a sip, and none of the vintages are available in the regular tasting room.

We ve been here several times over the years and previously enjoyed the family oriented atmosphere. The castle and grounds are lovely and some of the wines are decent. However, today was an experience that will result in us not returning and the reason why: half our group had previously been to Castello di Amorosa and didn t want to take the tour or see the grounds. The other half paid to go on the tour. The half that didn t go on the tour wanted to go into the gift shop and purchase some souvenirs as they had been to the castle before and then continue on the way. At the entrance we were told we could go around back and enter the gift shop to peruse and purchase the items.

We go around the building and received and entirely different reception. We were told that we had to pay $30 admittance fee to purchase items from the gift shop. Upon discussing with the manager he insisted that for the privileged of purchasing items from the gift shop and because we could go upstairs to the main castle we had to pay. We were dumbstruck and being treated like a group of thieves left a terrible impression. He then conceded one of us could go at a time, because he couldn t monitor our group of four. We won t be back and have taken Castello di Amorosa off of our tour list for friends and family visiting.

Beautiful, but if you want to see anything you HAVE to do the guided tour. We did the self guided tour and saw that most places were closed off for guided tours only - only downfall of this place.

Beautiful castle and the views are truly spectacular. I would recommend taking the evening tour so as to enjoy the sunset views from the castle and get some amazing pictures. Also, it is worth staying even after dark since they light up the place and castle looks so mesmerizing in those lights.

Beautiful place, if you can get to it. They guard it so much that you can t drive up to see it, out of curiosity. You have to pay just to get in. Interestingly, they were doing a wine tasting at our hotel and it was equally as pretentious. The guy serving the wine was not friendly and didn t really seem interested in sharing the wine with the hotel guests-

I recommend going to Sterling Vineyards and viewing it from there!

Nice location but not worth money if you are not planning wine tasting...

Amazing vineyard. One of the most popular vineyard in Napa

Scenery is amazing. Enjoyed the tour given by Joe. Great history.

Very unique. The castle itself is the biggest attraction it's very faithfully created. When you do actually go for the tasting it's nice to hear the folks running the place to be speaking Italian. I did find them ajust little pushy about selecting the premium wine tasting. It'll cost about 30 dollars for the regular tasting and 45 for the Reserve wine tasting. I recommend the sweet wines here I thought they were pretty superb.

$30/adult for entering the castle and wine tasting. The wine is soso, I prefer their "grape juice" than wine.

It was crowded at the basement during tasting due to group of people and the wait for next glass of wine will drive you nuts. It was the worst wine tasting experience I ever had in Napa.

We visited this castle in 2013 w/o paying a fee.