I still vividly remember my first winery tour in Napa Valley in October 2017. It was the season of red wine harvesting, and the air in the valley was fully filled with the smell of grapes.
Back then, I visited Robert Mondavi Winery and Castello di Amorosa and took a tour of both wineries. It was a real pleasure to take winery tours and taste a variety of wines in a day.
The reason I love visiting wineries in person is that each winery has different tour and tasting programs, facilities, and stories, which makes the visit more memorable. Also, I don’t know why, but I feel the wine tastes even better at the winery! — In that sense, I am so grateful to be in California. And it is very attractive that all wines have different tastes and flavors, so finding great wines is really interesting and enjoyable.
“It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.” — Steve Jobs
In fact, this sentence refers to calligraphy, but for me, it is also an exact impression of wine.
Personally, I really enjoyed the tour at Mondavi winery and tasting Momentum. Taking a photo in front of the signature entrance of Mondavi winery — which is on the label of Mondavi wines — was also fun.
The Catello di Amorosa winery was really beautiful before the fire broke out in October 2020. It was so shocking and sad to hear that the winery had a fire. It was a decent sized castle style winery and I really enjoyed browsing the winery and tasting lots of wines during my visit.
After that, I continued to visit wineries including one of the wineries in Italy and Napa’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, V. Sattui — I loved every visit!
Recently I read a Japanese comic book about wine, “The Drop of God”. In this book, I enjoyed discovering the story of S.L.V wine that won the 1976 Judgment of Paris, which I tasted while visiting Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. After reading the book, I set Bordeaux, France as my next vacation destination after COVID, and wanted to get more wine knowledge in a more professional way.
So, I searched for sommelier certificates and found two organizations — WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) and CMS (Court of Master Sommeliers). The main difference between the two is that WSET is focused on more general knowledge and CMS is closer to being a real restaurant sommelier. I believe at some point in my life I will start with a WSET certificate and then seriously try CMS to the next level.
In the meantime, I look forward to my next trip to another new winery soon and finding some really fascinating wines!
