Join a wine club, take a cave tour

Cave tours in Napa Valley

Caves. Dark and mysterious. Always chilly, never too cold. They sheltered the earliest humans, and their walls hosted some of our first attempts at art. And for a long time, they’ve been used to store wine barrels. When winemaking came to California, the winemakers decided to just make their own caves, with the same equipment and workers as the railroads that were driving tunnels through the Rocky Mountains.

Napa wine clubs like Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Wine Club often hold tours of the vineyard’s caves. Many Napa Valley wine caves are quite beautiful, and can cater elegant dinners. However well-appointed they are, these caves are still as cold and damp as ever, so dress with this in mind.

Vineyard near St. Helena offers cave tours

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its caves. One Bordeaux blend from the library that you might be introduced to on a cave tours of Anderson’s Conn Valley is the 2010 Signature Cabernet Sauvignon, an intense dark purple wine with a slight edge of red, has an aroma dominated by cassis with streaks of blackberry, red berries and blueberry, elements of smoke from the oak, and highlights of crushed roses and anise. Born from a year with a cool spring and fall and an intensely hot summer, this wine’s flavor has a massive structure of black, blue and red fruits with licorice, anise, tobacco and rosehips. This is a wine that should be allowed to age.