Touring the wine caves of Napa Valley

Find a wine club that offers cave tours

If you’re thinking of joining a wine club, pick one that offers cave tours. Caves are great places to store and age barrels of wine. They maintain an even temperature all year, low but not freezing. They’re also humid, which reduces the loss of wine by evaporation that you’d normally get when storing a non-airtight barrel for years. The humidity of a wine cave should be at least 75 percent. And wine caves are often carved, decorated and lit to suit their owners’ imaginations and sometimes have their own water features that draw from underground rivers. They can even be good places to have dinner. With dinner, you can taste the latest wines and the library wines from previous years stored in the cave.

Cave tours near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards, near St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn how they make and store the wine. One of the wines in its library is the ruby red 2009 Éloge. A fine blend from an excellent growing year, the ’09 Éloge has an aroma with a core of concentrated dark fruits, with crème de cassis, cigar box, spice and streaks of red currants. Its flavor is similar — deep and full-bodied with concentrated dark fruits, spice and mocha.

Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Join today.

The underground wine scene

Caves nicer than they sound

The best thing about a cave tours in the summer is that it’s always cool in the cave, to the point where you need a jacket. Also you can learn about the wine industry from the people who work in it, and try old library wines. There may be good food with this wine, often in a surprisingly beautiful setting — these caves are often carved, decorated and lit to create great subterranean works of art, complete with running fountains from underground rivers.

Cave tours of a vineyard near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn all about the process of making and storing the wine. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain, and has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide.

One wine you might sample during an Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards cave tour is the Right Bank. Their 2011 Right Bank came from a cooler than average year, leading to a powerful aroma and flavor of blue violets, red currants, menthol and anise, with seamlessly blended oak and grape tannins and bright acidity. This wine is expected to be good for thirty years. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards doesn’t issue a Right Bank every year. Try their latest Right Bank today.

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.

Wine clubs offer tours of vineyard caves

Wine club cave tours

Napa wine clubs like Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Wine Club often schedule cave tours. Many wine caves have been turned into underground works of architectural art, set up to cater dinners. Here you can taste the newest wines, and wines from earlier years. You can learn about the wine industry from professional winemakers. When going on a cave tour, dress as you would for a cool spring or fall day —it never gets too hot or too cold inside the cave.

Winery near St. Helena offers cave tours

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a short drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Wine Club or making a $100 purchase.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces wines that are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. One Bordeaux blend from the library that you might be introduced to on a cave tour of Anderson’s Conn Valley is the 2007 Éloge. This dark ruby wine has an aroma of mocha, chocolate, and black stone fruits balanced with oakiness. Its flavor begins with the juicy taste of ripe blackberries, followed by more dark fruit flavors with chocolate covered cherries perfectly matched with fruit and oak tannins. It has a finish lasting two to three minutes in the mouth. The ’07 Éloge is expected to get even better as it ages. Buy a bottle today and enjoy it ten to fourteen years from now.

Go underground to explore the wine world

Caves are good for storing wine

One of the great pleasures of exploring the wine culture of Napa Valley is the cave tour. Caves, with their even year-round low but not freezing temperatures, have been recognized for centuries as excellent places in which to store and age wine in the barrel. The first wine caves were ordinary caves and former limestone quarries in Europe. The cool, humid air in the cave minimizes the loss of wine to evaporation. In the 19^th century, explosives were used to blast and carve out artificial caves in the rock of the Napa Valley for the wine industry.

During cave tours, you can learn about the wine industry from the people who work in it every day and taste both the latest wines and library wines from previous years. Many of these caves are spectacularly lit and decorated by their owners. No matter what the weather is doing outside, it will be cool inside the cave, so bring a coat when going on a cave tour.

Cave tours of a vineyard near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn all about the process of making and storing the wine. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. Order a bottle today.