California castle

By Paul E. Kandarian

As Daryl Sattui  bent his lanky, 6-foot-5-inch   frame to fit through an arched stone doorway in his Napa Valley Castello di Amorosa in Calistoga, Calif.,  a metaphor could not help but spring to mind: Is this guy in way over his head?

Sattui, 65,  owner of the very successful V. Sattui Winery  just down Route 29   in St. Helena, leveraged himself up to his bright blue eyes to get this monster built, a magnificent castle atop a hill overlooking a terraced, Tuscan-style vineyard that was finished in spring 2007. It is a massive stone structure that replicates castle design from the 11th  to 16th  century and is much homage to his love of ancient architecture as to his passion for creating award-winning wine.

Consider: The place set him back $30 million,  consists of 107  rooms (including an honest-to-goodness torture chamber complete with a genuine antique Iron Maiden  and a replica rack), seven   levels (four  of them underground) and took 14  years to build. His V. Sattui Winery, begun by his great-grandfather Vittorio,  closed during Prohibition and reopened by Daryl Sattui in 1976  with borrowed labor and money from friends, helped pay for most of the castle; V. Sattui’s 400,000 visitors a year make it one of Napa’s busiest wineries. But in the last couple years of meticulous castle construction, Sattui’s budget was blown and he started borrowing.

“I had a budget but threw it out, now I’m all in,” Sattui smiled as he walked me through and around his castle which opened to the public April 9 for tours and wine tasting. “Except for my retirement, I’ve sunk every dime I had and then some into this.”

That ‘this’ is pretty substantial. The castle is part of the overall 171-acre  winery, is 121,000-square-feet  big, and was designed to be look like what a castle was supposed to be: A defensive fortification. Its architectural design purposely spans the centuries because European castles always underwent modifications, expansions and renovations over their lifetimes. And being made of stone, they tended to last a very long time.

Unless they were blown apart by attackers. Sattui even has that covered: One of the towers was created to look like it was shattered by cannon fire.

The design was expensive, no detail overlooked to make it as authentic as possible. Much of the 8,000  tons of stone, most of it basalt, was hand squared on site. The castle consists of five  towers with battlements, a church, a gigantic drawbridge, a dry moat, and a monstrous great hall with double doors held together by 2,000   nails handmade in Italy.

The great hall is majestic – 22-feet  high, 72-feet  long and 30-feet  wide – able to host 180 people, boasting a 500-year-old  fireplace and floor-to-ceiling wall frescoes hand painted by Italian artisans that took a Michelangeloan-like year and a half to complete. Ancient-looking wrought iron throughout the castle was made to look that way by dousing it with acid. Hand-carved sandstone gargoyles keep garish sentry on walls and towers.

Below ground are a labyrinth of wine chambers  –900  feet long in all - smelling sweetly of the casks bearing the fruits of the vines from the rich earth above. Escape tunnels are here as well, as are dead ends. At one point in our walk, the impish Sattui sent me into a hallway that got smaller and went nowhere.

“I sent Gov. (Arnold) Schwarzenegger  up there,” he said with a laugh about a reception attended by the actor-turned-governor who took a tour with Sattui that included a trip to the terminated hallway. “He hit his head.”

Something this large might seem to indicate a rich guy’s out-of-whack ego, but Sattui is as immensely likeable, soft spoken and low key as they come. Take the tour of the castle, you may well run into him as he tidies up after a tasting, and he’ll be happy to regale you with the nuts and bolts of how the castle was designed and built, but more importantly about the wine that is made there.

“I have a real passion in my life for all things Italian, the architecture, the art, and especially the wines,” he said, his large hands cutting the air as he spoke. “This is partly homage to my ancestry.

“And,” he admitted sheepishly, “it’s partly I just don’t know why. I just wanted to do it.”

He’d never designed anything bigger than a doghouse in his life, he said, calling himself a closet architect. He built the castle mostly to showcase his quality wine, and he seems to know whereof he speaks: His V. Sattui Winery has been named the state’s top winery in two   of the last three  years, and over the years the wines produced there have won more than 75  gold medals in various worldwide competitions.

Designing the castle came after numerous trips to Italy to get ideas, and poring over thousands of and blueprints of other castles to make sure he got it right. After a year of making his own designs, he turned them over to an architect. Fourteen years later, the dream was realized.

“I didn’t care to rush it, I enjoyed the project and I certainly didn’t do it for the money, though I’d hate to go broke,” he said, then admitted “no prudent businessman would ever do this.”

He may not be prudent, but he’s decidedly different. The San Jose State University graduate started up V. Sattui in 1976,  opening a deli to sell meats and cheese as well, something no other winery was doing. Others thought him crazy, he said. Now most do and it’s a huge part of the winery business.

Sattui always had the business bug, he said. During his college days, he sold college t-shirts and other merchandise to students. He even sold clogs before clogs were popular, including through Filene’s in Boston.

“I thought it would make me rich,” he shrugged. “But I didn’t know the shoe business. I was trying to make a buck a pair and I really should have been making more. But I just wanted people to have these shoes.”

He feels that way about his wine. Castello di Amorosa wine is not sold in stores, only onsite and online, and is reasonably priced, from $19  for the Rosato di Sangiovese 2005  to $68  for the Il Barone Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2003.

The castle does about 8,000  cases a year, V. Sattui five   times as much. He’ll have to sell a lot of wine and hold a lot of tours here to pay off the $30 million he’s sunk into the place. But that’s history as ancient looking as the castle he built.

“I’m at the point in my life where I want to do the things I want to do,” he said with a shrug. People might say I’m nuts, but I don’t care. I’ll be dead in 15  or 20  years, but this will be around a lot longer.”

He knows the allure of visiting the castle might be more theme-park than wine-loving, but downplays the angle of the former, stressing the latter, all the while realizing that a $30-million, 107-room castle with a torture chamber just might be something of a curiosity. That’s fine by Sattui, long as it gets people here to sample the fruits of his labor.

“I want people who are serious about wines to come here,” he said. “I thought if I built something beautiful to showcase it, they would.”

(Castello di Amorosa, 4045 North Saint Helena Highway, 707-942-8200.  Tasting only, $10;   tasting and tour, $25.  For information, visit castellodiamorosa.com)

PHOTO CREDITS: Paul E. Kandarian