Our friend Ricardo, from Long Beach, is quite a wine aficionado. We asked him for some tips on Napa and he sent us an email with some wonderful suggestions! We went just north of the city of Napa, CA to the Calistoga and St Helena area. We found a wonderful place by appointment only, Anderson's Conn Valley Vineyards. Their office was more of a work office rather than a showroom. We walked up to the "caves" they had built a few years earlier for our free tasting. Outside, the temperature was over 100 degrees, but inside the caves, the temperature is maybe 57 degrees with 95% humidity. We tasted perhaps 7 wines from bottles and then we tasted several more wines straight from the barrels to compare the younger wines. We were talking and tasting wine for about 2 hours. They had some of the most magnificent wines! They had a crisp Chardonnay that they served AFTER the red wines, showing that it can stand up to the reds. They were right!  

Original Photo