CALISTOGA – Amid the sprawling vineyards and cozy hillsides of the Napa Valley, Daryl Sattui’s castle rises impressively under a late morning sun. It’s invisible from Highway 29, but turn left at the street address, follow the paved road through rows of young vines, and there it is.
“Big” does not describe it. Castello di Amorosa, as Sattui calls it, is immense. Monumentally so.
It has a drawbridge, an iron-gated entrance, a dry moat, dungeon, chapel and great hall with frescoes covering the walls from ceiling to floor – a Tuscan medieval castle in the heart of wine country.
Visitors began arriving in April, but the project has been 14 years – and millions of dollars – in the making.
“I did it partly to honor my ancestors,” said Sattui, 65, a fourth-generation winemaker. “And partly, I don’t know. I just really have a passion for this.”
If passion can run amok, Sattui’s has. The castle, intended to showcase his Castello di Amorosa label, was originally designed to cover 8,500 square feet. But his love of architecture and all things Italian overwhelmed his intent.
The resulting edifice measures 121,000 square feet, with 107 rooms on eight levels, four of them underground. Some 8,000 tons of stones – including basalt and sandstone – were chiseled by hand and set individually. Leaded glass was imported from Italy. Gargoyles were handcarved. A maze of narrow hallways below ground measures 900 feet and leads to several chambers filled with wine barrels and artifacts.
Even nails were made by hand to stay true to the original process.
The cost of this eccentricity? Sattui has previously put it at $30 million, but he prefers to avoid the question now.
“My wife gets mad at me when someone asks about that,” he said. “Put it this way: I spent a lot of money, and then some.
“I ended up spending everything I had, sold all my stock, had to borrow money from Wells Fargo. I just hope I don’t go broke.”
Napa’s many styles
Some might call it monstrous a little too big for little old
Napa Valley but Sattui’s castle is nestled comfortably on a hill
surrounded by vines and trees.
“One of the wonderful things about the Napa Valley is that it
doesn’t have one aesthetic to it,” said Rick Walker, executive
director of Festival del Sole, a wine and classical music event held
this summer at the castle. “You’ll find a Persian palace at the
Darioush Winery, French chateau styles, modern construction,
Spanish influence like Mondavi just about anything under the
sun, including someone’s castle.”
Fellow vintner Carmen Policy, the former 49ers executive, calls
the castle “a marvelous reproduction that has historic flavor to
it. We refer to Napa Valley as Tuscany-like, so it’s appropriate
that the castle has Tuscany roots. The concept of wine and that
region blends perfectly.”
San Jose State grad
Sattui, a 1965 graduate of San Jose State
University, hopes it will draw a steady stream of visitors to
sample his wine. He founded Castello di Amorosa in 2002, but he
made his mark with V. Sattui Winery a few miles south in St.
Helena, where his deli and outdoor picnic area draw more than
400,000 locals and tourists each year.
Sattui’s great-grandfather, Vittorio, started V. Sattui in 1885
but was shut down by Prohibition laws in the 1920s. Daryl, using
borrowed money, rebuilt it in 1975 and now sells about 50,000
cases a year by mail order, online and on the winery premises.
Castello di Amorosa came as a result of Sattui’s need to
indulge his interests in architecture and castles (he owns a
former monastery and a Medici palace in Italy) and an urge to
try something new in winemaking.
“I was getting bored,” he said. “V. Sattui was too easy.”
For several years, he had been researching castles on visits to
Italy, taking notes and photos and reading books. A few times, he
said, he even met with real estate agents and feigned interest in
buying a castle just so he could get inside and see what they
looked like.
“I was enamored of them,” he said. “To me, they’re like
beautiful women I tremble sometimes when I see them.”
He turned over his ideas to an architect, but Sattui insisted
that it be built to exacting standards. The design includes styles
from the 10th through the early 16th centuries because castles
typically evolved over time. Some doorways, for example, have
been covered by bricks, and one curved stairway leads into a wall
(Sattui smiles impishly as he sends a visitor up the stairs).
“We tried to create randomness, and that’s not easy to do,” he
said.
Below ground, visitors move along a dark, narrow passageway
to several rooms, including the 12,000-square-foot grand barrel
cellar, which took 2″ years to build. A popular stop is the torture
chamber, which contains an antique “iron maiden” a large
cabinet shaped like figure of a woman that was used to impale its
victims with nails or spikes. Other tools of torture include a rack,
a cage used for hangings, a “cranium crusher” and three jail
cells.
“I don’t want this to be Disney-like,” Sattui said. “We’re
serious about wine, but I wanted everything to be authentic.”
He has plans to display swords and crossbows in an armament
room. Another small chamber is dedicated to his
great-grandfather, with hundred-year-old bottles from the
original label on display.
Visitors will be enthralled by the great hall, which measures 72
feet by 30 feet, with a 22-foot-high ceiling, and can be used for
large dinners or corporate events. At the far end is a
500-year-old fireplace that Sattui shipped from Italy. Above it, a
bearded nobleman loosely resembling Sattui stands regally with
the family crest.
The place is grand, and enormous. But is Sattui done?
Probably not.
“I have a sense it will never end,” he said. “”As long as I don’t
go broke, I’m OK.”
Contact Michael Martinez at mmartinez@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5503.
