5 Napa Valley Wineries You NEED to try

For episode three of our California Bucket List series, we're in the Napa Valley, trying some of their world famous wine. Cheers. We're trying wine right out of the barrel. Of course, this is by no means a complete guide to the Napa Valley, but I wanted to share some of my favorite wineries that I've been to over the years so that you could see where to start when beginning your Napa Valley trip. Are you tired of wine tasting in Napa yet? I definitely can't drink as much wine as I used to, but it's been really fun. You can see the other videos in the California Bucket List series in the description, and let's jump into episode three, wine tasting in Napa with five of my favorite wineries. I guess I should note a few things before we start. One, this isn't sponsored. I paid for all of these. Two, Napa is very expensive, so know that going in. And three, we did this over multiple days, so you don't want to do this much wine tasting in one day. All right, now onto the video. We started our Napa Valley journey with a visit to Visatui. This is probably the most visited winery in the Napa Valley, and it's easy to see why, as the people here are great, and the property is beautiful to explore. Plus, if you're traveling with kids, they were very family-friendly when we went. First wine tasting experience in the Napa Valley, only two and a half years old. This winery also has a great history. It started when the Satuis immigrated to San Francisco in 1882. They opened a winery a few years later that was eventually shut down during Prohibition. However, in 1976, the great-grandson reopened the winery in the Napa Valley and established Visatui again. Since then, it's become a Napa Valley staple and a great place for wine tasting. One of the highlights here for us was the exceptionally tasty port that they had. Plus, they had a few different types of grape juice that the kids could taste. If you're hungry, they also have a famous deli here with over 200 different types of cheeses and many different sandwich options. You can take the food and the wine, walk around the property, sit at the picnic tables, and look at the sheep. That was a great wine-tasting experience in Napa. Cool property, good wines. There's sheep for the children to look at. Very family-friendly. Definitely a good stop. For our second winery, we're headed north toward Calistoga to visit Castello de Amarosa, also known as the Castle Winery of Napa Valley. Here's our second Napa Valley winery, and I have to admit, this is a pretty cool place to explore. I've probably been here four times over the last decade, but I always love coming back whenever I'm in Napa, and I always love bringing people who haven't experienced it before to see this place. I didn't know until after I shot this video that this spot is actually owned by Visa Tui as well, so its history follows the history I shared earlier. Construction on the castle began in 1994, and it took over 15 years to complete. The castle has over 107 rooms with four underground levels and four above-ground levels. It's about as authentic as a modern castle can be, using old materials that were shipped over from Europe and including a moat, a drawbridge, and even defense towers. With the cheapest wine-tasting package, you can tour the upper part self-guided, but with one of the more expensive options, you can actually go down into the wine cellars and taste underground. Cheers. We're trying wine right out of the barrel. If you have the opportunity and can afford it, I highly recommend taking that tour, as it's pretty incredible to see the castle from underneath. It's the pit of despair for anyone who doesn't buy wine. Yes, we need to start climbing in. The attention to detail is staggering here, and it feels like you're in a 13th century castle. There's rooms that are lit with candlelight, rooms that look like they haven't been opened in over 100 years, and there's even a medieval torture chamber. Is this the chair that we get to do our wine-tasting in? The tour then ends with a tasting at a beautiful underground room. Finished wine-tasting number two in Napa. What'd you think? It was awesome. Super cool tour. It is a really fun tour, and they have good wines, too, so definitely see it. Also, don't forget to climb the tower before you leave. Of course, after the tour, you can go explore some of the above-ground rooms that you may have missed. Climbing the tower is definitely my favorite part, though, because you get some great views over the valley. Yeah, this place is expensive, but it is cool. You gotta do it once. We're at winery number three, Beringer. With only about a seven-minute drive from the castle, our next winery was Beringer, which was the second-oldest winery in the Napa Valley. This is one I had never been to before this video, but I really wanted to tour it because the property is so historic. Beringer has 146 years of history, and they were the first winery in Napa Valley to offer a public tour in 1934. We did the tasting that included a tour of the old winery, which took us into the caves. The caves here are incredibly cool as they were hand-dug, and they look much different than what you're used to seeing. One of the things I liked most about it is that they gave you wine along the tour so you could have something to drink while you were hearing about its history. I love that I'm just getting more wine to drink while I'm touring. This is nice. It's really impressive to see some of the old photos and incredibly old bottles from Beringer's history. You look like you know what you're doing. At least pretend like I know it. After tasting, you can walk around the property and go down and see the historic house. There are a few tastings that take place in the house, but that wasn't one of the tours that we did. For us, we just walked around the part of the house that was accessible and checked out all of its beautiful antiques and stained glass. This is our fourth and probably final winery in Napa, Frog's Leap. For our next winery, we headed over to Frog's Leap, which is in Rutherford on the Silverado Trail. This was another one that had came highly recommended and that I had never been to before. They even got a little snack for us. This is a nice tasting. We were greeted with sweet potato chips and goat cheese, coloring books for the kids, and even some blankets since it was a little cold in the early Napa morning. This was more of a traditional tasting with five different pourers seated at a table, but overlooking the beautiful property. After finishing the tasting, you can walk around the property, see the big chicken coop they have in the back, or just explore the beautiful gardens. We visited in the spring, so there was a lot of pretty yellow flowers around. For our last winery in this video, we wanted to show you something that was easily approachable if you were staying in Napa City and didn't want to go into the valley. For this one, we headed to a personal favorite of mine, which is Jam Cellars. I've been here a couple times over the years, and I always love the people and the atmosphere here. They have guitars on the walls, you can pick from hundreds of different vinyls for them to play while you're there, and they often have concerts on the weekends. Even if you don't think you like Chardonnay, be sure to try it here. The butter Chardonnay is pretty hard to beat. That was the last of our tasting experiences in Napa, and that's a great approachable one, especially if you're new to wine. They make some really good wine there. It's probably the most chill location that we've drank wine at, and probably my favorite wines we've had so far on the trip. Thanks for doing this bucket list video with us. Let us know what other California bucket list items you want to see in the comments, and we will see you on the next one.