We visited Castello di Amorosa, Dario Sattui's authentically-built 13th century Tuscan castle and winery yesterday near Calistoga California. The stonework is excellent.
This is not a plastic/concrete Disney castle. This is the real thing, or as close as you can get half way around the world from Tuscany. The castle took 13 years to design and construction started in 1997 and the castle was completed in 2006.
You can get nicely lost in this place - starting from the fortified winery entrance gate, working your way around and up the red brick and white granite towers, back down through the spacious courtyard and into to the barrel vaulted wine barrel basements.
While we were there we had the good fortune to be able to talk to three of the masons who worked on this huge project originally and happened to be there this week squaring stone for a new gate house.
Raymond and Fernando were from Mexico, and Johnny, on the right, was from Italy. They told us all the bricks came from Italy but the thousands of tons of stone were all sourced locally.
This is the place to come if you are a connoisseur of good stonework, oh and yes maybe if you like wine too.
You can get nicely lost in this place - starting from the fortified winery entrance gate, working your way around and up the red brick and white granite towers, back down through the spacious courtyard and into to the barrel vaulted wine barrel basements.
While we were there we had the good fortune to be able to talk to three of the masons who worked on this huge project originally and happened to be there this week squaring stone for a new gate house.
This is the place to come if you are a connoisseur of good stonework, oh and yes maybe if you like wine too.
