Lost in the Cellar

The Sattui Castle could make even a Medici envious.

We called Daryl Sattui on the fly, suggesting lunch if he were available by the time we arrived at his winery south of St. Helena. A difficult man in many ways, Daryl is at least unpretentious, and a last minute proposal such as ours he finds not the least bit an imposition. The wonders of cell phone tech assured us that we would be welcome, and we pulled up to the facility while listening to that message. Daryl was just then walking out of the winery in our general direction.

We hadn't really talked with Daryl since a party a year or two earlier. Staged at his estate's reservoir, a lovely spot with a stone bridge, a little island in the center, and a rowboat, the gathering succumbed to consternation as he threw our son into the pond within minutes of arrival. We could either assault him, or laugh off the incident as typically Daryl. We chose the latter course; the antic perfectly represented Daryl's sense of propriety, and, in any case, there would be a great story for everyone to tell, ourselves at the center.

He invited us into his deli to grab something for lunch, while he poured us a glass of wine, after which we sat at a picnic table on the lawn and caught up with events in our respective lives. He planned to depart on the morrow for 10 days in the jungles of Costa Rica, and asked if we'd been there and what he should see. We had traveled there, and we advised him that it was unique in all of Central America in that it was a virtual Garden of Eden seemingly devoid of the crushing poverty so easily found elsewhere in the region. Go almost anywhere, we suggested, because any tourist spot would likely be wonderful. We had found that it was difficult to be disappointed in Costa Rica, especially if one found interest in exotic flora and fauna. On our trip there, we had gone swimming in a river on the edge of a small town. Only later, while paddling a dugout canoe into the jungle, did we notice the thick population of alligators loitering along the waterway. Later still, over dinner that night in a thatched-roof restaurant, we noted the large shark jaws on the bamboo walls. The local river, it turned out, connected with Lake Nicaragua, the only place in the world where freshwater versions of the predators resided. Costa Rica was full of surprises, and Daryl was tantalized by the prospects.

Then Daryl abruptly excused himself to help a customer wheeling two cases of wine out of his establishment on a dolly. He disappeared for several minutes, treating the man as the most honored guest in yet another perfectly representative Sattui moment. Generally, the man is as capable of sensitivity as a meat ax. But where customers are concerned, Daryl is all melted butter, and he knows just how to spread it. He could provide service lessons to the world. He cleared tables, picked up the stray piece of litter and greeted other picnicking customers on the way back to our lunch in an admirable hands-on display of the successful millionaire who hasn't forgotten how he acquired it all. And in Sattui's case, it was hard work and attention to detail of the most extreme order. We had been there close to the beginning, and we knew as few others that Sattui was a self-made man of the most remarkable sort.

On his return, we inquired after the castle he's building in the mountains overlooking Sterling vineyards. He'd taken us on a tour on the day he dunked our son, but it existed then all underground; the ramparts had not yet been started. He invited us to go up and have a look.

A guy named Paolo's in charge, said Daryl. But don't waste his time and keep him from working.

Perfectly Daryl.

We headed north, found the driveway indicated, and proceeded up the mountainside on a freshly paved road invisible from the highway. The car climbed between the vineyards on either side, and we soon glimpsed the stonework that would shortly overwhelm us. The progress since our last visit was stunning. We regarded not a building, but a compound of buildings, unified by the familiar crenellation suggesting an ancient fortress.

Massive stone walls loomed here, a tower over there, a large building on one side, smaller buildings on the other. The complex claimed a sizable chunk of the mountainside, and it rose on several levels. A central piazza pulled it all together, one structure presiding several stories above it, while below the walled plateau several stories seemed to hide within the mountain.

The slightest disappointment tinged our amazement when we realized that the stone edifice was, in fact, a fraud. Cast-concrete walls were sheathed in a thick layer of hand-cut stone which left the perfect impression of traditionally raised masonry. We'd long wondered about that, but for just as long had forgotten to ask about the exact method of construction. All was revealed; the project melded new and old methods into an authentic replica of a 13th Century Romanesque masterpiece.

But just as impressive as the edifice is the location; its lowest point appeared to be higher than the highest point of Sterling, a mile or so to the northeast. Sattui's castle looks out over the top end of the Napa Valley, with a vista favoring a down-valley prospect. The myriad little mountain peaks tumble into each other, as if shaken off by the broad Vaca Range, their dark tops set off by the mustard studded vineyards and green grasses of midwinter. Mists hung in the air, obscuring totally the most distant hills, while the closer white towers of the other hilltop winery peaked out from behind its own trees.

As we wandered, we encountered Paolo, who greeted us warmly and stooped to pick up some construction trash as we talked. He resisted our praise as flattery, and insisted that we would see real progress in the coming months. A self-effacing man, he contradicted our presumption that he was an engineer; I'm much less, he said, in heavily accented English. And then he was gone, to more pressing duties than hospitality.

We headed toward the mountainside and the lowest of the many entrances into the cellars. Unlike so many winery tunnels, with sprayed concrete providing the interior finish, these were lined with brick, just as you might find in Roman catacombs or Venetian dungeons. The tortuous maze engulfed us, and before we knew it, we were hopelessly lost in twisting, turning passages suffused with the glow of distant light.

Sunken chambers contained tiers of barrels, dusty, unlabeled bottles lined some corridors, short flights of stairs angled up or down, right and left. We doubled back into familiar territory, took another turn and saw something new. We blundered into a large room frescoed with jousting knights rendered in an early renaissance style, then again into darkness. We knew there was a torture chamber somewhere, graced with a well-used iron maiden of several centuries in age, but we failed to find it.

Ultimately, we despaired of making our way back to where we'd started; our journey had already taken half-an-hour, and the result was complete disorientation.

So we cheated, and followed the dim light to one of the many entrances to the cellars, and emerged some several stories above where we'd started, in a large room where fermentation tanks hugged the walls. A surprised man stopped to looked at us confusedly. We introduced ourselves, and he went back to work while explaining that all the cooling plumbing had just been installed, and he was cleaning up. They expected to be making wine there during the next crush in the fall.

We don't know when Sattui's new winery will open to the public, but the event should be a grand one. This is the greatest building project that the Napa Valley has seen in perhaps a century or more. It may not rival Greystone in pure size, but it is equivalent in grandeur. And the setting is incomparable.

It is a magnificent, quirky complex that well-reflects its creator. Difficult as the man may sometimes be, he's worth the trouble. Go look at that castle. It's even worth a rude dunking in a lake.

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Copyright WineMerchant.com 2006