Blotto at Del Dotto – A Barrel Tasting Tour

Okay – blotto is a bit of a stretch but if I hadn’t dumped some of my $40-$125 wine between the barrels I would have been. Welcome to our barrel tasting at Del Dotto Winery in Napa Valley.

Del Dotto is a winery that we visited while bike touring in the Napa Valley last week. They have two locations which offer quite different but very worthwhile experiences. Without hesitation I would highly recommend their cave tour and barrel tasting – and at $US40 per person it is really a bargain. It was the highlight of the week as far as wine tasting was concerned.

Close to the city of Napa are Del Dotto’s historic limestone caves and tasting room and to the north in the St. Helena area is the Del Dotto estate winery and Venetian cave lined with Italian marble. We visited the Napa one though I understand that the wine experiences are similar.

You will need to reserve ahead of time directly with the winery. Allow at least 1 1/2 hours for your wine education, tour and tasting. Have a small bite to eat before you show up or the consequences of the barrel tasting will be magnified. You only taste red wine so don’t go if you only drink white wine!

The wine tour will lead you through the types of barrels used, whether it be French or American oak, the level of toasting and so on. The guides are very agreeable sorts and encourage questions. Nick, our guide, led us into the candlelit cave with Andre Bocelli music piped in to accompany our wine tasting directly from the barrel. Most people haven’t actually done a barrel tasting but it is a great way to really understand the ability of the wood to impart it’s flavour, and affect the final profile of the wine.

The guides are liberal with the size of the pours so the onus will have to be on you to show restraint and dump, since there is nowhere to spit here. We enjoyed pours from nine barrels with price points upwards of $50 a bottle.

Bike touring and wine tasting, especially wines of the caliber Del Dotto Winery offers, is a wonderful way to experience the Napa wine region. We signed up for a late afternoon tour when we knew we wouldn’t have to pedal much further. Also consider where you might be spending the night.

If you enjoy great wine, beautiful countryside and bike touring then you won’t go wrong with a trip to California’s Napa Valley.

Leigh McAdam

HikeBikeTravel

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