Andretti Winery

The Andretti Winery is a sweet little winery located off of Silverado trail in Napa County owned by none other than Mario.  No, not like Mario and Luigi, but THE Mario Andretti (hence the name: Andretti). We've been to Andretti one other time with my parents and both times we have had a great experience.  We got here pretty early since Andretti was our first stop so there was only one other couple at the winery, which was fun because we didn't feel rushed in any way.  The guy doing our tasting gave us a lot of good recommendations of other wineries to try as well as some seafood places to try in the city (which has nothing to do with a day in wine country, but was great, because we LOVE seafood).  Really he could have been the Northern California chamber of commerce poster child with all the great stuff that he told us to do the rest of the day and beyond!

(Word to the wise: There are a lot of wineries that dogs are welcome in Napa, this however is not one of those wineries.)

Our favorite wine we tried was the Zin Primitivo which was 50% Zinfandel and 50% Primitivo (or I guess you could just read the label to figure that one out.)  This was a really easy drinking wine.  It would be a perfect summer day red wine.  Typically on a summer day, we'll gravitate towards a bottle of the Kenwood Jack London Zinfandel, so it's nice to have another choice in the holster...i.e. wine frig) And apparently I'm slow on the uptake because I just noticed that on the label there's a checkered flag.  Sweet.

Our wine guy also told us some great tidbits about the wines - did you know that Mario was born in Montona, Italy?  Hence, the Montona Merlot.  This one was good too. I think I have quite the bias towards Merlots, but they seem to always surprise me.

(I blame the movie Sideways.)