Going on Cave Tours in Napa Valley

Look for a wine club that offers cave tours

Wine Club Cave Tours

If you’re trying to decide which wine club to join, pick one that offers a cave tour. Caves are the perfect places to store and age barrels of wine. Well out of the sun, they maintain an even temperature year round, which is nice and low but not freezing. As air from the outside enters the cave and cools, its relative humidity increases. This reduces the loss of wine through evaporation that would otherwise happen when storing a non-airtight barrel for years at a time. The humidity of a wine cave should be at least 75 percent — more than that if there are white wines being stored.

Winemakers have used natural caves and limestone quarries for centuries. With the rise of the wine industry in California in the nineteenth century, winemakers couldn’t always find caves in the mountains of Napa Valley. So they made their own, hiring the same workers and explosives experts that worked at the silver mines in Nevada and built tunnels through the mountains to create convenient places for wine storage.

Surprisingly good-looking caves

The nice thing about building your own cave is that it can look however you like. Wine caves are often carved, decorated and artistically lit to suit their owners’ imaginations and have their own water features that draw from underground rivers. Some of them are set up to be good places to have dinner.

During cave tours, you can taste the latest wines and the library wines from previous years stored in the cave. Bring a coat — it’ll be cool in there.

Cave tours of a vineyard near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn how they make and store the wine. One of the wines in its library is the dark ruby red 2009 Éloge. A fine blend from an excellent growing year, the ’09 Éloge has an aroma with a core of concentrated dark fruits, with crème de cassis, cedar, cigar box, violets, spice, toast and streaks of red currants. Its flavor is similar — deep and full-bodied with concentrated dark fruits, spice and mocha.

Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain, and has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. Join their wine club today.

Cave Tours of the St. Helena, CA Area

wine Cave tours in St. Helena, CATour the caves where wine is stored

One of the best things about wine clubs is being invited on a cave tour. Caves, which stay at just the right temperature and humidity year-round, have been recognized for centuries as some of the best places to store wine in the barrel. So perfectly suited are these caves that when immigrants to California found there weren’t enough caves in the Napa hills, they hired mining and railroad engineers to build caves for them.

The humidity in a wine cave should be at least 75 percent — more than that if there are white wines in there. The coolness of the air and the water pressure of the humidity discourage evaporation of the wine from the barrel — which is important, because the barrel isn’t completely airtight.

Surprisingly bright and beautiful caves

One of the great things about a cave tours this time of year is that it’s guaranteed to be cool inside the cave — so bring a jacket along on your cave tours. This is your chance to learn about the wine industry from the people who work in it every day and taste both the latest wines and library wines from previous years. You may also get the chance to try not only good wine, but good food, and often in a surprisingly beautiful setting — these caves are often carved, decorated and lit to create great subterranean works of art, complete with running fountains from underground rivers.

Cave tours of a vineyard near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn all about the process of making and storing the wine. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain, and has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide.

One wine you might sample during an Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards cave tours are the Right Bank. Their 2011 Right Bank came from a cooler than average year, leading to a powerful aroma and flavor of blue violets, roses, red currants, fresh red raspberry compote, menthol, clove, anise and allspice, with seamlessly blended oak and grape tannins and bright acidity. This wine is expected to be good for thirty years. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards doesn’t issue a Right Bank every year. Try their latest Right Bank today.

Wine Clubs, and Other Ways to Take Cave Tours

Cave tours in Napa Valley

Cave tours - St. Helena, CA

Caves. They are dark and mysterious. They are chilly, but never too cold. Despite not having been built for comfort, they were some of humanity’s first shelters, and the location of some of our first attempts at art. For centuries, they’ve been used to store wine barrels — the air in them is always at just the right temperature, so there is very little evaporation of the wine despite the hairline gaps that let air into the wine barrel and make it possible to tap the barrel. So it was that when winemaking came to California, the winemakers decided that if these hills didn’t have enough caves to go around, they would simply make their own, using the same equipment and hiring the same workers as the railroads that were driving tunnels through the Rocky Mountains.

Today, you can arrange cave tours of these wine caves. There you can taste the newest wines to be judged ready for drinking, and library wines from earlier years which have had a chance to age properly.

Wine clubs

Napa wine clubs like Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Wine Club often hold tours of the vineyard’s caves. Many Napa Valley wine caves have been artistically carved, lighted and furnished, and can cater elegant dinners. However well-appointed they are, these caves retain the chilliness and humidity that lets them fulfill their function, so dress the way you would for a cool spring or fall day.

Vineyard near St. Helena offers cave tours

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn all about the winemaking process. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived for two by joining Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Wine Club at the 6-bottle level or making a $100 purchase. In addition, at the 12-bottle level you get a complimentary cave tasting for four, and at the 24-plus bottle level you get a cave tasting/food pairing for six.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. These wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. One Bordeaux blend from the library that you might be introduced to on a cave tour of Anderson’s Conn Valley is the 2010 Signature Cabernet Sauvignon, an intense dark purple wine with a slight edge of red, has an aroma dominated by cassis with streaks of blackberry, red berries, plum and blueberry, elements of smoke and tar from the oak, and highlights of crushed roses, blue flowers and anise. Born from a year with a cool spring and fall and an intensely hot summer, this wine’s flavor has a massive structure of black, blue and red fruits with licorice, anise, tobacco, smoke, rosehips and violets. This is a wine that deserves to be allowed to age.

Wine Clubs Offer Cave Tours

Wine caves of Napa Valley

Cave tours - St. Helena CA

Caves have been used to store wine barrels for a very long time. The wine caves of Napa Valley, many of them built at the same time and by the same methods and workers as the first railroads to reach California, are famous. The air in them, humid and always cool but never freezing, is perfect for storing wine barrels for years or decades, as it minimizes the loss of wine to evaporation through the hairline gaps in the wine barrel.

The vineyards that own these caves have turned them into places worthy of exploration by tourists and wine lovers. Cave tours are an excellent addition to any vacation in the Napa Valley area.

Wine Club

Napa wine clubs like Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Wine Club often schedule cave tours. Many of the wine caves in Napa Valley have been turned into underground works of architectural art, and are set up to cater dinners. Here you can taste the newest wines to be judged ready for drinking, and library wines from earlier years. These are a great opportunity to learn about the wine industry from professional winemakers. When going on a cave tour, dress as you would for a cool spring or fall day —it never gets too hot or too cold inside the cave.

Winery near St. Helena offers cave tours

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn all about the winemaking process. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Wine Club or making a $100 purchase. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain, owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983.

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. These wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide. One Bordeaux blend from the library that you might be introduced to on a cave tour of Anderson’s Conn Valley is the 2007 Éloge. This dark ruby wine has an aroma of mocha, violets, chocolate, cedar and black stone fruits balanced with oakiness. Its flavor begins with the juicy taste of ripe blackberries, followed by more dark fruit flavors with coffee bean spice and chocolate covered cherries perfectly matched with fruit and oak tannins. It has a finish lasting two to three minutes in the mouth, making it a wine to savor. The ’07 Éloge is expected to get even better as it ages. Buy a bottle today and enjoy it ten to fourteen years from now.

Cave Tours of Napa

Caves are great for storing wine

Cave tours - St. Helena, CA

One of the great pleasures of exploring the wine culture of Napa Valley is the cave tour. Caves, with their even year-round low but not freezing temperatures, have been recognized for centuries as excellent places in which to store and age wine in the barrel. Humidity, which would normally be the last thing you’d want in any kind of long-term storage environment, is ideal for the storing of wine. Because the barrel is not perfectly airtight (if it were, you’d have to fight a vacuum every time you opened the tap) a little wine is always being lost to evaporation. Cool, humid air minimizes this loss. The humidity in a wine cave should be at least 75 percent, and more than that if white wines are being stored.

The first wine caves were ordinary caves and former limestone quarries in Europe. In the 19th century, with the rise of winemaking in California, the same technology (and the same mostly Chinese work force) that was used to mine for silver in Nevada was used to blast and carve out artificial caves in the rock of the Napa Valley.

Much more than just holes in the ground

During cave tours, you can learn about the wine industry from the people who work in it every day and taste both the latest wines and library wines from previous years. Added to the gustatory pleasure of the wine is the visual delight of the cave itself. The wine caves of Napa are not merely utilitarian warehouses for barrels. Many of them have been carved, decorated and artistically lit by their owners and are watered by underground rivers. Think of the subterranean kingdoms in Tolkien’s novels, and then imagine them with a lot more class. Some of them are set up to cater dinners. No matter what the weather is doing outside, it will be cool inside the cave, so bring a coat when going on a cave tour.

Cave tours of a vineyard near St. Helena

Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards in Napa Valley, a 10-minute drive from downtown St. Helena, holds tastings in its barrel caves, where current releases and library wines may be sampled and visitors can learn all about the process of making and storing the wine. Cave tastings are $65, but one tasting fee can be waived by joining their wine club or making a $100 purchase. Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards produces world-class wines at affordable prices. The vineyard is a 40-acre estate just south of Howell Mountain, and has been owned and operated by the Anderson family since 1983. Anderson’s wines are sold online and in five locations in Napa Valley, and many other locations nationwide.