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nothing short of fantastic!

We took our two glasses and went up on the veranda to enjoy the gorgeous 360 view of the Napa

I’ll preface this review by saying that I had never had Opus One prior to this visit. Yes, I have a bottle of 2009 in my collection, but I bought it based on “well everyone says it’s the best so it should be in my collection,” rather than on true personal knowledge. I was very excited about the visit, but also a little hesitant. A few of my fellow wine peeps that have been there before said it was a little disappointing……but, I’m thankful to report, we were not disappointed at all. Not only is the winery this magnificent Greek style structure on top of a mountain (I mean, truly gorgeous architecture), but the very thorough tour of the facility, and the wines (ohhhh the wines!) were

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The tour started in a large room, the Salon, with about 8 of us and honestly, I was concerned it was going to be a stuffy and boring tour.  I think that had a lot to do with the décor of the room which consisted of giant chairs that were so heavy, you could not move them an inch! The room also consisted of lots of white and beige, ornate details on EVERYTHING, and large pieces of

A vineyard tour.

Touring the entire facility, including a science lab that looked straight out of a sci-fi movie.

Production facility- crushing pads and stainless storage vats (they hand pick each grape that goes in to the wine).

A computerized machine that also picks out the exact type of grapes that Opus is looking for and weeds out the bad ones- crazy!

Barrel room – I have never seen a storage area that vast- it went farther than the eye could see!

Tasting of the 2012 (about a 3 oz pour), and a special tasting of the 2010 in the Private Library (side note: 2010 tasting is not provided with the tour, but you can check to see if you can purchase a tasting ahead of time.

Valley as the sun started to set.

We enjoyed both vintages immensely, but the 2012 was so unbelievable, we had to purchase a bottle of it.

One very big advantage of buying wine directly from the winery (especially of

an Opus One caliber) is knowing that it has been stored and cared for properly. All in all, it was a fantastic experience and we truly appreciate how well they treated us.

artwork…..I would assume they don’t let people drink red wine in that room, just saying. Our wine educator, Jim Nicolette, gave us the origins of the winery, and how infamous winemaker Robert Mondavi from Napa teamed up with Baron Philippe of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, for this new joint wine venture, Opus One. I admittedly didn’t know any of the backstory of Opus, so I found all of the information to be very interesting. You can read about it on their website if you’d like to know more.

The tour was extremely detailed. Here’s what our tour consisted of in a nutshell:

TIME VISITED: 10/28/2015, 3:00:00 PM

Opus One-

Robert Mondavi and the Baron...