Dario Sattui has been awarded a Certificate of Appreciation award by the California Heritage Council for his Castello di Amorosa. Sattui was recognized for using European tradesmen and materials and for educating local tradesmen while constructing the replica of a 12th century castle winery in the hills just south of Calistoga.

This is a ghost winery with a ghost. Its strange and lurid past includes a murder and a stint as a perlite factory.

In some ways, I admire the French. They gave us Lafayette, Voltaire, Bizet, Boyer, Debussy,  Monet, Louis XV furniture and pommes frites. They also told us how to speak with a nasal accent and disgraced themselves with the infamous Dreyfus Affair. And, remember, they allowed us to enter their country in World War II without visas.