Artesa Vineyards & Winery

I found out about Artesa Vineyards and Winery from a movie of all places. As a good little wine geek, I watched Wine Country the weekend it came out on Netflix in 2019. The comedy starring Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph, embodies everything I hate about group trips to Napa, but wow is the scenery GORGEOUS.

I was surprised when I couldn’t immediately locate the group’s first stop. The grounds and views were amazing. A little bit of Googling informed me that it was Artesa (pronounced: Ar-tessa), located on the southern tip of Napa Valley near Carneros. This, I thought, would be a great winery to take my sister, lover of The Gram and low-tannin wines.

While we were not disappointed by the views, we were disappointed by the service. We arrived on time about 30 minutes past their opening, but the hostess wasn’t yet set up to give a welcome drink. We sat at a table on the patio but didn’t get a glass of wine for almost 30 minutes. (NOTE: you can get seated inside at a large circular bar that reminded me of Guinness in Dublin.) The service continued at this languid pace for TWO and a HALF HOURS until I was forced to track down our pourer to pay our bill because we had another reservation.

We tried several of their Pinot Noirs, but my sister nor I loved anything enough to purchase. The one thing I did like was how the pourer would label the base of our glasses so we could keep the wines straight.