US: Wine Country Goes Wild
US: Wine Country Goes Wild
Mar 18, 2011 6
In the course of his travels, Steve Tingas has checked off item after item on a bucket list of worthy experiences. He's marveled at breathtaking mountainside views. He's taken in prominent art exhibitions. He's even visited a Persian-style palace—an over-the-top "sight to behold," says the Lowell, Mass., marketing consultant.
But the most curious part of Tingas's odyssey? He's done it all in one region, the verdant heart of California wine country: Napa Valley and Sonoma County. As a serious sipper, Tingas goes mainly to partake of the grape. But lately, he's been finding something else. That bucolic chateau in Sonoma where Tingas used to sit in the courtyard and enjoy an alfresco lunch with a nice cabernet? It's been purchased by movie mogul–turned-winemaker Francis Ford Coppola and made over into what's been dubbed a "wine wonderland," with swimming pools, bocce courts and an amphitheater.
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