On one of our day trips while we were in Carmel was into the city of Monterey, especially to see the area known as Cannery Row.  This day will be written about in several articles, I have already cited it once about a piece of art we purchased.  All I know is that this was a very expensive day during a week in our holidays in Carmel.

As we wandered around the historic waterfront area known as Cannery Row, we shopped in some boutiques and in some art galleries as well.   We also encountered a few wine shops, which had tasting rooms.  I was not aware of these tasting rooms before we got to Cannery Row.

One of the tasting rooms that we entered was for the Bargetto Winery of the Santa Cruz Mountains in California.  We enjoyed hearing about this family from Italy that started the winery and of all the different varietals that they planted.  I remember that it was not a large room and it was packed with wines, little food items, wine paraphernalia and a tasting bar.

We tried several different wines and I remember four of the wines we tried, there may have been a couple of more, that we may have been more, but I only took three labels as memory keep sakes, and I wish I had taken a fourth one, as it was all but impossible to remove.

We tried three wines from their Bargetto series; a Dry Gewurztraminer 2000, a Chardonnay 2000 and a Merlot 1999.  All were very well made and most enjoyable.  Then we tried a wine “La Vita” or “The Life” a wonderful red blended wine from the Italian varietals.  This wine is a blend of Dolcetto, Refosco and Nebbiolo grapes that are aged for two and a half years in oak barrels then aged a year in the bottle before release.  This was great and we bought a six pack of this wine, which became Christmas gifts to some of our dear friends, because we enjoyed this wine so much.  I enjoyed the label so much, but it looks like it went through a war or two.  The 1998 La Vita label shows a painting by Pierre Auguste Renior titled Luncheon of the Boating Party and I thought it would have looked great on my wall of labels, but it is pretty gnarly after I removed it from the bottle.  I found a true copy of the label to show side by side.