Underground tunnels, first used in France hundreds of years ago for aging wine, are one of the most romantic features of the California wine renaissance.

The Improvisator, who became intrigued with their magical acoustics twenty years ago, has developed the art of music in the caves, now beautifully mastered for CD from state-of-the-art surround-sound recordings in their silent and reverberant underground world.

Experience the echoing sounds of dulcimers, psalteries, Celtic harps and other strings, haunting ethnic flutes and panpipes and percussion from delicate bells to booming drums, from his collection of fifty exotic world instruments.

Recorded at Carmenet (now Moon Mountain) and Gundlach-Bundschu wineries in Sonoma Valley, and Livingston (now Livingston-Moffett) winery in Napa Valley, at the peak of crush, during the 1997 record-breaking grape harvest.

"MUST PICK CD...among the season's prettiest and most timeless...The soft acoustic quality of [40] ethnic instruments makes this exotically accented collection of standards...stand out from the usual holiday releases." [12/97]
--Dan Aquilante, "Must Picks", New York Post

"Recorded on location at wineries in both Napa and Sonoma valleys during the height of the grape harvest, the recording features both solo and multi-instrumental arrangements of well-known and ancient carols from around the world, recorded by a team of eight Northern California audio engineers using the finest technology available today...The magnificent reverberations of barrel-aging caves dominate the recording, which is the culmination of 15 years of acoustic research...." [12/97]
--Napa Valley Register

"The recording itself is superb...Track 3 astonishes with pounding large drums. Track 11 is almost like Japanese traditional festival music. Rich and beautiful resonance is the characteristic of this recording." [1/98]
--Tetsuo Nagaoka, The FM Fan (Tokyo)

To Order:

Phone (707) 224-4222
Or mail a check for $20.00 per CD to:
Carols in the Caves
P.O. Box 2117
Napa, CA 94558
Please allow 1 week for delivery after we receive payment and include your phone number in case of questions.

Photo courtesy of Windsor Green

Watch for more Cave Music:

In the works: A long-awaited Carols In The Caves DVD; 2005's New Year performance at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral; The Improvisator's first recordings (including an early, completely different, Carols In The Caves); and more recordings in both wine caves and natural caverns.