Local Wineries Make Their Own Histories—by Preserving Their Pasts

There are over 800 wineries in Sonoma County and Napa Valley, many with a rich history that reflects the area’s culture. Sonoma’s winemaking dates back to the early 19^th century when Spanish missionaries planted grape vines at San Francisco de Solano, California’s northernmost mission, located in what is now the City of Sonoma. Napa Valley followed when Prussian immigrant Charles Krug established a winery in St. Helena in 1861. Vineyards on lands farmed for generations surround old wineries. While their architecture has been preserved, dated winemaking equipment has been upgraded to enhance the quality of the wine. Tasting rooms with art on the walls and outdoor areas in beautiful natural settings draw visitors from all over the world. Many of today’s winery owners have devoted considerable resources toward the restoration and preservation of the winemaking tradition. Here are a few exemplary winery restorations.

Brion

Brion, located in the Sleeping Lady Vineyard just south of Yountville, is one of Napa Valley’s newest wineries. Fifty-two acres of the 110-acre property is planted mostly in cabernet sauvignon. The restored 1876 Victorian farmhouse and barn situated at the base of Mt. Veeder conjure thoughts of another era. The vineyard is co-owned by the Bettinelli family, long time valley farmers, and vintner Brion Wise, owner of Brion, B. Wise Winery and Vineyard, and Amapola Creek Vineyard and Winery in Sonoma.

On purchasing the property in 2013, the Bettinellis agreed to renovate the farmhouse while Brion Wise took on the bigger challenge—restoring and repurposing the “bank barn” into a state-of-the-art winery and tasting room. A “bank barn” takes its name from being built into a hillside, providing ease of access to the ground level and upper story. The Brion barn previously served as a home for cattle and was used for processing alfalfa and other agricultural products. The barn is one of a few of this type still remaining in California. With the structure teetering on the verge of collapse, most would have opted for demolition. “It had to be saved,” Wise says. “It’s such an integral part of the setting and the history. Tearing the barn down and constructing something new wasn’t an option.” He brought in a structural engineer to come up with a plan and work began. The crew numbered old boards so they could be removed and placed back in the original footprint. With the rear of the barn built on bedrock and the front resting on volcanic ash and porous clay, retrofit proved to be the biggest challenge. Stabilization of the structure required driving piers deep down below the soil’s moisture line. Wise’ labor of love took four-and-a half years to complete. The result is stunning— the barn is a work of art reminiscent of California’s agricultural past. And the tasting room is a work of art, too. Behind a wall of glass, barrels hold the winery’s aging cabernet sauvignon. Wise’s wife, Ronda Wise, an interior designer, tastefully juxtaposes contemporary artworks—purchased during the couple’s travels—with Napa Valley tradition. A second tasting room, The Loft on the upper level, provides views across the valley to the Vaca mountain range.

The renovated barn’s two-story structure enabled the use of a gravity flow for winemaking. Prior to the availability of electricity and pumps that moved wine from fermentation to barrels, wine was made using gravity flow. Elimination of pumps mitigates the risk of wine becoming too tannic or oxidized. It also reduces energy costs. Some argue that gravity flow enhances the quality of the wine.

Grapes are sourced from four vineyards—Sleeping Lady, Oakville Ranch, Moon Mountain and Caldwell. Production is 1,100 cases of cabernet sauvignon a year. Unusual for a small producer, Brion employs three winemakers—Massimo Monticelli, Mark Herold and Julien Fayard—each with a distinctive style that reflects the terroir of the single vineyard from which grapes are sourced.

Leaving no step in the winemaking process to chance, Brion shares the skills of Ramiro Herrera—a certified master cooper—with Coombsville’s Caldwell Vineyards. Herrera makes 300 barrels annually. He’s one of 34 master coopers in the world, and the only one in the United States. Herrera spends two months a year in Europe where oak is sourced from France’s Berce Forest and seasoned for up to 36 months. The barrels are fired or “toasted” in a process that caramelizes the woods’ natural sugars and adds complexity. The time toasted contributes to the wine’s flavor. A light toasting of 25 minutes or less produces hints of vanilla, coconut, caramel and clove, while up to an hour yields vanilla, smoke, crème brûlée and butterscotch flavors. Herrera coordinates with Brion’s winemakers to ensure flavors imparted are in line with what the winemaker hopes to achieve.

Tastings at Brion can be arranged by appointment throughout the year. During the spring and summer months, visitors can enjoy cabernet sauvignon in the courtyard under ancient olive trees.

Three Sticks Winery

Three Sticks is located in a restored adobe just off Sonoma Plaza at 143 W. Spain St. Prema Behan and Bill Price founded the winery in 2002. Price is a well-known figure in the wine industry. His private equity firm TPG Capital (TPG) acquired Napa Valley’s Beringer Vineyards from Nestle in 1995 and Chateau St. Jean some years later. In 2007 Price sold his share of TPG to his partners and entered the wine business full time. Price has ownership interests in Kistler Vineyards, Gary Farrell Winery, and Santa Barbara’s Lutum Wines and Head High Wines. He also owns several Sonoma County vineyards. William S. Price III grew up in Hawaii where his surfing buddies dubbed him “Billy Three Sticks,” in reference to the Roman numerals that follow his written name. The moniker stuck.

Three Sticks’ wines soon developed a following and needed a tasting room. “We wanted a historic structure, a place that felt like home,” says Behan, who serves as chief operating officer. Few places in Sonoma met the criteria until the Vallejo-Casteñada Adobe became available. Built in 1842 by Capt. Salvador Vallejo—brother of Gen. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, commandant of Mexico’s northern territory and founder of Sonoma—the adobe was first occupied by Mexican Capt. Don Juan Casteñada. It’s one of the few remaining buildings in Sonoma from that period.

Greg and Harriet Jones purchased the adobe in 1947 and undertook a major restoration. Harriet kept detailed notes on the work. “First, the outside clapboards came off, revealing the adobe walls with their ancient whitewash…layer upon layer of wallpaper was stripped from the walls some with newspapers going back through the Civil War…laths and wire netting were removed from the ceiling exposing hand-hewn beams tied to the rafters with leather thongs.” The couple added a master bedroom, now used as Three Sticks office. The Joneses commissioned well-known landscape architect Helen Van Pelt to design the garden. Some of the original plantings remain. Harriet lived at her beloved “La Casita,” as she called it, until passing away in 1996 at age 98. At her request, her son sold the adobe to her close friends, Robert and Leslie Demler. As executive director and former president of the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation, Robert Demler shared the Joneses’ love of Sonoma history. The Demlers upgraded the adobe’s basic amenities, careful to preserve the character of the original structure and work done by the Joneses. “I have fond memories of my time there,” Robert Demler says. “The adobe is a special, magical place.”

Bill and Eva Price purchased the adobe in 2012 and Behan oversaw restoration. Coming from a career in private equity, Behan was accustomed to challenges yet few matched the challenge of restoring an old adobe. “I’ve never been so stressed in my life,” she says with a laugh. It didn’t help that, though the property was zoned for residential and commercial use, a small yet vocal group of locals protested the occupancy of the adobe by a winery. The group managed to delay purchase until the Sonoma City Council approved Three Sticks’ use permit. Renovation required bringing the adobe up to fire code and seismic standards while respecting the historical integrity of the structure. And the multi-level garden had to be reconfigured for ADA compliance. The auxiliary building constructed at the rear of the property followed the U.S. Department of the Interior guidelines specifying that buildings constructed on a historic site should not replicate the nearby historic structure. Built with materials similar to those used in the adobe, the new building’s design is a perfect fit.

The Prices partnered with the internationally acclaimed San Francisco designer Ken Fulk, known for creating interior spaces that marry the past with the present. Other members of the restoration team included Sonoma historian George McKale, architectural historian Kara Brunzell, landscape architect Penney Magrane, architect Angeline Askham and historical consultant Arthur Dawson. During restoration and reconfiguration of the garden, the team uncovered animal bones, apothecary and wine bottle fragments, and a large ceramic piece with an intricate design of a landscape with a palace. The artifacts uncovered are on displayed at the adobe. Over the two-year restoration period, the team worked closely with Sonoma historians and the Sonoma League for Historic Preservation, holder of a historic easement on the property, regarding approval of modifications.

Three Sticks is known for its pinot noir and chardonnay. Grapes are sourced from three Price vineyards—the 600-acre Durell property in Sonoma, Gap’s Crown near Penngrove and Walala Vineyard on the Sonoma County coast. Winemaker Ryan Prichard honed his winemaking skills at Medlock Ames, Copian Custom Crush and Williams Selyem, the Dry Creek winery that set the standard for American-style pinot noir. Concurrently with Three Sticks, he’s winemaker at Flambeaux Wine in Healdsburg. Four tastings are held daily by appointment. A food-and-wine pairing includes five estate wines paired with dishes prepared by chefs James Nobel and Abri Chavira. Another offers a flight of single vineyard chardonnays with oysters from El Dorado Kitchen (May to October) or caviar from The Caviar Company (November to March).

Scribe Winery

Scribe, founded in 2007 by fourth generation California farmers and brothers Andrew and Adam Mariani, is located on the slopes of Sonoma’s Arrowhead Mountain. While researching the historic property at U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, the Marianis uncovered an 1823 map drawn by Franciscan priest, Father Jose Altimira, founder of Mission San Francisco de Solano. The map traces Altimira’s trek up the San Pablo Bay across the Carneros region, past Arrowhead Mountain, and through what is now Scribe property north of Vineburg. Three miles further on he established the last of the California missions and planted the area’s first grapes. Thirty-five years later, Emil Dresel, son of a renown German Champagne producer, arrived on the scene. Realizing the region’s grape-growing potential, he and three fellow Germans purchased 400 acres. It’s reputed that he brought undeclared riesling and sylvaner cuttings from Germany that he planted there, the first of these varieties to be grown in the United States. The Dresel family holds claim to several industry firsts. Emil’s brother, Julius, succeeded him and became the first in the state to plant vineyards on disease-resistant stock. His grafting system is still in use today. Julius’s son, Carl, became one of the first California vintners to sell wine using varietal designations. Carl’s wine won first place honors at the 1904 World’s Fair. In 1920, prohibition brought an end to all the Dresel family achievements. Vineyards reverted to other uses and the family’s home on the hill fell into disrepair.

The Mariani brothers arrived on the scene in 2007 and were keen to restore the vineyards and house to their former glory. They took on a huge project. At the time, the 256-acre property had most recently operated as headquarters of Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms, which for decades had been one of the most productive turkey breeding farms in the world. But its parent company moved the turkey-breeding operations back east in 2004 and the property had sat derelict since. Mountains of debris, old sheds, invasive plants and poison oak had to be removed. The two-year land restoration revealed old stone walls and foundations, 19^th-century Chinese tools, ceramic fragments and opium vials—likely remnants of when Chinese laborers worked the area’s many vineyards in the late 1800s. Thirteen of 14 low-level turkey barns were removed, with one repurposed for equipment storage. They planted 35 acres in pinot noir and chardonnay, along with riesling and sylvaner varietals to honor the site’s German heritage. “We discovered letters from the 1800s praising the quality of the wine made from mission grapes grown on the property back then. So we planted two acres of mission grapes to explore its potential,” Andrew says. Never straying far from history, there’s three acres planted with the sylvaner grape varietal, an homage to Emil Dresel.

Visitors to Scribe drive past rows of vineyards and stately palms toward the historic, mission-revival style Hacienda on the hill. With vines in the ground, the Marianis took on renovation of a building that had been vacant for 20 years. “We wanted to restore the Hacienda in a way that it didn’t look like it had been restored,” Andrew Mariani says. For guidance, he was inspired by the work of conceptual artist David Ireland, as well as by a 15^th century Japanese philosophy, derived from Buddhist teaching, known as wabi sabi.

The late San Francisco artist David Ireland spent nearly 30 years transforming his ramshackle 1886 Victorian into a work of art. A striking feature of Ireland’s 500 Capp St. residence—often referred to as the David Ireland House—in San Francisco is the patina of the walls. Wabi means “rustic simplicity” while sabi is “to embrace the imperfect.” The Hacienda restoration mimics Ireland’s art form, and the beauty of imperfection represented by wabi sabi. Walls with muted colors of old plaster, layers of paint and swatches of period wallpaper resemble a timeless mosaic. On a scripted border that circles the dining room wall is an excerpt from an 11^th century poem—attributed to Persian poet Omar Khayyam—that is apropos to Hacienda history, and Scribe:

Come, fill your Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

your Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but little way

To flutter, and the Bird is on the Wing.

Artisans spent several months replacing broken leaded stain glass panes and fixing the window’s rope pulley system to make them operable. From a distance the Hacienda roof looks it’s made of clay tiles. Not so. The tiles are metal, their rufous color the rust of age. “The metal roof saved the house from severe water damage that might have made it difficult to restore,” Andrew says. Workers uncovered a colony of honeybees ensconced in the walls. They were removed, their descendants now occupying Scribe’s apiary.

Winemaking is overseen by Andrew and Adam Mariani. In addition to the chardonnay and pinot noir estate wines, there’s a 2021 Sylvaner with an image of bearded, distinguished-looking Emil Dresel on the label. A St. Laurent wine is from grapes grown at Carneros’ Ricci Vineyard in Sonoma, the only vineyard of St. Laurent in California. Scribe’s cabernet sauvignon and syrah grapes are sourced from Atlas Peak, Petaluma Gap and Oakville appellations.

Scribe is only open to members of the Scribe Viticultural Society, a re-creation of Emil Dresel’s Buena Vista Viticultural Society, a club formed to promote advanced winemaking techniques, and to enjoy the “sensory, social and cultural benefits of sharing wine.”

The North Bay offers many opportunities to savor wine. Good food and interesting conversation enhance the experience. Several wineries provide the quiet pleasure of sipping wine while surrounded by the history of the region’s agricultural and winemaking pioneers—the Spanish missionaries, the bank-barn builders, the Dresel family and Charles Krug. Many wineries have been restored, preserving tradition while incorporating winemaking innovation. It’s the unique blend of cultures, respect for tradition and the diversity of winemaking styles that make Sonoma County and the Napa Valley special.