St. Helena is known as the “heart of the Napa Valley” wine region of California. Ironically, this thriving town built on the wine industry gets its name from the 1850s St. Helena Chapter (named for the mountain in the distance) of the Sons of Temperance, an organization dedicated to the reform and prevention of “drunkards.”
In 1861, German immigrant Charles Krug established the first winery in his name. He not only pioneered European varietal plantings, but also fermentation techniques and the careful selection of root stocks. In the mid 1870s, the Beringers followed in his footsteps, establishing what would become the longest continuous winery in Napa. The Phylloxera crisis at the end of the century hit the region hard, and Krug had to file for bankruptcy. A year after his death in 1892, James Moffitt purchased the land and began replanting vines using the Phylloxera “cure” of graftings onto American roostock. The Beringers, meanwhile, were
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St. Helena is known as the “heart of the Napa Valley” wine region of California. Ironically, this thriving town built on the wine industry gets its name from the 1850s St. Helena Chapter (named for the mountain in the distance) of the Sons of Temperance, an organization dedicated to the reform and prevention of “drunkards.”
In 1861, German immigrant Charles Krug established the first winery in his name. He not only pioneered European varietal plantings, but also fermentation techniques and the careful selection of root stocks. In the mid 1870s, the Beringers followed in his footsteps, establishing what would become the longest continuous winery in Napa. The Phylloxera crisis at the end of the century hit the region hard, and Krug had to file for bankruptcy. A year after his death in 1892, James Moffitt purchased the land and began replanting vines using the Phylloxera “cure” of graftings onto American roostock. The Beringers, meanwhile, were able to keep things going and introduced their own innovations, including hiring Chinese laborers to dig caves into the hills behind their winery for cool storage. Eventually St. Helena and surroundings became a popular place for European immigrant settlers and a wealthy tourist destination for its wines, now in full expansion, and also the hot springs industry.
But Prohibition put a halt to everything between 1920 and 1933 and most wineries abandoned their vineyards and turned to other businesses (although Highway 29 was one of the most traveled roads during that time for bootleg brandy running). Among those that survived were the former Krug vineyard and the Beringers. In 1943, Krug was sold to Cesare Mondavi, who employed his two sons Robert and Peter to run the operation. (The Mondavis are still at Krug, although Robert branched off on his own to Oakville in the 1960s).
The 1970s saw a full resurgence in Napa wines and the St. Helena region. Today, St. Helena is a thriving wine region with boutique and commercial wineries sharing the land and producing wines in a vast range of styles. ~Amanda Schuster
– Description from
Amanda Schuster
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