7 Things You Should Know About Beringer Vineyards, Napa’s Oldest Continuously Operating Winery

Like many of Napa’s earliest wineries, the story of Beringer Vineyards is the story of the American Dream. In the late 1860s, Jacob Beringer immigrated from Mainz, Germany — a town just off the banks of the Rhine river — to the U.S. after hearing about the country’s bountiful opportunities. He landed in New York and, shortly after, caught wind of the then-elusive Napa Valley. He’d heard the area offered a topography similar to that of his home region.

Jacob moved to Napa in 1869, and, six years later, he and his brother Frederick purchased a vineyard in St. Helena for $14,500, or around $348,410 today. In 1876, the brothers founded Beringer Brothers and embarked on the estate’s first grape harvest and crush. 150 years later, Beringer Vineyards remains intact as Napa’s oldest continuously operating winery.

Only 18,000 cases were released as part of Beringer’s first vintage in 1876. Today, the winery’s luxury portfolio alone produces over 250,000 cases annually. In its 150-year history, the estate has never ceased operations, so here are seven things to know about Beringer Vineyards.

One of the founders got his American start at another famed winery.

While in New York, Jacob Beringer, who began his career as an apprentice at a cooperage and, later, as a winemaker near Berlin, heard of the rocky hills and fertile soils of the Napa Valley, prompting him to move to the region in 1869. But he didn’t start looking for property to start a private venture right away. Instead, his first gig on the west coast — and in the American wine industry in general — was working as the cellar foreman at Charles Krug, Napa’s first commercial winery. After wetting his feet there, he purchased the neighboring winery in 1875 with his brother, naming it Los Hermanos in their own honor.

It pulled an early winemaking method from motherland technique.

In 1876, the brothers ordered the construction of Beringer’s winery and cellars along a steep hill. The choice to work on a slope was a conscious and crucial one: In the Rhine Valley, winemakers depend on gravity to facilitate the winemaking process, and the brothers wanted to mimic that. At their St. Helena property, horse-drawn wagons wheeled tons of grapes to the third floor of the facility now called the Old Winery. A steam-powered crusher would then press the grapes, and the resulting juice trickled down to the second floor where it fermented. Once complete, gravity again pulled the fermented juice down to the building’s first floor for aging.

Beringer was the first winery in Napa Valley to offer public tours.

Beringer launched its visitor program in 1934, and the move sparked wine tourism in the region — a sector that has since driven and continues to bring loads of revenue to the region. The estate amplified its efforts to boost tourism by having winemaker Fred Abruzzini, lauded for catapulting Napa to its present-day fame, distribute flyers advertising Beringer Vineyards to Golden Gate Exposition attendees in 1939. This promotional scheme led Beringer to become the premier Napa tourist destination at the time.

A federal license allowed Beringer to persist through Prohibition by making and selling wine for religious purposes.

With the onset of Prohibition came mass shutterings of wineries, distilleries, and breweries nationwide. Few left the period unscathed, but Beringer is one of them. Bertha Beringer, Jacob’s daughter who took the helm of the winery with her brother Charles in 1915, persuaded the federal government to hand the estate a permit to produce and sell wine for religious purposes. But Beringer didn’t exactly follow its federal mandate: The company continued to produce wine for clandestine, commercial purposes, granting Bertha the moniker “Whisper Sister,” which inspired the name of one of the winery’s now-popular labels.

Beringer farms vineyards across eight of Napa’s sub-AVAs and one in Sonoma.

Beringer’s vineyards span from Napa to Sonoma, and within both AVAs, the estate works plots across nine, nested sub-regions. Within Napa, the winery’s grapes grow in historic, fabled sub-AVAs like St. Helena, Oakville, and Mt. Veeder, among others. In Sonoma, Beringer’s Vineyard is in Knights Valley. All together, the brand is most concentrated in the St. Helena and Howell Mountain sub-AVAs, as it farms three vineyards in each of them.

Beringer Chardonnay was the first white wine ever to clinch Wine Spectator’s wine of the year award.

In 1996, Wine Spectator named Beringer Chardonnay Napa Valley Private Reserve 1994 the publication’s wine of the year. The accolade marked the first time a white wine received the award. Wine Spectator began naming its top 10 wines yearly in 1988. The publication’s tasting notes say that at the time, the expression revealed “tiers of ripe pear, honey, hazelnut and butterscotch.”

The property features a piece from a famous sculptor.

During construction, the brothers had workers build them individual houses on property, as the vineyard also served as their personal residence. Frederick’s house, named the Rhine House, was completed in 1884 and is now the centerpiece of the entire estate. Over a century later, it received an upgrade in the form of a fountain sculpted and installed in 1988 by Ruth Asawa. Asawa is a wildly popular artist with public-facing work dispersed throughout San Francisco and exhibits in major museums like the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. The sculpture, called History of Wine, is in the shape of an amphora wrapped with hand-drawn depictions of winemaking symbols.

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