Beringer Wine

Beringer Wine

A first time visitor to the Beringer Wine Rhine House is almost always amazed at the beauty and impressed by the history. At the time the house was built in 1884 a quarter of the cost was toward the 40 panels of stained glass.

All of this is of course aimed at setting the tone for the entire winery, now over 125 years old, that this is a special place in the Napa Valley and that Beringer wine is a special wine. It is special wine, the quality is known to be worthy of ageing in the oak barrels in the caves carved into the base of the mountain at the winery. Of course all this makes it a favorite wine tour in Napa Valley on almost everyone’s must see list.

Today’s serious wine collectors store their bottles in wine coolers or specially designed refrigerators complete with a humidity control. Back when this vineyard was first planted, those luxuries were not available to winemakers so the Beringer brothers Jacob and Frederick hired Chinese workers to dig the tunnels and caves to store their wine.

These same workers had already played an important part in California history building the Transcontinental Railroad across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There, valuable experience was gained in digging tunnels through a granite mountain inch by inch. The caves are still used on the winery property and the winery is quick to point out the temperature and humidity inside the caves is near perfect year round to store the wine. You can see it all for yourself on a winery tour.

There is much more history at the winery including another house the brothers had also used and the building used to make the wine was cleverly built on the hillside to use gravity in moving along the wine while it is made. All this is no small matter, in 2001 the winery was placed on the National Register for Historic Places as a Historic District and California named it a State Historical Landmark.

The winery feels, with good reason, some of their land is among the best available for growing the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in the Napa Valley. Other notable varietals they grow are Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. The wines are sold in a range of prices from under $15 a bottle to over $50.

One way to distinguish their wine labels from each other is to note the specific tier listed. For example the best Beringer wine is the Private Reserve followed by the Leaning Oak, Knights Valley and California Collection.

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