Korbel Champagne Cellars~Photo Essay

When Joanne Huspek was visiting a couple of weeks ago, we drove to the nearby Korbel winery and took the tour of the champagne cellars.  Of course I had a camera but when I get together with Joanne, I forget to take pictures.  We had a great time on the tour, had lunch, then bought some champagne before leaving.  

It was the first time I had been to the Korbel winery.  I have lived here for three years but have not gone there.  I have driven by it but never to it.  I loved the tour and the winery and wanted to share it with my daughter, who goes to wineries with me from time to time.  On her next day off, we took the short drive to Korbel, once again.

The winery is set in the Russian River Valley in Guerneville.  The drive out is beautiful and once you arrive, you find yourself out in the middle of a forest of redwood trees which provide a lot of shade and welcome coolness.  

This is the main winery building.  The door on the right houses the Offices and the door on the left is the starting point of the Champagne Cellars tour.  All of the wiinery work is still done in this building, including the barreling and bottling.  

This is the Visitor's Center.  It was originally a train station for the train line that the Korbel family established,  together with another family of the area, to shorten the 9 day one way trip from the Russian River to the port in San Rafael.  They also established their own post office.  Visitor's can get a multitude of literature in this little building as well as learn a little about local history from the pictures and maps inside the building.  Then it is outside to sit and wait for a tour guide!  Nice and shady, at least.

An original Railroad Crossing sign outside the Visitor's Center next to a huge redwood tree provides shade and a cool place for visitors to wait for their tour guide. 

When the tour guide arrives, he/she begins with the history of the Korbel brothers.  The guide that Joanne and I had, Sunoma, was much better than the one my daughter and I had the following week.  Sunoma told our group about Franz Korbel (the name Korbel means "goblet") growing up in Bohemia, in what is today the Czech Republic under the Hapsburg rule.  He was very political and vocal.  As a result, he was arrested and put in prison.    Prisoners were allowed only one visitor each week and it had to be the same visitor each week.  The Korbel family decided that the family member to visit would be Franz's grandmother.  Each week for over a year, the grandmother would visit her grandson for a short while then go visit the guards, bringing them gifts of cigars and wine.  One day, she came on her regular visit but underneath her large hoop skirt, she carried a change of clothes for Franz.  She visited as usual then left to visit the guards.  In the meantime, Franz changed out of his prison clothing into the gentleman's clothing that his grandmother had smuggled in.  When it was time for visiting hours to end, Franz put on his hat, turned and waved to the prisoners, and walked out along with all the exiting visitors.  

[This is  the Brandy  Tower which is a replica of the tower  Franz Korbel  saw from his prison cell.  It was  built as a reminder of where he came from and what he escaped.  This tower suffered damage in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.  It was subsequentlly reenforced with steel bands.]

Franz fled the country, taking a ship to New York where he was later joined by his two brothers, Anton and Joseph.  They worked, saved money, moved on toward the west, eventually reaching San Francisco, just after gold was discovered in California.  Franz started a number of small businesses, including making cigar boxes.  Needing lumber for the cigar boxes, he went out to the surrounding area to see if he could find a closer and cheaper source of wood.  Eventually, he came upon the Russian River valley where he negotiated the purchase of 3,000 acres of land which included a sawmill.  The Korbels began a lumber business, supplying the wood for the hundreds of buildings going up in San Francisco.  Eventually, the building boom slowed down and the Korbel brothers started to research other uses for their land.  They planted a number of crops, and raised cows for a dairy.  Eventually, they decided to try growing grapes and began to produce wine.  Years later, they went on to produce their first champagne crop.  According to the tour guide, water was very expensive and champagne became the drink of the day, being cheaper than water.  

Inside the building, visitors see the History Room where there are many vintage photos of the Korbel family and the early days of the winery.  The Korbel brothers began a political newspaper which was the first newspaper printed in color ink in the United States.  It was called The Wasp.  According to history, the articles in the paper were real political stingers!

From the History Room,  we were shown an 8 minute video on the history of the winery and current production.  We learned about the champagnoise method of making champagne with its two fermentation processes.  And we learned that there are over four million bubbles in every glass of champagne!  (I want to know who sat there and counted them!)  Later we were taken to see the huge oak barrels that hold the wiine and smaller ones that hold the cuvee (champagne before it has the bubbly stuff in it).  We were shown the riddling process (the turning of the bottles so that nothing settles in any one area which keeps the fermentation process from being uniform).  We were shown how the bottles of champagne are opened to take out the top part where the residue rests, then sugar and more wine are added to fill the bottle and it is recorked, caged, and wrapped.  By the way, there is very little added sugar in wine.  The sweetness in it comes from the sweetness in the grapes.

The tour ends with the sampling of five champagnes made by Korbel.  They actually make about eight different kinds of champagne but only distribute two of them, Brut and Extra Dry.  A third variety, Natural, is available in California only, through Trader Joe's.  The other varieties are available only at the winery.  Korbel also makes wines and brandies which it sells only at the winery. 

This photo shows a bit of the lush, tranquil setting of the Korbel winery.   

There is a delicious deli and market on the premises with a lot of seating area where visitors can enjoy their lunch and beverage of choice.  The setting is tranquil and beautiful.  After lunch, my daughter and I went into the Tasting Room where we sampled some of the wines and brandies made by Korbel before stopping in the Wine Store to buy some to bring home.  Wine Tasting is complimentary, as is the tour.

On the way out to the parking lot, I took this picture of the many sunflowers growing on the property and the one of the vineyard across the road (River Road).   

Incidentally, the Korbel family no longer owns the winery.  It was sold to Adolf Heck in 1954, with the condition that the winery would carry the Korbel name in perpetuity.