We spent an afternoon at Beringer two Saturdays past, sort of last minute. We had just been to Paraduxx. It was o.k. Hegui was ready to go home but I was restless and wanted more. We ended up here while looking for gas. Our tank light had turned on while we were on a sight-seeing drive in Howell Mountain right off the Silverado Trail. Since there aren’t any stations around there, we went to the main drag in Saint Helena. Lo and behold, there was Beringer! And that day they were having a cheese festival!
welcome to Beringer
This is an old winery by American standards. It was originally founded in the late Nineteenth century. Jacob and Frederick Beringer emigrated here from Germany. Jacob was familiar with wine there and thought this spot in Napa was similar to the soils in the Rhine Valley. It’s a complex history spanning the whole Twentieth Century including Prohibition. We took the tour and learned a lot about the place.
our Beringer tour guide, Marvin
Ah, the tour! That really was something. Hegui and I were talking about it while experiencing it. The conversation went like this:
H: The tour is like our first time in Napa Valley.
S: We would have been in awe.
H: Yeah, but I feel like I’ve graduated.
It wasn’t all bad, really, and I thought our tour guide, Marvin, had a funny and dry sense of humor. I heard him say to the excited and slightly tipsy guests, “We make oceans of white zinfandel but we’re known for cabernet.” When we reached the spot in the original cave where the Beringers’ stored their personal wine cellar, he described how it currently holds old bottlings from the World War 2 era. When asked, he agreed that most of the stuff had probably turned to vinegar by now, though added that it was probably delicious vinegar that you might actually consider drinking straight. That’s a trooper!
The tour goes through the original building and caves. They’re dug directly into Spring Mountain, which I thought was cool. I’m a sometime fan of Spring Mountain Winery and used to be in their wine club. Unfortunately, the caves are largely a tourist trap now, as Beringer apparently has a large air conditioned warehouse across the street where they store the stuff these days.
antique horizontal wine press
Beringer family wine cellar with World War 2 era bottlings
inside the original Beringer wine production facility
We were both intrigued by Marvin’s description of wine barrels. He had a stave from one and made a big point of saying that there are 54 in a barrel. Hegui turned to me and exclaimed, “Fifty-four! That’s a good number.” You bet!
bread mozzarella salad demonstration at Beringer
The grounds of the facility were quite spectacular, really. It’s there that we saw a loquat tree. They’ve also got several really old houses that have become historic landmarks. In one we went for what was billed in the program as a “mozzarella making class.” The tiny, cute but rather brusque and patronizing chef claimed that she didn’t have enough time to show this process in a mere ten minutes. Instead, she had decided to demonstrate making a crouton mozzarella ball salad. She’d already marinated the mozzarella balls. Her assistant used a brush to paint olive oil onto some large slices of bread. Then the assistant toasted them on this dramatically huge grill in the vast kitchen. They cut it up into cubes and tossed it together with some cherry tomatoes and the cheese. Ta-da! Pretty disappointing, no? They didn’t even serve the demonstration salad. Instead there were some tiny plastic cups of bread salad, sitting out god knows how long. Hegui didn’t bother to take one. I did but wasn’t impressed as it had no flavor.
And that really was the problem: no flavor. We tried the wines but they weren’t that exciting at all. I stopped even writing tasting notes at the time and won’t bother here with the ones that I did make. There was the 2008 Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc, 2008 Private Reserve Chardonnay, 2008 Stanly Ranch Pinot Noir, and 2005 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. We passed on the choice of one: Nightingale Dessert Wine or Cabernet Sauvignon Port. We didn’t go to the Rhine House Tasting Room for the limited production wines which “tend to be more full-bodied and complex in flavor” either. Just didn’t have the heart for it.
Rhine House on Beringer estate
I see Beringer wines everywhere. But if the basics are any guide, this isn’t a place for wine lovers. Now if you’re just a tourist looking for an interesting experience, that’s completely different! The tour and grounds are brilliant!
some Beringer bottlings in the sales room