HECK  CELLARS - Korbel Champagnes

In the mid-1800s, America offered new hope to three brothers seeking to escape political unrest in their European homeland. Emigrating from Czechoslovakia to the United States, brothers Francis, Anton and Joseph Korbel found success in exchange for their hard work and innovation.
F. Korbel & Bros. began as a manufacturing business in San Francisco that produced materials for the building industry. As their enterprise expanded, the brothers eventually acquired a sawmill and began a full-scale lumber operation near the town of Guerneville in Sonoma County.

The Korbels, born in the farmlands of the province of Bohemia (today's western Czech Republic), found the remote and rugged redwood country in Sonoma County irresistible. Lured by the beauty and opportunity of the mountainous timberlands, the brothers eventually moved their families from San Francisco and settled in the Russian River Valley. As Northern California's lumber boom slowed, the Korbels turned their attention to farming the bottomlands of their Russian River Valley ranch. Here the soil was sandy, the mornings were filled with fog from the nearby Pacific Ocean, and summer days were long with sunshine.

It would be in this valley that the Korbels' love of the land, their unmatched enthusiasm for hard work and their spirit for enterprise would lead them to create a great American champagne.

During the late 1870s, the Korbels harvested prunes, beets, wheat, corn and alfalfa, and operated a commercial dairy. During this time, they planted their first vineyards and began experimenting with different grape varieties, including Pinot Noir - early evidence of the Korbels' ambition to become champagne producers. Pinot Noir was an unusual variety for California; it was known primarily as the principal grape of the Champagne region of France.

In 1882, the three brothers began a small wine-making operation at their ranch and produced some 20,000 to 30,000 gallons of wine from their vineyard yields. KORBEL wines were so well received that two years later the brothers closed their dairy, converted all of their ranch lands to vineyards, and devoted all of their energy to wine-making. A tradition that was to become a legacy was well under way.

The Korbel Winery continued to grow throughout the 1880s. It was during this time that the Korbels sent for winemaker Frank Hasek in Prague to come to the United States to be their champagne master. Employing the time-honored French method of producing champagne, méthode champenoise, the Korbels quietly but aggressively experimented with cuvées. By the mid-1890s, the Korbels shipped their first California champagnes, and by the turn of the century KORBEL was an internationally known, award-winning label.

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