Schramsberg

If you plan to visit just one of the valley’s big champagne makers, the historic Schramsberg winery should be high on the list. The winery was established on the slopes of Diamond Mountain in 1862 by German immigrant Jacob Schram, who had soon made such a name for himself as a maker of high quality wines that he was paid a visit by a vacationing Robert Louis Stevenson in 1880, a visit memorialized in Stevenson’s book Silverado Squatters.

Schram made still wines mainly from German grape varietals, and the winery’s fame as a sparkling winemaker began in the 1960s when the Davies family bought the old winery and, rather than compete with the makers of sweeter sparkling wines like the nearby Kornell winery and Korbel in the Russian River Valley, opted to make drier wines from traditional French champagne grapes—a risk considering the American palate was better accustomed to sweet white zin than bone-dry champagnes.

The 1965 blanc de blancs was the first American-made champagne to use chardonnay grapes. And the 1969 vintage was served to President Richard Nixon and Premier Zhou Enlai of China in Beijing in 1972 for a toast to the normalization of diplomatic relations.

Today Schramsberg makes about 45,000 cases of wines, ranging from that historic blanc de blancs and a rich, creamy blanc de noirs up to its flagship J. Schram wine, regarded as one of the best Californian champagnes. Tasting the champagnes is the culmination of a fascinating appointment-only tour of the winery that includes a visit to the spooky caves dating from the late 1800s and a lesson on the art of champagne making. You can also explore Jacob Schram’s beautiful Victorian home and gardens.

If the wines taste complex, that could be due to the grapes coming from 67 different vineyards in four California counties, with many in Carneros and the Anderson Valley in Mendocino. The hotter estate vineyard around the winery was replanted mainly to cabernet sauvignon in the late 1990s, and Schramsberg now makes a cabernet (the 2001 vintage was the first release) under the J. Davies label (1400 Schramsberg Rd., via Peterson Rd. off U.S. 29, Calistoga, 707/942-2414 or 800/877-3623, www.schramsberg.com, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. daily, tour and tasting $20).