Korbel Champagne Cellars

Korbel's story begins with three brothers from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Francis, Anton, and Joseph Korbel, who formed F. Korbel & Bros. in San Francisco in 1862 and made their way to California's Russian River. They first worked as lumbermen, clearing redwoods from the steep hills above Guerneville, then planted their first vineyards in the 1870s. In 1884 the brothers brought in Frank Hasek, a Czech-trained winemaker, as champagne master, and the sparkling wines that made the name followed. The brick winery tower, completed in 1886, still stands today as an emblem of the estate. The Heck family (Adolf, Paul, and Ben Heck, all Champagne-trained winemakers themselves) purchased Korbel in 1954 and has owned it ever since.

Today Korbel is the largest méthode champenoise sparkling wine producer in California, with the Heck family continuing as proprietors under chairman Gary Heck. Paul Ahvenainen, vice president of operations and winemaking, leads the cellar with longtime sparkling specialist Patricia Ortiz; the lineup ranges from the broadly distributed Brut and Brut Rosé to limited library releases of vintage and tête-de-cuvée bottlings. The estate covers 600 acres along the lower Russian River, with vineyards, the original brick winery, a 19th-century train depot used as the tasting room, and the Antique Rose Garden listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Tours of the cellars and gardens run daily, and the tasting room is open without reservation, a rarity in modern Sonoma.