In this postcard story, we visit Larkmead, established in 1892 four miles north of St. Helena, midway between Calistoga and St. Helena, whose vintage stone wine cellar is one of Napa Valley’s most beautiful. In the early 1870s, Dr. Charles Hitchcock (1810-1885) established a country estate on a 1000-acre parcel of densely wooded land in what is now Bothe-Napa Valley State Park. His family named it “Lonely.” Dr. Hitchcock, previously the Pacific Coast Medical Director for the U.S. Army at the S.F. Presidio, had accumulated a massive fortune in local real estate and became a highly influential figure in early San Francisco high society. His country home welcomed and entertained honored guests from the City, actively promoting Napa Valley as the ideal summer getaway for the wealthy.
Following “Lonely,” the good doctor purchased a nearby plot of land to build a country estate for his daughter Lillie Hitchcock Coit (1843-1929) on the eastern side of the County Highway along the rail line. Lillie, a colorful character, “scandalous,” according to her loving father, was the famous cigar-smoking darling of the San Francisco Fire Department who preferred trousers to fine dresses while freely gambling in male-only saloons. She bequeathed a sizeable sum to San Francisco to build a memorial to the city’s volunteer firefighters – Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. Lillie named her 400-acre ranch and country home Larkmead, for the profusion of larks in the surrounding meadows. She planted a vineyard of 130 acres and constructed a small wooden winery, leaving a legacy for historic Larkmead Winery fine wine vineyards. (For a postcard Note on “Lonely,” see References at end.)
Larkmead Winery, Near St. Helena, Built 1906 – c1915
This superb photo postcard presents a rare personal tour of Larkmead Vineyards circa 1915. Under the protective watch of the sturdy, picturesque stone winery, Theresa Salmina, wife of then-owner Felix Salmina, tends the vines while a shipment of wine awaits to be loaded on a rail car heading to eastern markets. After leasing the Larkmead wooden winery and vineyard for several years, Felix Salmina (1861-1940) and his uncle J. Baptiste Salmina, both from a long line of Italian-Swiss winemaking families, acquired the Larkmead property in 1895. In 1905-1906, they replaced the wooden winery with the iconic stone wine cellar built by skilled local stonemasons using sandstone quarried from the nearby hills. It stands where the trains once stopped at Larkmead Station on today’s Larkmead Lane. Under the guidance of the Salmina family, the vineyards were enlarged with plantings of fine wine varieties. Larkmead wines built a strong reputation and received worldwide award-winning recognition, pre- and post-Prohibition. Famously preserved was a rare three-quarter-acre block of ancient-vine Tocai Friulano, a prized grape native to northeast Italy.
Giant Fermenting Building At Larkmead, Constructed c1945
The Larkmead Winery remained dormant during Prohibition while the family continued to sell and ship wine grapes across the country from their Larkmead vineyards. Following Repeal, the company expanded to produce bulk wine in large quantities. They further increased the vineyard acreage to keep up with the demand, and installed a special fermenting room “the finest in this part of California” (as opposed to the Central Valley). When Felix Salmina passed away in 1940, his two sons took over the business to become one of Napa Valley’s largest producers. In the mid-1950s, under new corporate owners, Larkmead lost its luster as a premium wine brand. In 1958, Hanns Kornell acquired the winery for his sparkling-wine cellar. Within a few years, Kornell was the master of bottle-fermented, premium sparkling wine in the valley.
Hanns Kornell Champagne Cellars, Founded At Larkmead 1958
Hanns Kornell (1911-1994), son of a Jewish winegrowing family in the Rhine Valley, studied enology at the Geisenheim Enological Institute. He was the proud third generation of his world-renowned European family who began their méthode champenoise production of superior wines and champagnes in 1848. In 1939, Hanns narrowly escaped from Germany to arrive in America in 1940, where he made sparkling wine for Cook’s Imperial in Chicago and at Fountaingrove in Sonoma County. Not until 1958 was he able to establish his own champagne cellar at Larkmead, where he prominently displayed “Third Generation” on his labels and advertising material, including postcards. This charming work of California postcard art is by celebrated woodcut artisan Mallette Dean, who often paired with St. Helena fine press printer James Beard to create a rich source of historical wine and winery imprints, all very collectible.
Hanns Kornell. Gold Medal Winner, Sonoma – c1952
A rare early advertising postcard from Hanns Kornell’s time in the town of Sonoma, when he took over the old Sonoma Wine Co. in 1952 and renamed it Hanns Kornell Cellars, his first cellar. Here he produced bottle-fermented prize-winning vintages under his “Third Generation” label. Literally building his business bottle by bottle, Kornell solicited wine orders by day and filled them at night while his champagne production was in progress. By 1970, he was personally supervising the making of some 35,000 cases of International Award-Winning Champagne bottled, fermented, aged, and shipped in the original bottle. In the 1980s, he reached 80,000 cases. His chosen postcard advertising scheme was artful displays of labeled bottles of Hanns Kornell Champagne, a rarity in the California wine scene. Today the historic images are much appreciated by wine historians.
Hanns Kornell, Third Generation, California Champagne, 1970
The back message of the postcard relates the Hanns Kornell story; on the front are colorful bottles of the different styles of Kornell Champagnes, including Sec, Brut, Pink-Rosé, Extra Dry, and Sparkling Burgundy. Of note: while very few winemakers have issued such postcards featuring their wares, there are four known different postcard images issued by Hanns Kornell over the years. This particular postcard was graciously written and sent by the Champagne master himself to the Unzelmans following their tasting tour in 1970, “It was so nice of you to visit my Cellars. Thank you very much for the courtesy in becoming acquainted with the procedure of the production of my Champagne. Come back soon.” Later, during Kornell’s efforts to give a major upgrade to his facility in 1986, a series of unfortunate events brought this beloved figure into financial difficulty and bankruptcy. The Napa community rallied behind him. The Rombauer family purchased the old winery and brought it back to life as Kornell-Larkmead Cellars. Shortly before Hanns Kornell’s death in 1994, Robert Mondavi bought the Kornell family home that was facing foreclosure, and granted Hanns and his wife Marilouise life tenancy. A good wine country story. Today, since 1992, Larkmead has been home to the Frank Family Wine Estate, carrying on the fine Larkmead tradition.
References
Landfield, Jerome. California — America’s Vineyard. Verdier Cellars. City of Paris, S.F. 1945.
Landfield was Le Sommelier at Verdier Cellars, the City of Paris’ new Wine Department established when Prohibition ended in 1933. Verdier Cellars gained the distinction of being the “finest Wine Cellar in America — 100,000 bottles with over 500 different labels, ranging in price from the most reasonable to the rarest.” Sommelier Landfield wrote a weekly column, “Cellar Chats in the Verdier Cellars” for the S.F. Chronicle. Wayward Tendrils Quarterly (v.19 #4, Oct 2009) has a good, illustrated story of Verdier Cellars.
Melville, John. Guide to California Wines. A Practical Reference Book for All Wine Lovers. 1955.
Sullivan, Chas. Companion to California Wine. An Encyclopedia. 1998.
Note on “Lonely.” See San Luis Obispo Wine History Project Newsletter, Oct. 23, 2024: Galewski “Lonely.”
From The Archives
F. Salmina & Co. Fine Larkmead Wines. Label, c1915
Hanns Kornell at Larkmead, c1960s
