New Englander Alfred Lovering Tubbs was only twenty-two years old when he arrived in San Francisco in 1850 as the agent for a large Boston mercantile company to sell their shipload of goods and to try out the young West Coast market. He followed up this profitable assignment with a partnership with his brother Hiram, and they opened a successful chandlery business. In 1856, they established Tubbs & Co., Manufacturers of Cordage, the first and largest rope-making firm on the Pacific Coast, serving the needs of the shipping, farming, construction, and mining industries. Alfred Tubbs, notably successful and prominent in San Francisco circles, was elected to the California State Senate in 1865. During his four-year term he earned a reputation of being one of the State’s most effective Senators. And then, in 1871, the brothers built a large, luxurious hotel in Oakland. All of this before Alfred Tubbs bought land at the upper end of Napa Valley near Calistoga, planted a vineyard, and built his magnificent estate and stone winery in 1882.
Tubbs Wine Cellar, Near Calistoga, c1907
Alfred L. Tubbs (1827–1896) was familiar with Napa wine country from his seasonal excursions to the famous White Sulfur Springs resort near St. Helena. Consequently, in 1870, while still maintaining his bustling cordage business in San Francisco, he purchased several hundred acres for a country estate about a mile north of Calistoga. In 1882, he began planting a 220-acre vineyard to the choicest wine varieties and built a large mansion on his estate that he named Hillcrest. Two years later, and inspired by Ch. Lafite, he began construction of his castle-like winery using locally quarried light-colored stone for the sides and back, and imported cut stones for the face. The walls, forty-two inches thick at the rear where it cut into the north side of the hill, provided ample coolness to the cellar. Tubb’s first vintage, in 1886, was made in a temporary wooden winery while his handsome stone cellar “with one of the finest fronts of any building in Napa County” was being completed in time for the 1888 vintage. His new cellar was equipped with oak and redwood cooperage totaling 350,000 gallons, with almost 200,000 gallons in oak. By the 1890s Tubbs Wine Cellar was the seventh largest in the Valley. In its unique lifetime, it would be called one of the most important.
Tubbs Winery, Calistoga, Built 1884 – c1907
Tubbs sought sound advice in the selection of choice vines. During a visit to Europe, he sent back ten thousand cuttings from the vineyard of Schloss Johannisberg and a similar number from both Château d’Yquem and Château Lafite in Bordeaux. In 1893, he had been wisely replanting his vineyard with resistant rootstock for several years, and his vines remained phylloxera-free. Forty-five acres had been grafted to Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chasselas. As his cellar master, Tubbs engaged French-born Jerome Bardot, who had previously made award-winning wines at Schramsberg for pioneer winegrower Jacob Schram — who, incidentally, had directed the planting of Tubbs’ vineyard in 1882. Bardot now began to produce outstanding red and white table wines under the Tubbs label. In 1883, soon after he established Hillcrest, Tubbs was a leading force and major stockholder in the founding of the newly incorporated Napa Valley Wine Co., a group of leading Napa Valley winegrowers who united to enable them to sell their high-quality Napa Valley wines directly to retailers, not to wine merchants who blended the wines with inferior vintages. The Napa Valley Wine Co. and Tubbs Hillcrest Winery would be founding members of the powerful San Francisco-based California Wine Assn. in 1894, with A. L. Tubbs on the Board of Directors. From this date, the regular carloads of wine shipped from Hillcrest were marketed by the C.W.A., one of their top-of-the-line wines.
Tubbs “Hillcrest” Mansion, Calistoga, Built c1882
Alfred Tubbs and his wife Elizabeth Chapin Tubbs spent most of their summer months in residence at their spacious three-story stone and wood “summer home” on their Calistoga wine estate; the winter season saw them “at home” in San Francisco at their posh Palace Hotel apartments. This richly hand-colored postcard of their “beautiful” country residence was published by a local Calistoga merchant. Two other similar unidentified “Beautiful Residence” wine cards are known, of the Beringer Rhine House and the Seneca Ewer home, both in St. Helena and published by a hometown vendor. Local promotion at its prettiest. Also historically invaluable — the Rhine House and the Ewer home are still here to amaze and admire, but Hillcrest was lost in the catastrophic 1964 wildfire.
Entrance To The Tubbs’ Estate, Calistoga. c1908
Hotel del Monte, established in 1880 on the Monterey coast, was one of the finest luxury hotels in North America, extremely popular with the wealthy and influential of the day, including Alfred Tubbs and his family. In Tubbs’ eye, the splendor of the resort’s landscaped 126 acres and gardens designed by noted landscape architect Rudolph Ulrich were unsurpassed. Tubbs brought the renowned gardener to Hillcrest to beautify the estate with native and exotic trees, colorful garden areas, and meandering drives, creating a wine country showplace. In late December of 1896, Alfred Tubbs died unexpectedly at his San Francisco residence. His youngest son, William B. Tubbs (1862–1915), became master of Hillcrest, the vineyard, winery, and estate. William, in turn, was succeeded in 1915 by his son Chapin Tubbs, who ran the operation until Prohibition. (The two older Tubbs sons were firmly entrenched in Tubbs Cordage.) Fun Wine Country Connection: Prominent St. Helena vineyardist and hotelier George Schoenwald was certainly involved in our Tubbs wine story. Schoenwald was manager of Sulphur Springs in 1881 and six years later at Hotel del Monte for nineteen years; in the same year, Tubbs was establishing Hillcrest, Schoenwald was busy establishing his Esmeralda Vineyard and Winery near downtown St. Helena (today’s Spottswoode).
Mount St. Helena From The “Tubbs” Road, Calistoga – c1933
During the Dry years, the winery was closed, but the family continued growing grapes, although the orchards of prunes and pears were the main income crops for Tubbs Ranch. With Repeal, Chapin Tubbs reopened the winery as Chateau Montelena, after the towering mountain hovering four thousand feet above Hillcrest. When Chapin died in 1947, the winery again closed. The grapes went to other wineries, and the estate was divided among family members. And then the “Chinese Junk” era arrived, when a Chinese engineer and his wife acquired the property for their retirement, made the upper story of the empty wine cellar their home, and built the Oriental Water Gardens, being the five-acre Jade Lake with arched bridges between decorative islands holding lacquered pavilions, and an authentic five-ton Chinese Junk in the lake’s center. Tubbs Road (now Lane) runs today across the upper valley, passing in front of the Tubbs property. This masterful real-photo postcard is from the hand of revered photographer Ira C. Adams (I.C.A.), who came to Calistoga as a young boy in 1882 (same year as Tubbs). A well-loved figure in Calistoga history, Adams was not only a successful photographer, but “a celebrated musician, historian, philosopher, poet, and more.” A select number of his photographic postcards of upper Napa Valley wine country are favorites in the collection, many focused on foreground vineyards, with majestic Mount St. Helena in the background. Fun Fact. Several classic Adams photo postcards features Old Faithful Geyser, a close neighbor two minutes west of Chateau Montelena. This wonder is one of only three “faithful” geysers in the world, regularly erupting every 15 to 20 minutes for 2 to 6 minutes, sending its sprays 60 feet in the air while creating magnificent rainbows in the mist.
One Of The Several Stone Bridges…Near The Big Tubbs Ranch, c1905
Napa Valley’s stone bridges, the first one built near downtown St. Helena in 1894, are treasured history in the county. The handwritten message on this early photo postcard is its only identification. A Napa River crossing would be necessary in this vicinity and was more than likely used by anyone going to the Tubbs place. Even in 1968, when Chateau Montelena began its revival. New owner Leland Paschich, a local vineyardist, purchased the property and replanted some 100 acres of the Tubbs vineyard land, brought in partners attorney James Barrett and developer Ernest Hahn, who hired Miljenko (Mike) Grgich in 1972 as winemaker, whose second vintage, a 1973 Chardonnay, won the famous 1976 Paris wine tasting — and changed the course of wine history forever. Today, fifty years of Barrett ownership later, the winery produces world-class Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, and Zinfandel— with “a unique story in every bottle.” And the old stone bridge remains “near the big Tubbs ranch.”
References
Adams, Leon. The Wines of America. 4th ed.1990. NY: McGraw–Hill.
Peninou, E. & Unzelman, G. The California Wine Association and Its Member Wineries 1894–1920. 2000. Santa Rosa: Nomis Press.
Ryder, David. Men of Rope. History of Tubbs Cordage Company. 1954. SF: Historical Publications.
Sullivan, Charles. Companion to California Wine. An Encyclopedia.………………………………………………………………………. 1998. Berkeley: U.C. Press.
