Wine Country Postcard Stories: This Is Mr. Ewer’s Cellar. You Remember Him

It all began about 1870 with a house, a mansion really, in St Helena in upper Napa Valley. It sat majestically on a hill above St. Helena’s Main Street (Rte. 29), on a 13-acre property on the outskirts of town going north; a few years later the Beringer Bros. Winery and its imposing Rhine House would become their next-door neighbors. Although we have no exact date, we imagine that State Senator, Assemblyman and Judge Seneca Ewer set to building a suitable family residence upon his arrival in St. Helena from Butte County in 1870. We know his lovely new home, set amidst carefully executed landscaping and “one of the most attractive places in the county,” was ready and chosen for inclusion in the oversized, picturesque Illustrations of Napa Co. Calif. With Historical Sketchbook published in 1878. The Ewer family enjoyed their distinctive home for some thirty years. The children grew up enjoying grand birthday parties and social functions galore, while several family weddings were held in the home’s welcoming spaciousness and gardens. And here, in 1904, in his eighty-second year of life, Mr. Ewer contracted pneumonia and passed away. But we are getting ahead of our story.

Seneca Ewer Family Residence, St Helena, c1900

The beautiful Ewer home was anonymously featured on this turn-of-the-century hand-colored postcard published by R. Behrendt in San Francisco for Walter Metzner’s Smith Pharmacy, St Helena. Scrawled on the back is “Home of Mrs. Will Clanton’s father.” Mrs. Clanton was Seneca Ewer’s married daughter Mildred. :: The old-colonial style, white-trimmed mansion has enjoyed a long life. Following the death of Seneca Ewer, a St Helena family spent several years here before selling it to a San Francisco physician who leased it to hotelier H. Schultz to become the long-running St. Gothard Inn which opened in early 1911. The town’s electric railway stopped at the front gate.

Ewer & Atkinson — Valley View Winery & Vineyard, Rutherford, 1908

The Winery Story. In 1885 Seneca Ewer (1821–1904) and his partner Joseph B. Atkinson founded Ewer & Atkinson Winery a few miles south of St. Helena at Rutherford. They were men of means and their venture in winemaking was a secondary business interest. Both arrived in California in 1850, Atkinson from New Jersey and Ewer from western New York, and worked for a few years as miners in the Mother Lode. Atkinson subsequently spent twenty profitable years in the mercantile business in San Francisco and retired in 1880 to his 110-acre vineyard ranch near Rutherford, and became a director of the Napa Valley Wine Company in 1887. Ewer, after practicing law in Oroville, Butte County, and serving terms in the State Legislature (1850s) and Senate (1860s), settled in St. Helena in 1870 and embarked on a long and prominent career as a civic leader and a formidable wine industry figure. In 1880 he began planting a vineyard at Rutherford and in 1885, in partnership with Atkinson, erected a large 100’x126′, 150,000-gallon, two-story wine cellar of locally quarried stone. The famed Napa Valley winery architect Capt.

Hamden McIntyre, who was responsible for Niebaum’s Inglenook Wine Cellar across the St. Helena Hwy, was contracted to build beautiful Ewer & Atkinson. In 1885, Napa Valley could boast 102 wineries, and the partners’ venture into winemaking was an immediate success; in 1889, the winery was enlarged to a storage capacity of 400,000 gallons. “Interestingly,” historian E. Peninou comments, “as that year’s entire vintage of 170,000 gallons was purchased by the San Francisco wine house of S. Lachman & Co, it would suggest that Ewer & Atkinson had not yet established their bottle trade, or they would have marketed the product themselves.” Two years later (1891) they expanded again and proudly “replaced their original still with a new Saunders continuous-type still.” (Peninou, Napa Viti District online) In 1896 Atkinson suffered financial difficulties and withdrew from the partnership; two years later Seneca Ewer gave his 37-year-old son Fred half-ownership and the business was reorganized as S. Ewer & Son. Following the death of Seneca Ewer in 1904, Fred inherited the operation and used Valley View Vineyards & Winery as the firm’s name. When the 1906 earthquake shook Napa Valley, Ewer’s stone winery suffered noticeable damage and significant wine was lost when tanks split or were tumbled from their skids. Fred was able to carry on and maintain the winery’s longstanding reputation for producing some of Napa Valley’s choicest wines. Active in community affairs like his father, in 1908 he was elected Vice-President of the Napa Co. Grape Growers Assn. In 1916, with Prohibition on the horizon, he helped establish and served as Treasurer of the Napa Co. Grape Protective Assn, while his son Alwyn, born 1892 in St. Helena and had followed his father into winegrowing, served as Secretary. Alas, to no avail, in 1918 Valley View Winery ceased operations. Five years later in 1923 Fred, now in his 60s, sold Valley View to Georges de Latour, who enlarged it with new additions to the north and south sides, to become his Beaulieu winemaking facility. Andre Tchelistcheff, award-winning Cabernets, and great fame followed for the old winery. Another beloved Napa Valley wine story.

A special-favorite early Pre-Prohibition postcard in my collection is “Valley View Vineyard & Winery, Rutherford,” dated 1908 shown above. A pencilled message on the front, signed by M. Chiles of pioneer Chiles Valley fame, reads “This is Mr. Ewers cellar. You remember him.” Yes, we do.

“I am in Rutherford today picking grapes, From Alwn [sic] Ewer.” 1907.

Amazing Postcard Story. No.1. Sometime in the early 1900s Valley View ordered from the German postcard publisher Franz Manger of Cologne (Koln am Rhein) a series of beautifully printed, artistic advertising postcards featuring reproductions of paintings by several 17th – 19th century Dutch Masters. The cards were available in full color or black & white with colored wooden frames, while the backs of these stunning cards bear a printed ad for Valley View Vineyard. About five years ago, several of these beautiful, never-before-seen postcards were offered online; two were described as “having writing.” The “writing” was a written message, “From Alwn [Alwyn] Ewer. I am in Rutherford today picking grapes.” At the time I recognized the wine name Ewer, but not Alwyn. Now I know Alwyn was the grandson of Seneca Ewer and on this day was at the Rutherford vineyard with his father Fred helping with the harvest. In an effort to date these postcard mailers (which are not postally used and bear no postmark), a scholarly postcard friend helped me determine that the divided back format of these cards would date them after March 1907 (when divided backs came into use). We might reason that Fred Ewer could have ordered the special mailers in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake to reassure his customers that the winery, although damaged in the quake, was still in business and eager to “Solicit Your Orders” for their “High Grade Wines & Brandy” and “Fill Them Promptly.” :: As an aside, Fred Ewer’s (I assume) choice of these exquisite paintings as an advertising tool was quite remarkable, and quite moving, actually. Researching and learning about the seven artists and their works brought no end of pleasure to this wine historian. Such a grand and exciting wine country treasure.