A Valenti sold the property to Fred Holt during World War II. Valenti (who wasn’t at the property very often). After prohibition the winery was owned by a San Francisco restaurateur, A. The foundation stone with the date and name of founder, Anton Rossi is located high up on the stone wall above the main winery entrance. The old stone gravity 2-level winery was built with rock quarried from nearby and dates from 1898. A small guest house is located next to the winery across from the cottage the Heitz family used to refer to this as the ‘Heitz Hilton’. Joe and Alice purchased this property in 1964 and lived in the old cottage for many years. Others in the valley heard that Joe was buying the property and one individual offered a higher price but was refused as Fred honored his handshake agreement with Joe. The owner at the time, Fred Holt & his wife Alice agreed to sell his property (no vines were planted here at that time) to Joe with a handshake that day. He and Alice drove up to the ranch, walked up to the wooden porch and knocked on the door of the old white cottage. Several years later, looking to expand and needing more space for winery operations Joe remembered visiting the old Rossi Ranch at the end of Taplin Road years prior. Heitz also purchased Cabernet Sauvignon from Christian Brothers Winery and bottled it as his own. And Hanzell is still producing wine (no longer owned by the Zellerback family). As a result, some of the first Heitz sold wines were actually from Sonoma County rather than Napa Valley. These wines were from Hanzell Vineyards near the town of Sonoma in Sonoma County – founder of Hanzell, Harold Zellerback passed away in 1963 and his wife Hana soon liquidated their inventory (including several vintages) and sold the property. The earliest vintage of these wines that Joe purchased was a 1959 vintage Pinot Noir and several subsequent vintages including some Chardonnay. Their first wines were not estate, but were rather purchased wines in cask or barrel and then bottled under Heitz Cellar. Heitz Cellar made wine here for only a few years in a small building directly in front of/west of the current tasting salon building. Heitz Cellar still owns Brendel’s old sign winery welcoming visitors to come try his Grignolino which now hangs in the Brendel Wines tasting room in downtown Napa. At the time Brendel grew and made only one wine, an obscure varietal called Grignolino.
In fact he was, and in 1961 Joe and Alice purchased his 8.5 acres just south of St. Hanns mentioned that an elderly gentleman, Leon Brendel (incidentally the first winemaker at Freemark Abbey) might be interested in selling his property and tiny winery just south of St. Helena property came about because of a conversation he had with long time Napa vintner Hanns Kornell (proprietor at the time of Kornell Champagne Cellars located on site of what is now Frank Family Vineyards). And right before starting Heitz Cellar Joe was a professor and helped setup the enology department at Fresno State in the late 1950s. Joe received invaluable training for a number of years in the 1950’s when he worked with the famed winemaker and soils expert Andre Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu Vineyard. He ended up taking the job at Gallo where he worked with Ernest and Julio Gallo for a short while.
Following his graduation he had two job offers, one from the owners of Freemark Abbey at the time and the other from Gallo Winery. Through the air force, he was stationed in Fresno – after the war finished he went to UC Davis where he graduated with a degree in enology in 1948, three years later graduating with his Masters degree, also from UC Davis (he was one of only a handful of students in his graduating class with enology degrees). Veterinary medicine was his first calling he dropped out of school after World War II started to join the United States Air Force. Joe was born in Illinois and grew up on a farm. It certainly took a while for Napa Valley to recover from Prohibition and today more than 80 years after the end of Prohibition there are now more than 1,100 producers in Napa Valley making wine commercially. In fact when they were founded, there were less than 20 wineries in operation in Napa Valley. Heitz Cellar is one of the older continuously operating wineries in Napa Valley. This tasting room opened in 2002 and is on the location of the original Heitz Winery which was founded in 1961 by Joe (passed away in 2000) and Alice Heitz.
Heitz Cellar maintains a tasting salon located almost directly across from Hall Winery on Highway 29 slightly south of the town of St.
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