History of the Materials

It’s reassuring to know the wine casks we have gathered over the last decade will enjoy a final resting place, cherished in some living room, adding to the comfort and memories of family members for years to come. It is important for us as well, to keep whatever history we can uncover about the materials with the furniture we create, and preserve their provenance out of respect for the craftsmen and women who originally worked the materials and the limited natural resources from which they came. That is why, each year, we spend some time researching where our casks came from and compiling a bit of California history that seems to otherwise go unrecognized. Enjoy.

Italian Swiss Colony

Eighty-five miles north of San Francisco, in a country lush with wine grapes, lies the little village of Asti. At the heart of Asti is the once thriving winery, the Italian Swiss Colony. But the story of the winery begins with gold rather than grapes. The feverrish rush of 1849 lured many Italian and Swiss to the northern hills of California, many of whom had forsaken their native vineyards for quick wealth. By the early 1880’s the bottom had dropped out of what looked like limitless prosperity, and these unfortunate outlanders were joining the hungry lines of the unemployed.

There was one man, though, with a very practical idea of what might be done about that: an Italian born philanthropist named Andrea Sbarboro. These immigrants, he knew, came from generations close to the soil, and there was plenty of good soil in California. Sbarboro's idea was to set the jobless immigrants to work in an agricultural colony where they could share the land and the profits of the vineyard.

Read about the History of the Italian Swiss Colony (download pdf) and the California viticulture industry in the early 1900’s, written by Andrea Sbarboro himself. This is part of his autobiography, which we discovered at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, California.

DiGardi

The story of the casks from the DiGardi Winery begins more than a century ago in Germany, where great white oaks grew for over 150 years and were milled before being shipped to San Francisco.

It was in 1886 that Francis Joost and his sons, Martin and Fabion, called upon the well respected cooper, David Woerner, to produce the fourteen 2,000 gallon casks required for their winery in Vine Hill, California. In Woerner’s busy shop on the northwest corner of Main and Harrison in San Francisco, the fine German oak was worked by hand and fire and transformed into the massive vessels that would be filled for the next 84 years with award-winning California wine.

Look into the shop of David Woerner (download pdf) and at the bustling cooperage industry of the early nineteenth century. The article was written in 1903 by an anonymous author and is housed at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, CA.

Next: Wine Barrels