Our People
Scot Covington
John Tankersley
Ben Byczinski
The Old Stone Winery
As early as 1880, Italian immigrants began settling in Sonoma County. In the climate and soils of the region, they recognized the potential for growing the vines and wines of their native Italy. As they planted the grapes of their homeland, they also planted the seeds of a new California.
The Old Stone Winery is a cornerstone of this early Sonoma County winemaking history. In fact, records show that the original sales room at the Old Stone Winery, in operation since 1935, is one of the oldest winery tasting rooms in the county.
But the story really begins in 1908, just two years after the 1906 Earthquake, when one of the early winemaking pioneers, Frank Nervo Sr., started building his stone winery. He hired a stone mason from Santa Rosa, Mr. Maroni, to do the stone work. After witnessing the devastation caused by the Earthquake – which flattened most of the buildings in downtown Santa Rosa – Maroni would make sure his building would stand up to future assaults from nature. He reinforced his 60-foot by 70-foot stone building with a unique design that was all his own. At the mid-point in each wall, at the floor joists, he embedded in the stone a heavy chain all the way around the building. Earthquake plates were placed from one side to the other. Frank Nervo Jr., interviewed in 1995, said that Maroni was certain that the building “wouldn’t crack in the event of another quake…”
The Old Stone Winery was the first winery to be built with a concrete floor; dirt floors were the norm at the time. Lumber for joists for the second floor was shipped from Oregon. Nervo remembered the carpenter describing why they wouldn’t cut the beautiful Douglas fir: “Because there’s not a single knot in them. They are just perfect.”
Once the winery was completed in 1908, Frank Nervo Sr. began the art of making wine. The entire process was done with steam power, using a small 30-horsepower locomotive-size boiler. It was powered by wood for many years, and later by diesel fuel. The boiler was located in the room where we greet visitors to Trione Winery, in the tasting room.
Steam ran the must pump and the press. Overhead, a donkey engine powered steel wheels of different sizes, turning leather belts that powered the crusher, as well as the grape conveyer belt intake that fed the crusher. The antique crusher remained intact at the Old Stone Winery until it was remodeled.
Upstairs fermenters gravity-fed the ground floor storage tanks. Fermented grapes were poured from carts onto a circular wheeled bin, pushed via rails onto the press. In the early part of the century, it was a very efficient system.
In the Old Stone Winery’s upstairs fortifying room, Nervo and his crew made their bestsellers, aged Port and a dessert wine called Angelica. They made the Port “from 15-year-old Zinfandel and Sauterne wines…and they were plenty aged.”
The Old Stone Winery is a storied building that has seen its share of “firsts”: an earthquake-safe building with a unique design that has stood the test of time; the first winery to be built with a concrete floor; and one of the oldest winery tasting rooms in California, in operation since 1935. Now the Old Stone Winery begins a new chapter, as the centerpiece of Trione Vineyards & Winery.
*Information for this history of the Old Stone Winery excerpted from the “Wine Library Associates of Sonoma County Oral History Series,” a 1995 interview conducted by Joe Vercelli with Frank Nervo Jr., Nervo family historian.