After 47 years in business, the Sonoma County winery behind one of the country’s most recognizable $19 reds is debuting its first tasting room.
But the wines at the Marietta Cellars tasting room, opened Friday at 250 Center St. in downtown Healdsburg, will be unfamiliar to that cheap red’s fans. Instead, the space will highlight the higher-end, smaller-production wines that Marietta has recently introduced. In fact, visitors won’t be able to drink the label’s flagship, Old Vine Red, at all.
“I didn’t want to bring the same wines that I’ve been taking to market across all 50 states,” said Marietta owner and winemaker Scot Bilbro. “I wanted to use the tasting room as an opportunity to do something different.”
The tasting room offers two flights, both $35. The Single Estate Series consists of a Riesling from the old-vine Wirz Vineyard in the Central Coast ($38/bottle), plus three single-vineyard red wines from Marietta’s estate vineyards in Alexander Valley, Yorkville Highlands and McDowell Valley ($48-$58).
New wines from Marietta Cellars’ Etta series include a dry Riesling from the old-vine Wirz Vineyard. (Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle)
Then there’s the Etta Series, which Bilbro called “our most personal project yet.” It includes four wines from small parcels within the estate vineyards and wades into slightly more experimental waters. There’s a floral, barely pink Grenache Gris-Trousseau Gris blend; a honeysuckle-laden Viognier; a red field blend that tastes like bitter cherries (and could withstand a chill); and an herbaceous, minty Cabernet Franc.
“Etta,” the diminutive suffix in Italian, is meant to represent “that these are our little wines, our little snapshots,” Bilbro said. Each of the four wines is named after a color – Gris, Alabaster, Rosewood and Carmine – and costs between $42-$54 per bottle.
On the surface, these wines represent a significant departure from the affordable blend that Marietta has always been known for. The Old Vine Red label has two features that would suggest to an erudite wine lover it’s not a very serious wine: It’s nonvintage – a blend of wines made in various years – and carries a “California” appellation, rather than the sub-appellations like Alexander Valley and Yorkville Highlands that grace the Single Estate and Etta wines.
Marietta Cellars owners Lisa Steinkamp and Scot Bilbro with their dog, Harry, at their new tasting room. (Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle)
Bilbro insists that Old Vine Red is much more artisanal than its price tag and appellation would suggest. Like everything Marietta makes, Old Vine Red comes entirely from estate fruit – that is, from vineyards that Marietta owns, which affords a greater degree of control over the viticulture. It’s just not advertised on the labels.
Bilbro’s father Chris founded Marietta Cellars in 1978. He made his first wines in an old cow barn in Dry Creek Valley, naming the operation after his beloved great-aunt. Initially, he bought grapes from other growers, cobbling together a blend of hearty red grape varieties like Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Syrah and Carignan. Over time, he amassed land of his own; Marietta now owns 180 acres of vineyards in Sonoma and Mendocino counties.
Three of Chris’ sons, Scot, Jake and Sam, followed him into the wine business. In 2012, Scot and Jake bought Marietta Cellars from their father. Later, they incorporated an old-vine Zinfandel vineyard, Limerick Lane, that Jake had purchased with his wife. Four years after that, Scot and Jake agreed to split the businesses: Jake would run Limerick Lane Cellars as its own entity, while Scot would assume sole control of the 30,000-case Marietta. Sam, meanwhile, founded the Italian-inspired Idlewild Wines, whose tasting room is a block away from Marietta’s new one. (Chris died in 2019.)
As Scot Bilbro and his wife, Lisa Steinkamp, made Marietta their own, they began to think about a tasting room. “Marietta’s had a following for so many decades, but there’s nowhere to go,” Steinkamp said. Occasionally, fans show up to the winery in Geyserville hoping for a tasting, despite the very obvious “not open to the public” sign out front.
Lisa Steinkamp first saw this branch in S.F. restaurant Namu Gaji in 2010. She was thrilled when she happened upon it earlier this year at the home of the artist. (Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle)
The couple knew they’d found the spot when they happened upon the downtown Healdsburg space, a former police station most recently occupied by Roadhouse Winery. (The bathroom is where the old holding cells once were.) Steinkamp, an architectural designer, set to work remodeling it. They sanded off paint on the walls to expose the bare concrete. On one wall, she reproduced an Egon Schiele painting using chalkboard paint; she’ll change the imagery over time. She populated the room with antique pieces: The bar is a kitchen island she found at a home in Ross, while the back bar is a white marble hutch from the home of Cindy Daniel, owner of Healdsburg’s now-closed restaurant Shed.
Steinkamp’s most prized addition is an imposing, winding branch suspended over the communal table. She first saw it in 2010 at the San Francisco restaurant Namu Gaji and told herself that if she ever opened a wine bar, she’d want a piece like that. Earlier this year, when she was visiting the home of artist Jeff Burwell to pick up some wood for a home renovation project, she was shocked to see the branch hanging from his home’s rafters. After Namu Gaji had closed, she learned, Burwell had taken the piece back, removing the black paint that had covered it. Steinkamp jumped at the chance to take it.
Marietta’s tasting room can seat 14 people indoors, plus another 18 outdoors at the elevated patio underneath a metal arbor. There won’t be any food to start, but Bilbro and Steinkamp plan to eventually offer something.
Bilbro hopes that the tasting room will show people another side of Marietta. “The tasting room is important for us, because these aren’t wines we’re going to put into distribution,” he said. There’s more to Marietta than Old Vine Red now.
Marietta Cellars. Tastings $35. 250 Center St., Healdsburg. 707-473-8281 or mariettacellars.com
This article originally published at Why a 47-year-old California winery’s first tasting room won’t let you try its wildly popular red.