Renaissance Vineyard & Winery

Our Story (from rvw.com)

Renaissance Vineyard and Winery is located in Yuba County. To the southwest lie Marysville and the Central Valley. To the east are the Gold Rush towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City.

Yuba County has a long history of wine-making.

During the Gold Rush, the wine region of Yuba became famous throughout the United States. Fortune Magazine recognized this fact in its 1933 issue describing the wine regions of the U.S. (see map). A group of French settlers, who founded nearby Frenchtown, were making Cognac-style brandy during this period. Marysville, thirty miles from Renaissance, boasted the largest winery in the state. A man named L.B. Clark had planted 50,000 vines on his 600-acre Rancho Virginia at Collins Lake, only 5 miles from Renaissance. Winemaking was very successful in North Yuba until the early 1880s, when hydraulic mining was severely restricted by law. Soon the mining population dwindled, which in turn forced many farms to be abandoned.

It would not be until the members of the Fellowship of Friends purchased its land in 1971 and created Renaissance Vineyard and Winery that this region would once again regain its world-class winemaking status.

It was not the original intent of the Fellowship members to create a vineyard and winery the original intent was to provide its membership with a retreat where they could realize their principles of self-development.

As good fortune would have it, one of Germany's most renowned winemasters expressed interest in the Fellowship's philosophy. His name was Dr. Karl Werner, and his family boasted 17 generations of winemakers. Dr. Werner was the founding winemaster at the Callaway vineyards in Temecula, California when he was introduced to the Fellowship. He came to the North Yuba retreat and immediately was struck by its winemaking possibilities. The land reminded him of his native Germany. He tasted the soil and recognized its unique terroir: the rocky red soil and the mountain climates could produce wine of distinct character, he felt, for the vines would have to struggle in this soil to survive. The Fellowship in turn embraced his vision, as it so poetically expressed their philosophy of life.

Under Dr. Werner's direction, the members worked long hours to clear the land, carve terraces, and drill 135,000 holes for the vines. Some of the terraces were so steep that the massive D-8 bulldozer toppled. Because of the climate, Dr. Werner decided to install drip irrigation to water the vines. He experimented with different grape varieties and decided to focus on three: Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, and Sauvignon Blanc.

Dr. Werner then turned his attention to the winery facility itself. He envisioned a circular concrete structure three stories high, two of them underground. The top story would house the stainless steel tanks for fermentation. The bottom levels would store the barrels for aging and the bottling room. These levels would take advantage of the coolness of the mountain granite, and gravity could serve as a natural pump, minimizing the stress of more aggressive, modern pumping systems on the wine.

Work continued on both the vineyard and the winery, and in 1979 the first grapes were harvested. That first harvest took only 20 minutes and produced one barrel of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Dr. Werner believed that Nature arrives at perfection slowly. There was no rush to market. In 1988, Renaissance Vineyard and Winery sold 5000 cases. Sales doubled in 1989 and then again in 1990.

When Dr. Werner's health began to decline in 1984, his wife, Diana, who had a viticultural degree and had worked at his side from the beginning, assumed increasingly more responsibility for daily operations. With Dr. Werner's death in 1988, just a few months before the first cases were sold commercially, Mrs. Werner assumed full responsibility as winemaker.

The emphasis during these early years was on luscious German-style dessert white and blockbuster red wines with an ability to age between 20 and 50 years. It soon became apparent, however, that the Renaissance terroir (pronounced "terr-whar") was suited more to red wine, and that German winemaking techniques, which is suited more to white wines, did not lend themselves to the type of Cabernet Sauvignon that Renaissance was producing.

Again, good fortune smiled. In the early 1990s a French-Israeli arrived to guide Renaissance Vineyard and Winery to the next level of world-class winemaking.

ur next winemaker, Gideon Beinstock first arrived at Renaissance in the 1970s and helped to plant the vineyard. During the 1980s he roamed the vineyards of France, exploring their wines and wineries. He built friendships with a number of winemakers in Burgundy and the Rhone Valley, and was particularly influenced by such wine experts as Steven Spurrier (Academie du Vin, Paris, 1980/81) and Maggie McNie, MW (Masters of Wine Program, London 1989). With his half-French heritage, Gideon's first love was definitely French wines. He began to write articles about wines and conduct classes. He returned to Renaissance in the early 1990s where he gained hands-on experience as assistant winemaker under Diana Werner.


When he became winemaker in January 1994, Gideon brought a radical change to our winemaking art: he "finished" the 1991 Cabernet Sauvignon, blending Renaissance's traditionally pure varietal Cabernet Sauvignon with 4 percent Merlot and 1.5% Sauvignon Blanc. The result was a gold medal at the 1995 VINEXPO and a great deal of critical praise. Wine author and columnist, Matt Kramer, proclaimed this 1991 Renaissance Cabernet Sauvignon as "one of its best--intense, filled with a blackcurrant scent and superbly balanced" and further described it as "stunning and long-lived." It was this wine that prompted him to call Renaissance "California's best-kept Cabernet secret."


Originally, the Renaissance winemaking style was highly extracted, thick, very tannic, designed for long aging in the bottle. Gideon's "hands off" style of winemaking was based on minimal manipulation: gentle extraction, no inoculations, no fining or filtration doing everything in our power to highlight the expression of the terroir in the wine.


Starting in 1994 Gideon conducted a series of experiments with additional grape varieties in the vineyards, searching for the best microclimate, soil, and varietal combination. This program opened new horizons for our use of blends as a winemaking tool (for example, Cabernet Sauvignon with Cabernet Franc and Merlot), and lead to the creation of a whole range of exciting new wines, such as Syrah, Grenache,Viognier and Roussanne.


Compared to the single varietal approach, which German winemaking exemplifies, blending a few varietals to maximize the expression of the soil and "sense of place" is a key element in the French winemaking tradition. Gideon, who trained as an artist, described his winemaking art: "Just as a painter mixes different colors to capture the essence of light, I work with a palette of different grapes to achieve compositions that capture the essence of our vineyard".

Gideon was quick to point out that truly understanding the terroir is a slow process. "To really learn, it will take generations. In time, people will gradually decipher the mysteries and true potential of every fold of land in our vineyard and know what grape or blend does best where".

Looking to the Future


What unites all the Renaissance wines from the early years under the founding winemaker to the present is the unique terroir, the taste of the spare, red soil and the multiplicity of microclimates that emerge in every vintages. Many of the wines that have been produced from this new era of winemaking, however, have yet to be released to the public. Although Renaissance Vineyard and Winery has fulfilled this land's destiny, the winemaking possibilities are endless. Each new wine is, in itself, a sleeping beauty waiting to awaken in your glass.