A House Rebuilt on Success of Sutter’s White Zinfandel

The 103-year-old Victorian mansion that the Swiss immigrant wine maker, John Thomann, built beside the winery he had begun in this Napa Valley town in 1874 might be called “The House That White Zinfandel Rebuilt.”

Mario Trinchero, who 40 years ago bought the then-defunct, 19th-Century Sutter Home Winery that had succeeded Thomann’s operation in moving from earthquake-damaged San Francisco in 1906, was offered the Thomann house, but couldn’t come up with the $12,000 asking price. Every penny was needed to restore and run the winery.

But, thanks to the success of Sutter Home’s White Zinfandel, which grew from production of 25,000 cases in 1980 to an expected 2.8 million cases this year, Trinchero’s son Louis was able to buy the old house in January, 1986. It has since been restored to turn-of-the-century elegance, serving both as company headquarters and part of Sutter Inn, a bed-and-breakfast operation.

Because of the explosive growth in Sutter Home’s production, the wine operation was moved in stages starting in 1984 from the historic winery building beside the mansion to a sprawling new plant on Zinfandel Lane a few miles south of town. There, a fully automated bottling line installed this year fills and packages 30 cases of 750-milliliter bottles of wine a minute during four 10-hour shifts a week. The old winery, operated by Carolina Sutter Leuenberger until Prohibition, now serves as a tasting and sales center for visitors.

Sutter Home Winery remains a family-owned enterprise, with Louis “Bob” Trinchero as president, brother Roger as vice president and sister Vera Torres as secretary treasurer.