Meet Hannah Weinberger: California's First Female Winemaker
This profile was featured in the August 2, 2023 issue of Merobebe.
Image courtesy of the St. Helena Public Library
Hannah Elizabeth Rabbe was born in Indiana in 1840, but we’re going to first talk about her future husband, John C. Weinberger, as we don’t know much about Hannah’s childhood.
J.C. had been a confectionary apprentice in Bavaria before immigrating to New York when he was around 18 years old. After moving to Cincinnati, Ohio (where he would meet Hannah) and then Indianapolis, J.C. began a fruit and nursery business while learning about wine making. After taking a trip to California and falling in love with the Napa Valley, he returned the following year to purchase a 240-acre property in St. Helena for only $3,000 from Charles and Carolina Krug (of Charles Krug Winery) in 1869. He promptly begins working on a two and a half story stone masonry winery and planting grape vines.
An 1852 sketch of the property at J.C. Weinberger Winery in Napa Valley. Image courtesy of Abe Books.
A couple of years later, he returns to Ohio to marry Hannah (who would become his second wife) and they return to Napa together to continue building the winery.
In 1876, The J.C. Weinberger Winery was finally finished and is said to be the first stone wine cellar in Napa. With 35 acres of vineyard planted by this time and additional grapes purchased from other growers, the winery produced about 50,000 gallons of wine and was also one of the first commercial producers of grape syrup! Outside of the vineyard, J.C. also gets a job as the director of the Bank of St. Helena and the couple continue growing their winery while raising their 5 children. Life was good, until…
In 1882, an employee named William J. Gau fell in love with and began making unwanted advances towards their eldest daughter, Wilhelmina (aka “Minnie”). Gau even went as far as falsely announcing that they were engaged in a San Francisco newspaper (wtf?), prompting J.C. to promptly fire the creep.
Gau became angry, and would linger around the vineyard making threats and just generally being an asshole. Finally, on March 21, an upset Gau extracted revenge by sending a fake telegram to J.C., pretending to be a friend and luring him to a nearby train station. Once J.C. arrived, Gau walked up to him and shot him twice in the head, He then turned the pistol on himself, committing suicide in front of everyone on the train and the platform.
(Holy shit. When is Netflix making a docu series about this?)
After Hannah’s husband was murdered, she not only took over the operation of the winery and vineyards, but also took her late husband’s place as a director at the Bank of St. Helena. At a time when women couldn’t vote and were discouraged from working (much less own a business), Hannah took over the winery and became the first female winemaker in California to own and operate a winery! Just like her husband, she became a pioneer in the Napa Valley wine industry and successfully grew the winery under her management.
A historic photo of J.C. Weinberger Winery in Napa Valley.
Image courtesy of The Napa Valley Wine Register
By 1889, she had increased wine production to 100,000 gallons, also producing 5,000 gallons of brandy. That same year, Hannah traveled across the Atlantic with her cabernet sauvignon to make an appearance at the World’s Fair in Paris, a prestigious wine competition featuring mostly French and other European winemakers. Hannah’s cabernet sauvignon won a silver medal, making her the only California female winemaker to do so in the wine competition! The award and publicity not only increased the reputation of her winery, but of Napa Valley wine overall.
Hannah continued to run the winery with her uncle, Colin T. McEchran, until his death in 1909, at which point her son J.C. Jr. took over as the winemaker. The mother and son duo continued the success and growth of the winery until Prohibition in 1920. At that point, she had been running the operation for 38 years.
A photo of William Cole Vineyards in Napa.
Image courtesy of The Napa Valley Wine Register
The wine pioneer herself lived to the ripe old age of 91, passing away in May of 1931. It would be another 50 years before another female winemaker became a main figure in the wine industry.
While the property passed through a few different families after Hannah’s death, it didn’t reopen as a winery until 2004 where it is now the home of William Cole Vineyards, and was then listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
Damn. What a story.