Commissioned by the Goodman Brothers in 1886, Trefethen’s historic winery was built in a grove of towering oak trees at the center of Eshcol Ranch, directly across the street from the Oak Knoll train station. Designed and built by Captain Hamden McIntyre, who also built Inglenook, Far Niente, Greystone, Beaulieu, Chateau Montelena, Frog’s Leap, and many others, the historic winery is his greatest work in wood. Immensely framed by stout rectangular posts of Douglas fir and clad in tongue-in-groove redwood siding, the original structure was built so solidly that a visiting writer said that the mezzanine level on the second floor “could have supported the weight of a small locomotive.”

It also presented McIntyre with a unique challenge. Like many of his cellars, it was built as a gravity-flow winery, where grapes were crushed on the third floor, fermented on the second, and aged on the first, utilizing the gentle force of gravity to move from one stage to the next. Unlike his other gravity-flow structures, however, the Eshcol winery was not built into a hill, which would have allowed easy access to the top floor. Instead, considering the valley floor location, Hamden rigged up an ingenious elevator system to raise the grapes up to the top floor, powered by a horse-drawn winch.

It worked beautifully. An article in the Napa Register in 1886 described Eshcol as a “model farm” and the first wines made there helped to establish Napa’s early reputation for quality. At the landmark 1888 California State Viticultural Convention, both Eshcol’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauterne wines won first prizes. And at the 1889 Paris Exhibition, in the shadow of the stunning new Eiffel Tower, Eschol wines collected over half of the awards at the wine competition! In 1889, Eshcol was amongst the wines that moved early wine writer and journalist Frona Wait to name Napa “The Banner Wine-Making County” which had come to “lead the State in table wines.”