In the mid-1800s, America offered new hope to three brothers seeking to escape political unrest in their European homeland. Emigrating from Czechoslovakia to the United States, brothers Francis, Anton and Joseph Korbel found success in exchange for their hard work and innovation.
F. Korbel & Bros. began as a manufacturing business in San Francisco that produced materials for the building industry. As their enterprise expanded, the brothers eventually acquired a sawmill and began a full-scale lumber operation near the town of Guerneville in Sonoma County.
The Korbels, born in the farmlands of the province of Bohemia (today’s western Czech Republic), found the remote and rugged redwood country in Sonoma County irresistible. Lured by the beauty and opportunity of the mountainous timberlands, the brothers eventually moved their families from San Francisco and settled in the Russian River Valley. As Northern California’s lumber boom slowed, the Korbels turned their attention to farming the bottomlands of their Russian River Valley ranch. Here the soil was sandy, the mornings were filled with fog from the nearby Pacific Ocean, and summer days were long with sunshine.
It would be in this valley that the Korbels’ love of the land, their unmatched enthusiasm for hard work and their spirit for enterprise would lead them to create a great American champagne.
