California's No. 1 sparkling wine, the finest rosé. California's No. 1 sparkling wine, the finest rosé. The Brut Rosé is a flavorful, complex, and dry wine. It goes well with a variety of meals, and is a great wine to drink as an aperitif or on its own. Schramsberg was founded about 150 years ago on the mountainside of Napa Valley by Jacob Schram. In 1965, the Daviess couple, who became owners, established the company as a producer of sparkling wines made using the Champagne method. They started with Blanc de Blancs made from Chardonnay, and have continued to produce high-quality sparkling wines that have been used many times at official dinners for successive American presidents. In 1965, Jack and Jamie Davies, parents of current president Hugh Davies, purchased Schramsberg. For many years, Schramsberg had been in ruins, but Jack and Jamie Davies decided to use this land to make a sparkling wine that America could be proud of. At that time, there were only 21 wineries in California, and the total area cultivated with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir was about 20 hectares. Sparkling wines from outside of France were merely "drinks with bubbles" and were treated as less than wine, and everyone thought that it was reckless to make high-quality sparkling wine. But Jack and Jamie didn't give up. They said they would make a domestic Champagne-style sparkling wine full of complexity and luxury. They replanted grapes in fields that had been poorly managed for decades, paid close attention to grape cultivation, and reviewed all the brewing processes, adjusting the aging period of the wine through trial and error to create the best taste. And above all, they traveled around the country to spread the name of "Schramsberg," the story that the two of them believed in. The 1965 Blanc de Blancs was the first commercially available sparkling wine to use Chardonnay. Blanc de Noirs, released in 1967, became famous as a sparkling wine made using the traditional Champagne method, mainly made from Pinot Noir. The Reserve, released next, established its reputation as a high-class sparkling wine aged for more than 48 months, and the Cremant Demi-Sec, released in 1973, was made from Flora grapes, a cross between Semillon and Gewürztraminer, and has been used many times at official dinners for American presidents. In 1972, President Nixon made a surprise visit to Beijing and served Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs from 1969 at his meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai. J. Schram, made from grapes harvested in 1987, was released in 1992, and released a wine that rivaled the Tête de Cuvées of the world's top champagne houses. As a result of Jack and Jamie's tireless efforts, Schramsberg has become a world-famous sparkling wine house. American wine critic Nathan Chroman says, "You can talk about sparkling wine from ordinary producers in a line. You can talk about the fact that a major French producer started making sparkling wine in California in a paragraph. But the impact that Jack and Jamie have had on California could take a chapter." All grapes are harvested by hand, and the wine is also made by hand. All wines are aged in the cellars on the winery's premises, and most of the remiage is done by hand by employees. The labels of the flagship wine, Jay Schram, are applied by hand. Schramsberg stocks, ages, and releases 2.7 million bottles of wine.