Our Story

The Onastis tribe—also known as the “Wappo”—inhabited this region for some 10,000 years prior to the arrival of Spanish and Mexican explorers and missionaries in 1823. In the ensuing years, military aggression and the ravages of European disease drove off the majority of the native population.

Edward Turner Bale, an English doctor of questionable character and skills, received an 18,000-acre Mexican land grant covering this part of the Napa Valley and gave it the macabre name “Rancho Carne Humana.” Bale died shortly after the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, leaving his Mexican widow to battle the American court system to hold onto a few parcels for her daughters. Homesteaders settled on the remaining land.

A homesteader named A.H. Gibbons sold his 122-acre tract to Charles Scheggia, a Swiss-born saloon owner and wine merchant in San Francisco. Scheggia cut terraces, planted Zinfandel and Riesling vines, and built a winery from stone quarried on the property.

A fire destroyed the winery and phylloxera was ravaging the Napa Valley’s vines. So Scheggia began selling the property’s precious rhyolite stone, a sought-after construction material. The stone—like that shown here, in the old winery entrance—was likely quarried by Chinese laborers. These workers were poorly treated and subject to discriminatory laws in the Napa Valley, but made a massive mark on the region. They are thought to have built this estate’s signature stone terraces and dug an impressive half-mile-long water pipeline.

Emile Werle, another San Francisco saloon owner, acquired the property as a payoff for a sizable bar debt. The timing was propitious for Werle, who closed his Market Street tavern at the start of Prohibition. Calling upon skills he had learned in the wine business back in his homeland of Alsace, he planted hearty grape varieties that could withstand train travel, and shipped fruit to home winemakers, earning a nice profit.

For four decades, the Werle family would use the property as a hunting camp (as seen in this 1949 photo) while farming Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon vines with oxen and mules. In 1960, they would turn their attention to earning more income off the ranch, reestablishing quarry operations and also planting a Christmas tree farm.

Wayne Hogue, a director at Caymus Vineyards, learned that Caymus founder Charlie Wagner had been quietly buying outstanding Zinfandel from the Werle ranch since the 1950s. Hogue bought a 21-acre vineyard parcel from the Werles and planted it to cuttings from his friend Dick Grace. In 1985, after years of selling fruit, Hogue launched an estate label, The Terraces.

Scouting for vineyard property, the Crull family stumbled upon the old Werle ranch. It was a run-down, overgrown 88-acre property with dilapidated buildings, but the old vines, the stone terraces, and the unusual soil type indicated its potential. They purchased it and set to work, replanting vine rows with help from Beringer Vineyards, selling fruit, and eventually releasing wines under the Quarry Vineyards label.

The Crulls purchased Wayne Hogue’s vineyard plot, reuniting the pieces of the original Werle ranch, and expanding their burgeoning winemaking efforts under The Terraces label. They restored the old stone winery on the property two years later.

For more than 140 years, The Terraces has been continuously growing high-quality wine grapes. The Terraces label, now more than 35 years old, continues a tradition of winemaking on the property that dates back to 1881.