Note: The article excerpted below was originally published in Napa Valley Life Magazine and can be found here.
“Each year, Napa Valley Life pauses to recognize and celebrate the area’s bounties by asking our readers to weigh in on their favorite places to eat, drink, shop, and play, and we have the privilege to present them in our annual Best of Napa Valley-Readers Choice Awards. Well, folks, the results are in! After calculating thousands of votes and write-in entries, we are pleased to share and congratulate this year’s winners in each polling category.
We hope you enjoy reading the results and take the time to congratulate the ones you know and make a point to discover the ones you don’t.”
Flora Springs Named “Best Hidden Gem Winery” in Napa Valley Life Magazine’s 2022 Best of Napa Valley Awards Readers Choice
“Founded in 1978 by John and Julie Komes and named after their free-spirited mother, Flora, Flora Springs history dates back to the late 1800s when grapes were first planted on the estate. Lauded as one of Napa Valley’s local hidden gems, the St. Helena winery and tasting room offer visitors a relaxing respite to learn some of Napa’s unique history and experience some of the region’s top-rated Cabernet, Chardonnay, single varietal, and Bordeaux blends, including their award-winning Trilogy.”
Visit Our Tasting Room in St. Helena
We welcome you to Napa Valley for wine tasting while enjoying views of flourishing vineyards and the western hillsides. Wine tastings are currently by reservation only. Space fills quickly, make your reservations today.
The label is a reproduction of a print titled “Flora Dispensing Her Favours on the Earth,” created by the artist Richard Cosway in 1807. Nat Komes came across the illustration in a book given to his grandmother, Flora Komes, many years ago. “I immediately looked up the origin of this image, which captures my grandmother’s spirit so completely,” says Nat. Moved by this timeless image and Flora’s oft heard saying, “Love the land and it will love you back,” Nat decided to use this illustration on the wine that celebrates his family’s 40 years of farming the land.
The “Flora Dispensing Her Favours on the Earth” Print Nat Found in His Grandmother Flora’s BookThe Original “Flora Dispensing Her Favours on the Earth” – Now in the Digital Collection of the New York Public Library
An excellent vintage in 2018 yielded a big, concentrated wine with forward flavors of black cherry, blueberry, and crème de cassis that coat the mouth in luscious blue/black fruit. Hints of coffee, dense dark chocolate and sandalwood emerge in this layered and complex Cabernet, and though muscular and powerful, the wine’s silky-smooth tannins keep it approachable even in its youth. Still, this wine will reward aging for the next 20 years and should be decanted if opened within the next five. This highly collectible wine is like no other, the last Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon to be sourced from Rennie Vineyard on our former St. Helena wine estate.
The 2018 Napa Valley Harvest
2018 brought a long, steady and near-ideal growing season to Napa Valley. Bud break began in late February/early March followed by an extended flowering period in May/June that yielded uniform grape clusters. The summer continued with typical warm temperatures but no significant heat spikes. Harvest was later than in recent years, accompanied by mild weather through September and October that allowed grapes to be picked at optimum ripeness and flavor. Napa winemakers agreed that 2018 was one of the least eventful and finest growing seasons they’d witnessed, yielding wines of intensity, concentration and balance.
Note: The article excerpted below was originally published in the Napa Valley Register and can be found here.
“…Ten miles northwest is the also-eccentric tasting room for Flora Springs, which emulates the cave style of Jarvis with the asymmetry and playful nature of Quixote. Right alongside Highway 29 at the gateway to St. Helena, Flora Springs certainly grabs the attention of those driving by. A striped mound-shape, the tasting room differs significantly from the surrounding bistros and minimalist exteriors.
“We wanted the building to feel like the entrance to a wine cave built into a mountainside, so we used bent plywood to give the structure its curvature and painted the outside to represent the natural geologic striations of the earth,” said founder John Komes. “The name Flora Springs combines the name of Flora Komes, my mother and our matriarch, with the natural springs that run in the western hillsides, so we wanted to capture the natural energy of the springs as well.”
Komes has a background in construction, so he wasn’t too hung up with the building process and was sure to incorporate a laid-back meeting space outside on the backside of the facility.
“Beautiful wine caves have and always will be a draw for guests to the Napa Valley, so it’s nice to be able to offer a sense of that with our tasting room, but our outdoor patio and rooftop deck have a different sensibility,” said Komes….” Read more.
Shop online and include a note that the order is for pick up
Schedule a time via our online reservation system. Please be sure to provide your order number in the notes when making your reservation. Please allow 24 hours from the time of placing your order.
Arrive at your scheduled time, park in front of the Tasting Room, and call the phone number posted out front. One of our staff members will bring your wine out to your car.
Wine Club Members, please contact Madeline Nossiter at 707-967-6724 or madeline@florasprings.com to coordinate shipments or pick up of your wines.
Our staff is onsite 10 am – 4 pm, Monday – Saturday and able to safely and conveniently fulfill your wine order. Please allow at least 24 hours for us to get your order ready for you.
During this time our entire Flora Springs family wants you to know that your well-being is our top priority. Thank you for your support of our small, family-owned winery.
Flora Springs Tasting Room:
677 S. Saint Helena Highway
Saint Helena, CA 94574
(707) 967-8032
It was the early 1990s and Flora Springs had been in business for just over ten years when I decided we needed to have a tasting room on Highway 29.
There wasn’t quite as much tourism in Napa Valley as there is now, and I wanted a place right on the highway where people could easily visit us. I bought a building – an old HVAC shop – just south of the old Dean & DeLuca gourmet grocery (now Gary’s Wine & Marketplace) in St. Helena. I cleaned it up, installed a circular bar, hired an artist to paint some wall murals, and opened up for tastings.
But business was slow. I kept hearing folks say they hadn’t “noticed” the tasting room, even people who stopped at Dean & DeLuca. I decided to do something about it. My wife, Carrie, and I had recently visited Barcelona and seen many of the buildings designed by renowned architect, Antoni Gaudí. I loved the flow and imagination of his structures, the fanciful nature of his designs.
You can guess what happened next.
When I returned to St. Helena I consulted with a local architect, and together we designed a new Tasting Room that echoes, in Gaudí-like fashion, the look and feel of a wine cave set into a mountainside. We used bent plywood to give the structure its curvature and painted the outside to represent geologic striations in the earth.
Inside we created separate tasting areas made to feel like private rooms in a wine cave, and installed a curved tasting bar with a modern bistro vibe. The rooftop, which has magnificent views of mountains and vineyards to the west, feels like a comfortable living room, a place where people can relax and enjoy a glass of wine.
Wine Tasting in Saint Helena
Thanks to my son Nat, our Tasting Room has gotten some upgrades recently, and I’m excited about the improvements. I always wanted it to be a place where people could indulge their sense of sight as well as taste and smell. Most of all, I want the Tasting Room to inspire curiosity and delight, to be the place where people come to learn more about the legacy of Flora Springs.
Note: The article excerpted below was originally published in the Napa Valley Register and can be found here.
‘I’ll tell you a story,” John Komes said. He was standing in front of a colorful painting that depicts Flora Springs Winery, which he and his family launched in 1978 in a pre-Prohibition ghost winery in St. Helena.
“We decided we wanted a painting,” he said, recounting how the family invited Cynthia Fitting, an artist living in Sacramento, to come to Flora Springs to talk about a project.
“When she was leaving, her car wouldn’t start.” Fitting flagged down an employee, just leaving the winery, to ask for a jump. Too busy, the man replied, and he hurried off to a sales meeting.
Fitting got the commission and produced the vivid, charming painting, which portrays the winery and its people…”Read more.
One of the many reasons Napa Valley is such a superb region for growing wine grapes is its incredible diversity. Although a mere 30 miles long and several miles wide, the valley is home to a wide range of microclimates and a vast array of soil types. Over the years, this diversity has led vintners and growers to create defined grape growing areas within Napa Valley. These areas, which reflect their regional designations, are called American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs.
The Napa Valley is itself an AVA having received its own designation in 1981. It is California’s first recognized AVA and the second in the United States. Over time, sixteen “nested” AVAs have been designated within the Napa Valley AVA. Flora Springs owns and farms vineyards in five of these, including the St. Helena, Rutherford, Oakville, Oak Knoll and Los Carneros AVAs.
But what about the places in between, the regions in Napa Valley that are not part of a nested AVA? If you look at a Napa Valley AVA map, you can see there are several areas that lay outside of the nested AVAs, in fact, our Kairos Vineyard, home to our Out of Sight Cabernet Sauvignon, is in one such area.
“Kairos is just south of the Stags Leap District, kind of wedged between the Stags Leap, Oak Knoll and Coombsville AVAs,” says General Manager Nat Komes. “So when we bottle the Out of Sight Cabernet, we use the Napa Valley appellation on the label. But that doesn’t have any bearing on the quality of the vineyard or wine.”
In fact, there are plenty of properties renowned for high quality grapes and wines that do not lie within a nested AVA. Examples include sites that are between the St. Helena and Howell Mountain AVAs as well as vineyards found east of Oakville in the mountainous area known as Pritchard Hill.
For now, says Nat, “The Kairos Vineyard is a perfect example of the quality that can come from areas outside the nested AVA system.” For proof, look no further than Flora Springs Out of Sight Cabernet Sauvignon.
Arrive at your scheduled time, and park in front of the tasting room and call the phone number posted out front. One of our staff members will bring your wine out to your car.
Wine Club Members, please contact Madeline Nossiter at 707-967-6724 or madeline@florasprings.com to coordinate shipments or pickup of your wines.
Our staff is onsite 10 am – 4 pm, Monday – Saturday and able to safely and conveniently fulfill your wine order. Please allow at least 24 hours for us to get your order ready for you. Thank you for supporting our small family-owned winery.
During this unusual time our entire Flora Springs family wants you to know that your well-being is our top priority. We are not able to offer wine tastings or other wine experiences right now, but are looking forward to when we can. We can’t wait to see you!
Flora Springs Tasting Room
677 S. Saint Helena Highway
Saint Helena, CA 94574
(707) 967-8032
The Komes & Garvey family would like to thank our loyal friends and neighbors by inviting all Napa County residents to join us at our tasting room in St. Helena January 11 & 12. Enjoy a 2 for 1 wine tasting and a 10% discount on purchases with a two-bottle purchase. Valid for Napa residents and one guest with proof of residency.
The modern design of our Tasting Room mimics the hillside caves and natural springs of our Estate winery, located just down the road. Here you’ll find our Vineyard Courtyard picnic area and Rooftop Lounge, both with stunning views of vineyards and western hillsides. Our Cave Rooms are available for private group tastings hosted by our friendly, informative hospitality staff. Learn more about The Room.
We look forward to seeing you!
Flora Springs Tasting Room
677 S. Saint Helena Highway
Saint Helena, CA 94574
(707) 967-8032
Note: The following article was originally written by Chris Macias and published in the San Francisco Chronicle on October 30, 2018 and can be found here.
The Napa Ghost Wineries You Can Visit
Trek around Wine Country, near its luxury hotels and fine-dining destinations, and you’ll find the remnants of wineries that date back to a time when Napa wasn’t so flush. These are vestiges of the Dark Ages for California wine. They’re known as ghost wineries, not because they’re haunted (though that’s up for debate in some cases), but because they serve as an important link between Napa’s early years as a wine region and the bustling destination it is now.
Napa Valley had a thriving wine industry in the 19th century, with more than 140 operating wineries opened by the final decade. But starting in the late 1880s, the region was hit with a triple blow that left the local wine industry reeling for decades. First, an outbreak of the lethal grapevine virus phylloxera crippled wine production for 20 years. Then the Great Depression arrived, which dovetailed with Prohibition from 1920 to 1933.
This half-century of setbacks left many California wineries in ruins. Although a few were able to stay in business by selling sacramental wine or grapes for home winemaking, the industry had withered to about three dozen by the time Prohibition was repealed. Many of the buildings remained vacant for decades, falling into ruin. Halloween notwithstanding, Napa’s ghost wineries are worth visiting any time of year. They’re scattered throughout the valley, offering a peek into a storied history and a spirit of perseverance that defines the area.
Here are a handful of the ghosts you can visit:
Flora Springs: This former home of the 1900 Rennie Brothers Winery in St. Helena, suffered a one-two punch at the turn of the 20th century. Not only were its vineyards hit by phylloxera, but a fire in its wine cellar decimated its production capabilities. After decades of inactivity, the property was purchased in the mid 1970s and renamed Flora Springs. The ghost winery has since been renovated and serves as a production facility, which visitors can see during tours of the Flora Springs estate. Flora Springs plays up its ghost winery heritage with Halloween releases including All Hallows’ Eve Cabernet Franc and Ghost Winery Malbec…
Visit Our Tasting Room in St. Helena
