The sleeping beauty winery (2025)

By SASHA PAULSEN
Register Features Editor

This is a ghost winery with a ghost. Its strange and lurid pastincludes a murder and a stint as a perlite factory.

It’s also a winery with a future thanks to a couple who happenedupon it by chance, fell in love and pursued the absent ownerdiligently until he sold it to them. If all goes as planned, Leslieand Richard Mansfield will soon be embarking on a restoration ofthe Franco-Swiss Cellar to its century-old glory, and once again itwill be turning out wine.

There are ghost wineries scattered throughout the valley —relics of the thriving wine industry that was shut down byProhibition — but in the last few decades most have been reclaimedand restored, some as houses, some incorporated into new wineries.The 1876 Franco-Swiss winery, which in its heyday produced 100,000cases of wine, had been overlooked, passed by. Perhaps it’s thelocation in the hidden Conn Valley beyond Howell Mountain, a remoteplace where time could easily have slowed down or even stopped.Sitting near the road, amid oaks and fields, the old winery, atfirst glance, appears to be hardly more than a crumbling pile ofold stones sitting next to a battered barn, a skeleton of abuilding, a home for bats and owls.

Nonetheless it caught the attention of the Mansfields when theyfirst arrived in the valley.

Richard Mansfield is a winemaker trained in Oregon and Germany,and Leslie Mansfield, is a graduate of the Ecole Ritz Escoffier andthe Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and author of 18 cookbooks,including “The Lewis and Clark Cookbook, Historic Recipes from theCorps of Discovery and Jefferson’s America.” They married in 1995and moved to Napa Valley where he became a consulting winemaker,while making his own wines under the Mansfield Winery label in aSt. Helena custom crush facility.

On a recent afternoon, while pouring her husband’s outstandingwines — a riesling, viognier, chardonnay, merlot and cabernet —Leslie Mansfield recounted the story of how they found and finallyacquired the Franco-Swiss Callar.

“We’ve been trying to get it for 13 years,” Mansfield said. Thatwould be since they first saw it.

“We were exploring all the roads to get to know the valley,” shesaid. “We came around a corner and there it was. I knew it wasit.”

Across the road from the winery building was an equally old andrundown house.

“We’re not rich people,” said Mansfield, “but we decided wewanted this place.”

Tracing its history, the Mansfields learned that theonce-thriving winery had subsequently been converted into a perlitefactory, converting the volcanic material found nearby into thestuff that turns up in potted plants. The former manager of thefactory had bought the building from the owner, and lived somewherein south San Francisco.

“I just kept writing to him,” Mansfield said. “Just, ‘Hi, howare you doing?’ We sent him wines.”

Ten years ago, she said, the owner sent her the key to thehouse. “Then we worked out the financial details.”

The house, which had been lived in by renters and thensquatters, “was full of bugs and bats” but they set about restoringit, and transformed it back into a elegant living space that housesa fascinating collection of memorabilia from world travels in Asia,Europe and Africa — including the years Leslie spent in SouthKorea, where she worked as a freelance apparel designer forNike.

Meanwhile, they kept up correspondance about the winery,researched the history and worriedly watched time and the weathercontinue to take its toll. “Every year when it rained, more stonesfell down,” Mansfield said. “Last year, a corner fell down, and itbroke my heart.”

Three months ago, they were finally able to buy the winery,which was named by Napa County Landmarks as one of the valley’smost threatened treasures.

Enter the architect

To embark on the restoration, the Mansfields turned to architectJulianna Inman, a member of the Napa City Council who specializesin restorations of historic buildings, and whose local projectshave included the venerable Victorian that is her own home inname.

“It’s a major effort,” said Inman as she toured the building, astone shell that houses the rusting equipment from its time as aperlite factory. Timbers have been cut away, and the grout betweenthe massive hewn stones crumbles at a touch. What’s left of theroof is largely holes, and at one end is the rickety patched-onstructure that was the factory. “One of the first problems will besecuring the building enough to work safely on the premises.”

Right now Inman and the Mansfields are embarking on thepermiting stage of the restoration — they’ll need a variance torestore it as a working winery because it stands on a small parcel— but they are hopeful the county government folks will recognizethe historic value of the project.

“The cultural landscape is one of things about it that’sintact,” Inman said.

“You could be going back 100 years when you are here,” Mansfieldagreed.

The ghost

As for the ghost of the Franco-Swiss winery, it’s a tale besttold with a glass of Mansfield wine — the riesling is one to seekout, but for murders and ghosts, perhaps the cab is the bestpairing.

It was linked to a murder. The St. Helena Star Dec. 1, 1882,headline describing the event reads: “Louis Murback shoots JulesMillet Sunday at Franco-Swiss Cellar with Fatal Effect.”

The article goes on to describe how, Millet, 32, the nephew of“G. Crochet, one of the proprietors of the cellar,” had recentlyarrived in the valley from France and was living in the winery.When R. E. Wood, a landscape photographer, arrived to take picturesof the winery, Louis Murback, a “vineyard and cellar laborer” stoleseveral of his photographic plates. Discovered, Murbach wasthrashed and fired, but given severance pay, which he subsequentlyspent in San Francisco on liquor and a gun. He returned to thewinery, he knocked on the winery door, and announced he was goingto shoot someone so “it might as well be you” to Millet. Milletdied of the gunshots, and Murbach was tried and hanged. A hundredyears later, an uneasy ghost was still rumored to be roamingthrough the ruins of the winery.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Leslie Mansfield said, “but Richardoften sensed something that made the hairs on the back of his neckstand up. I felt nothing.”

Then one day when guests were visiting, and they went on a nighttour of the winery, and one of the visitors boldly called, “JulesMillet, if you are still here, knock.”

Late, alone in the house, Mansfield said, she not only heard aknocking, but explosions — and she found all the flashlights they’dused to explore the winery had exploded.

Intrigued she asked a psychic to examine the flashlights and thewoman reported “she felt a lot of anger” around them. Mansfieldrecounted the story to another visitor, a Catholic priest, who,with another, performed burial rites at the winery.

Since then, Mansfield said, there have been no signs of ghosts.But once the now-sleeping winery is restored, no doubt it mayreturn to enjoy a glass of wine.

For more information about the Mansfield wines and the project,visit www.mansfieldwinery.com.