We bottled our first grape juice in 1980, expecting to serve
Gewürztraminer juice to our children as well as the kids accompanying their parents in Navarro's tasting room. Since we had no intentions of
selling juice, less than fifty case were bottled using excess bottles that we hadn't already used for wine, in a various range of bottle styles with a hand printed label. The first restaurant customer for our
Estate Bottled Gewürztraminer wine was Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which helped introduce Navarro to the many chefs who dine at this mecca of the local food movement. We decided to leave a bottle of Gewürz juice for their amusement. A few days later we returned to the winery, and to our amazement, Chez Panisse had already placed a large order for juice. We phoned Alice; she explained that when a group of four came into her restaurant, it was likely that one adult wasn't drinking wine.
We still make juice the same way as we did 35 years ago: squeeze fresh, top-quality wine grapes then immediately cold-filter the juice to prevent fermentation. Cold-filtering juice takes a lot of time but we didn't want to pasteurize the juice which would make it taste cooked.