She's one of Napa Valley's most famous winemakers. After 30 years, she's finally opening her own tasting room
Heidi Barrett, one of Napa Valley's most famous winemakers, has opened a tasting room for her personal wine brand, La Sirena, more than 30 years after its debut. (Giselle Garza Lerma/S.F. Chronicle)
Heidi Barrett, one of Napa Valley's most influential winemakers, has opened a tasting room for her personal brand - more than three decades after it debuted.
Barrett, 69, played a significant role in the rise of some of the region's revered cult Cabernet brands in the 1990s, including Screaming Eagle, Dalla Valle Vineyards and Grace Family Vineyards. She's one of the most sought-after winemakers in California, but her own label, La Sirena, has received notably less acclaim than her client's wines.
"It's been flying a little too under the radar," Barrett said.
Barrett launched La Sirena in 1995 when a client suddenly couldn't use a Sangiovese she made due to a conflict-of-interest situation. The client was going to sell the wine on the bulk market, but Barrett got a loan and purchased it for herself. It was ready to be bottled, so she had just a month to come up with a name and branding, and order all of the materials, such as glass, corks and labels.
La Sirena's flagship wine is a Cabernet, but it also sells less traditional Napa bottlings, such as Moscato. (Giselle Garza Lerma/S.F. Chronicle)
Barrett has spent more than 10 years looking for a tasting room for La Sirena, deeming every other option too big, too expensive or both. Last year, she toured the industrial, barn-like space at 810 Foothill Blvd. in Calistoga - the city she's called home since 1989 - and purchased the building and its accompanying winery in August. She's running the brand and tasting room with the help of her two daughters, Chelsea and Remi Barrett, La Sirena's associate winemaker and director of sales and marketing, respectively. "This came up and it was like, ‘Wow, this is the one I've been waiting for," Barrett said.
Barrett recently scaled back her client work to just a handful of wineries in order to focus on opening the tasting room, which she said is turning into something of a post-retirement career. "To do this now seems crazy at this age, but I have the next generation in the wings and poised to (take over)," she said, referring to her daughters and three granddaughters. "It's a big dream in the making for many, many years."
Located off Hwy 29 and a few blocks from the gateway to downtown Calistoga, the ocean-themed La Sirena (Barrett is an avid scuba diver) rounds out a walkable corridor of quirky Napa Valley tasting rooms offering more than the region's signature Cabernet. Next to La Sirena is Rivers-Marie, the coastal Pinot Noir and Chardonnay brand from Thomas Rivers Brown, another famed Napa winemaking consultant. Then there's Lola Wines, best known for its fresh, esoteric white wines, like Malvasia Bianca and Fiano, and the renegade Tank Garage Winery, beloved by millennials and Gen-Z for its one-off, offbeat blends with irreverent names.
Barrett built her career on rich, layered and ultra-premium Cabernet that sells for hundreds of dollars a bottle. Unsurprisingly, a $185 Cabernet sourced from her home vineyard is La Sirena's flagship wine. But on the whole, La Sirena isn't the stereotypically serious Napa Cabernet brand. It's playful, starting with the blue mermaid on its label (La Sirena translates to "the mermaid"), and functions as a creative outlet for Barrett. "We do have delicious Cab. It's what I'm known for," she said. "But I've been trying to make wine really approachable for people, make consumers more confident about their choices and appeal to more than just the serious Cab collector."
The tasting bar is tiled in La Sirena's signature blue, inspired by Majorelle Blue, a mix of cobalt and ultramarine trademarked by French painter Jacques Majorelle in the 1920s. (Giselle Garza Lerma/S.F. Chronicle)
One of La Sirena's best-sellers, for example, is something most Napa producers wouldn't dare attempt, given the stereotype that it is cheap and sugary sweet: Moscato, sold in a bright blue bottle. But La Sirena's, priced at $34, is crisp, aromatic, fruity and dry.
There's also Pirate TreasuRed, a one-of-a-kind blend of seven different grape varieties: Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Grenache, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Petite Sirah. "It took me a while to make all of that play well together and be delicious," Barrett said, noting that the name was inspired by the popular phrase, "The treasure of the seven seas."
The tasting room, which opened this month, doubles as an art gallery. Barrett's grandmother was a professional artist, and she's been painting for more than 35 years. The interior is a light-filled canvas that displays her interpretations of landscapes, vegetables, flowers and wine bottles. Visitors can purchase both originals and reproductions. "I jokingly say, ‘If the wine thing doesn't work out, I'll just paint," Barrett said.
The sea motif is threaded throughout the tasting room. An enormous light-up mermaid sign hangs on the top of the exterior, beckoning tourists to pull over. Water is poured from an octopus carafe. The winery's door handles are seahorses, and the bathrooms, marked with mermaid and pirate signage, each feature a large mermaid mural inside, painted by Barrett.
La Sirena's mermaid logo is rendered into an enormous light-up sign on the front of the Calistoga tasting room. (Giselle Garza Lerma/S.F. Chronicle)
The only color outside of Barrett's paintings is accents of La Sirena's signature blue, which is inspired by Majorelle Blue, a mix of cobalt and ultramarine trademarked by French painter Jacques Majorelle in the 1920s for his Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, Morocco. It's in the tiling on the bar and covers the doors to the small on-site winery and barrel room. Barrett attempted to recreate the exact shade, taking a Moroccan blue pot to the paint store, but it couldn't replicate it. The only match she found was in artist paint, which wasn't sold in buckets. So the door was painstakingly painted "tube by tube," she said. "I'd go to Michael's and clean them out."
Outside of the tasting room, a row of teal swings, which Barrett said "came to me in a dream," dangle under the wisteria-covered trellis. Inside, there's bar and table seating, and an upstairs loft can host a group of up to 12 people. A small back patio sits steps from a vineyard and feels deceptively far from the cars driving past the front. Tasting flights range from $25 to $100 and walk-ins are welcome.
Describing the eclectic space, Remi Barrett said, "It's like Ariel's grotto in ‘The Little Mermaid.'"
La Sirena. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday. Walk-ins available. 810 Foothill Blvd., Calistoga. lasirenawine.com
