River Belle Inn

River Belle Inn

The house at 68 Front St. was built by Adna Phelps, who moved to San Francisco shortly after completing it in 1875. The second resident was a young ambitious French winemaker named Georges de Latour, who never quite found his place in Sonoma county. Instead, he soon moved to Napa to found Beaulieu in 1900, which still brands their premium cabernet with his name.

Giuseppe Simi bought the house in 1897. By 1904, when the Simi brothers died, they were among the most successful wine makers in California, producing over half a million gallons of wine from their 400 Healdsburg acres. Four years later, when Isabelle Simi Haigh and her husband took it over, they continued to successfully manage it until Prohibition came in 1920.

While other winemakers were intimidated into pouring their finished wine into the streets, the Simi’s held onto their bottled wines for 14 years -- some say they continued making wine -- believing that someday the market would return and their holdings would prove valuable.

Simi’s success continued for decades, their tasting room a well-known tourist stop on what became Highway 101 and the wines continued to lead the way in the post-Prohibition resurgence. She became an even-more colorful and outspoken woman, wearing a signature vest decorated with political and other buttons, speaking her mind and sharing the stories of a lifetime in wine. She continued to live in the house at 68 Front St. until she passed, in 1981.

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