Korbel’s beer project and the brewer it hired.

Russian River Brewing Company did not begin as an independent brewery. The company says it was founded by Korbel Champagne Cellars in Guerneville, California, in 1997, and Sonoma County Tourism’s listing likewise describes it as founded as part of Guerneville’s Korbel Champagne Cellars that year. English Wikipedia says the sparkling-wine house had decided to try its hand at brewing beer and hired brewer Vinnie Cilurzo as brewmaster; the company’s own history adds that he was, at first, its only employee.

Cilurzo had brewed in Southern California before Korbel. English Wikipedia says he was head brewer at Blind Pig Brewing Company in Temecula and credits him with inventing the Double India Pale Ale, also called Imperial IPA, while he was there. At Korbel he started the two lines that would come to define the brand. The company says Pliny the Elder, first brewed at the Korbel location in 1999, was one of the first commercially brewed double or imperial IPAs in America, and that it is still the brewery’s most popular beer. Wikipedia, citing the company, says that Brettanomyces, the wild yeast Cilurzo most admired in Belgian lambic beers, was first used with local wine barrels in 1999 to make sour beers.

The turning point came six years in. According to the company, in 2003 Korbel decided to get out of the beer business and transferred the rights to the Russian River Brewing Company name, all of its beer names and its recipes to Vinnie Cilurzo and his wife, Natalie Cilurzo; Sonoma County Tourism’s listing also says the brewery passed to the couple in 2003. The Cilurzos wrote a business plan, found two managing partners and persuaded about 30 friends and family members to invest, the company says, and in April 2004 they opened a brewpub in downtown Santa Rosa under their own ownership. Over the following years, the company says, the couple bought out all of their partners and investors, and Wikipedia lists the two of them as the owners.

Roman names, “-tion” ales and a February queue.

The brewery’s beer names work as a naming system. Its best-known pair takes the names of two Roman writers: English Wikipedia notes that Pliny the Younger, the beer, is named after the Roman author Pliny the Younger. Many of the Belgian-inspired ales carry single words ending in “-tion”; Wikipedia’s list of the range includes Damnation, Redemption, Temptation and Supplication. The company says all of its barrel-aged beers contain Brettanomyces. One name records a dispute settled by brewing: Wikipedia says Collaboration Not Litigation was brewed with Avery Brewing Company after both breweries had made a beer called Salvation.

Pliny the Younger became the brand’s most visible event. Sonoma Magazine wrote in early 2017 that Cilurzo first brewed it in 2005 and that at the time it was the first triple IPA; English Wikipedia, citing the San Francisco Chronicle, says it was introduced as a winter companion to Pliny the Elder. The magazine described a release traditionally held on the first Friday in February and running for two weeks, with the beer then served only on draught at the Santa Rosa brewpub, and with each guest allowed three hours inside and three glasses. It told visitors to expect long lines from early morning, sometimes starting the night before.

The format has changed since. Wikipedia, citing the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, says the beer was sold in 510 ml bottles for the first time in 2020 at the pubs. In 2021 the pandemic moved the release online, and in 2022 it was pushed back to March, when it was offered in bottles and on tap at both locations, Wikipedia says, citing the North Bay Business Journal.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Trappist, lambic and craft brewers: Rochefort, Westvleteren, La Trappe, Cantillon, Boon, 3 Fonteinen and Russian River Brewing Company. Beer brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from breweries run inside monastic communities to family businesses that still carry a founder’s name and companies that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single beer can be poured everywhere from a village café to a city bar.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its brewing or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its beer is actually brewed and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the brewery says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the brewery’s own word.

From a downtown brewpub to a Windsor brewery.

The second site came later. The company says the decision to build a new brewery in Sonoma County was made in 2014 and that the search for land took nearly two years, ending with 15 undeveloped acres in Windsor, just north of Santa Rosa. English Wikipedia, citing the Press Democrat, says the Windsor Planning Commission approved the brewery, pub and restaurant in 2017. The company says the new brewpub opened on 11 October 2018, and Brookston Beer Bulletin reported the grand opening that day. The company describes an 85,000-square-foot building that houses production of both its clean beers and its sour barrel-aged beers, along with a brewpub, a beer garden and tours, while the original downtown Santa Rosa pub continues to serve small-batch beers.

Both sites are in Sonoma County, and the company describes small-batch brewing in Santa Rosa and production brewing in Windsor. In September 2014, while the production brewhouse was being replaced, Brookston Beer Bulletin reported that Firestone Walker would brew Pliny the Elder for draught distribution only, and Wikipedia cites the Press Democrat describing the shift as temporary. The brewery’s name is also the name of a river and of a wine-growing area in Sonoma County, both of which are separate from the company.

For a design guide, Russian River Brewing Company shows how a naming system — Roman names for its double and triple IPAs, “-tion” words for the Belgian-inspired ones — can carry a brand through a change of owner and a move from one town to two. Compare the Belgian-style brewery of Maine’s Allagash and the Oregon brewpub of Deschutes. For this guide we use hop green, cellar pine and barrel oak with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Russian River Brewing Company’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.