Hops and the Kilns of Dry Creek Valley
Near Healdsburg, California
Before wine ruled these hills, one of Healdsburg's signature crops was the humble hop, the flower that gives beer its bitterness and aroma. From the late eighteen hundreds into the early twentieth century, the Dry Creek and Alexander valleys were dense with hop yards, the tall vines trained up strings on wooden trellises. To sell hops you first had to dry them, and that required a special building.
Along the valley roads farmers raised hop kilns, tall barn like structures with peaked drying towers and cupolas on top to draw off the moist air. One handsome example just south of town on Westside Road operated for decades in the early twentieth century, and still stands today, later reborn as a winery. Harvest was a whole community event, with pickers filling the fields each late summer to strip the cones by hand.
But the crop was fragile. Disease, shifting markets, and Prohibition all took their toll, and by the mid twentieth century the hop yards had faded. What survives are those distinctive kilns dotting the countryside, their pointed towers now some of the most photographed old buildings in wine country.
Every time you pass one, you are looking at the ghost of the era when Healdsburg smelled not of Cabernet, but of green hops drying in the warm valley air.
