Author: Gail Unzelman

Andre Tchelistcheff considered Louis M. Martini — along with Herman Wente of Livermore Valley fame, and Laurence Marshall, pioneer in bringing winegrowing to Lodi — one of the three “apostles of the modern California wine industry.” Martini was a founder of the Wine Institute in 1934, who ten years later spearheaded the Napa Valley Vintners Assn. to be hailed as “the grand old man of Napa Valley wines.” His was the first winery to install mechanical refrigeration for white wine fermentation, introduce vintage labeling and emphasize varietal winemaking. The Martini brand and its full-line palette of wines equated with excellent value, and Louis Martini Winery became one of the most famous and beloved wineries in Napa Valley.

One of California Wine Country’s most popular Pre-Prohibition promotional postcard images ever used was actually, a fakery. Almost fifty years ago, when my collecting of California wine postcards began, one of the first cards I found was a hand-colored California generic featuring the image of an unidentified mustachioed vineyard master harvesting giant clusters of grapes from a single vine.

From early on, California wineries have welcomed visitors to come and sample their wines, tour the cellars, and learn about wine, its culture, and how it is made. And perhaps buy a jug or a bottle or two to take home. Postcards showing an interior view of a winery cellar or tasting room are more rare and we acknowledge them for recording this chapter of wine country history. On our tour we will visit several historic winery tasting rooms — variously called the sample room, tasting hall, tasting bar, visitor center, reception room, or tasting lounge.

Ambitious, and determined from an early age to establish a career in the California wine trade, young Hanoverian Theodore Gier (1860-1931) sailed in 1881 from his native Germany to America. Two years later he was settled in Oakland, across the Bay from San Francisco, to become one of the most successful, and powerful, wine men in pre-Prohibition California. Gier, “of slight frame and of uncommon nervous tension” was a public-spirited and progressive citizen, a recognized business leader whose ownership interests included a bar and saloon, bank founder, real estate developer, resort owner, and city philanthropist. His huge Oakland-based wine and liquor operations, wholesale & retail, counted five locations in Oakland, along with numerous vineyards and wineries in Napa County and the Livermore Valley. In 1910 Gier incorporated as the Theodore Gier Vineyard & Wine Co., with a capitalization of two million dollars. In a few years, the company had annual sales of just over three hundred thousand gallons of wine.