Author: Gail Unzelman

When California attained statehood in 1850 and established the County of San Luis Obispo, grape growing and wine making already had been actively pursued a short few years after 1772. This is the founding date of Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, the fifth Mission of the twenty-one established in Alta California by the Franciscans between 1769 and 1823. The San Luis Obispo wine industry was born at the Mission. Today, in 2024, the celebration of grapes and wine is firmly entrenched in this premier Central Coast wine country with 35,000 acres planted to vineyards and a total of sixteen different American Viticultural Appellations and Sub-Appellations.

Around the time of our amazing postcard visit to Sutter Home Winery in 1908, St. Helena was the bustling hub of the Upper Napa Valley and its wine industry. It was 60 miles north of San Francisco, and lauded as an ideal place to live with a climate where fruits of all kinds grow in abundance.

In the late 1800s, Sonoma County made a name for itself as home to a number of Utopian colonies. Located not too far from one another, they were clustered within the great Russian River watershed that flows through the Santa Rosa plain. The 110-mile river is a vital resource in Northern California — from its headwaters in the north near Ukiah in Mendocino County, it meanders in every direction through the heart of Sonoma County’s wine country to make its way to the Sonoma Coast and the Pacific Ocean…

It all began about 1870 with a house, a mansion really, in St Helena in upper Napa Valley. It sat majestically on a hill above St. Helena’s Main Street (Rte. 29), on a 13-acre property on the outskirts of town going north; a few years later the Beringer Bros. Winery and its imposing Rhine House would become their next-door neighbors.