The Wine History Project

Some of the prettiest, and earliest, postcard views documenting the pre-Prohibition California wine industry are those published from photographs taken by Turrill & Miller. And all of them that are in my collection have been immediate and longtime favorites. I recently stumbled upon an online site of The Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco, that features the photographic work of Turrill & Miller, especially their wine country images. It’s a great story.

Including the “Beautiful California :: Wine Industry” series, there are some two dozen postcards in my California Wine Country collection that can be identified as Turrill & Miller photographic images — all are in Sonoma or Napa counties. Also, there are probably another dozen or so not bearing a Turrill & Miller imprint that could well be from their camera. The California Pioneers online video “survey” titled “An Escape to Wine Country” presents about three dozen images; it is not clear how many became postcards. There are about twice as many Napa images (29), and I have fifteen of them as known postcards. A thorough survey of the T & M photographic wine country archive (550+images) at the Society would be a valuable endeavor. In the meantime, traveling first to the Sonoma County area, here is a fine showing, with good stories.

During the 1870s and 1880s the California wine industry made a steady swing from Los Angeles to the north. The center of this burgeoning industry became San Francisco where great amounts of wine from the countryside were collected, blended, and shipped.

For the half-century of its modern life, most people have commonly referred to the magnificent, mammoth stone wine structure just north of St Helena in Napa Valley as Christian Bros Wine & Champagne Cellars. Historians readily call it by its birth name, Greystone. The years in between were busy years. Within a decade of its completion in 1889 by Bourn & Wise Wine Co, Greystone began its succession of property owners. In 1894 Charles Carpy, a Napa Valley wine pioneer and power in the industry, acquired it. When Carpy became a founding member of the giant California Wine Association that year, so did Greystone.

Toasting is one of our oldest social customs, evolving from prehistoric ritual, to royal banquets, to conviviality and friendship, to romance and love. Though the custom is ancient, the word “toast” dates back only to 17th century England, where it was used specifically to describe drinking to the ladies.

The California Wine Industry has embraced the use of postcards since their introduction in the U.S. in 1898 as an efficient, expressive tool to publicize their wines. The postcard front picture-image could be the winery itself, or the vineyard, cellar, tasting room, bottles of wine, or any other wine scene identifying a specific winery — with room on the back for a message and the address for mailing.