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.