Panorama Of Sonoma Valley, City Of Sonoma, From The Northeast – c1900
A visitor to the Sonoma Valley in 1893 exclaimed, “If this is not Paradise, there is no such spot on earth. The beauty of the scenery, the wealth of the soil, and the perfect climate are united here.” A beautiful, rare double foldout postcard shows the little township around 1900 with tidy vineyards extending up the northern hillsides. The budding city’s vineyard acres clearly outnumbered its inhabitants, three to one. By 1892, the area population was 750, while there were 3,000 acres planted to vineyards, mainly Mission and Zinfandel, but with plots of Riesling and Semillon. Wineries dotted the landscape. During the last half of the 19th century, a number of winegrowers established their wineries near or overlooking the Sonoma Plaza. One very rare turn-of-the-century postcard led to this wine country story.
Mission San Francisco de Solano, Sonoma, Cal. – c1907
The Sonoma Mission was established at the southern end of the Valley of the Moon in 1823, the last mission to be founded in Alta California. Around it, the little Sonoma pueblo was born. During the first winter, the padres planted a twelve-acre vineyard a short distance east of the church with cuttings brought up from Mission San José in the Bay Area. This vineyard became the source of most of the vines planted in the Sonoma and Napa valleys during the 1830s and 1840s. By 1830, the fathers were making about a thousand gallons of wine annually. The mission vineyard was surrounded by a stone and tiled adobe wall, and was watered from a good spring whose water was brought down by an irrigation ditch. But after the 1835 secularization, the wall was torn down for its building materials, leaving the vines at the mercy of the free-roaming cattle. Edwin Bryant, newspaper editor and author of the classic 1848 What I Saw In California, documented the distressing condition of the historic vineyard. In 1904, almost sixty years later, newcomer Samuele Sebastiani purchased a large portion of the Mission vineyard for his new winery.
Sonoma Plaza Barracks, Built By Gen. Mariano Vallejo – 1836
The Sonoma Barracks, facing the great central plaza on the north side, across the road from the Mission on the northeast Plaza corner, were built in 1836 to house the Mexican army troops of comandante Gen. Mariano Vallejo (1807-1890). Vallejo and his squadron were sent the year before from the S.F. Presidio to keep civil peace during secularization and to lay out the town of Sonoma. Under his control, secularization in 1835 was swift. Mission lands were parceled out to his friends, family members, and himself. From then until 1846, Sonoma was the headquarters of the Northern Frontier. Construction of the two-story adobe barracks was completed in 1840, but the earnest General had begun planting vine cuttings a few years earlier, taken from the nearby Mission vineyard. In just a few years, he was making some twenty barrels of wine and brandy. In the 1850s, Vallejo remodeled the building into a working winery and expanded his winegrowing operation, which, at its peak, had more than 18,000 vines and generated an annual income of $20,000. Vallejo hired Dr. Victor Fauré, a French physician and pioneering winemaker, to manage his vineyards and wine cellar. Fauré became known for producing award-winning wines from the Vallejo vines and is often credited with discovering the potential of the Zinfandel grape as a superior winemaking variety. The vineyard and winery continued operations into the late 1870s, when his vines were attacked by phylloxera. His vineyard is now honored as the first commercial vineyard in Northern California, while Vallejo is the acknowledged father and inspiration of the commercial wine industry in the Sonoma Valley.
The Old Mission Chapel On The Plaza – c1900
This is an incredible California wine history postcard. The ex-chapel is shown being used as a wine cellar, storing over eighty wine barrels. For many years following secularization, the Mission buildings suffered a slow decline with different owners and many uses, including warehouse, hay & grain storage, and a winery. In 1881, Solomon Schocken, “one of Sonoma’s most active and successful businessmen,” bought the Mission church and outbuildings from the Catholic Church. At one point, a saloon was built up against the old Mission. One wonders if it opened into the barrel room. After the 1906 earthquake bulged the outside adobe wall of the Chapel, Schocken sold it to the California Landmarks League for eventual restoration. The Shocken Hill Quarry, which he founded in 1886, became a cornerstone of Sonoma’s economy and played a worthy role in the lives of two of our winery owners, soon to be met.
Leonido Quartaroli’s Sonoma Winery, Postmark 1906
This extremely rare 1906 postcard inspired the present quest to unearth the story of Mr. Quartaroli and his fellow wine neighbors around the Sonoma Plaza. When Italian immigrant Leonido Quartaroli (1860-1944) arrived from his native Tuscany in 1882, he was only twenty-two years of age. While his stated ambition was to own a large farm, he did not have enough money to buy land, for even then the land around Sonoma sold for $100 an acre. For his first seven years, he worked for the railway and for Solomon Schocken in his recently established quarry. Quartaroli soon became a partner with Settimo Ciucci, a fellow Tuscan arriving two years earlier, as proprietors of the Toscano Hotel on the Plaza. Over the years, Quartaroli owned considerable choice properties and became a popular Hotel Keeper around the square, proprietor of the City and El Dorado hotels, and co-proprietor of the Toscano and Swiss hotels. In late 1905, he built his unadorned, strikingly handsome quarried-stone and wooden winery on the corner of 4th Street East and Spain Street, one of several late 19th and early 20th century wineries established in town. Neighbor Samuele Sebastiani and his home and winery were across the street. Barely a year later, demand for his wines prompted Quartaroli to build “a substantial stone addition to his wine cellar.” He bought wine grapes from local vineyardists, crushed them at his winery, and proudly advertised his Claret Wines and Brandies, Pure & Unadulterated, Wholesale & Retail from the winery. Quartaroli also had several San Francisco connections, as his wife Amelia was born there in 1870. About his wines, he liked to quip, “I make only one kind of wine — good wine” … and he found a ready market for all he made at top prices.
Quartaroli Sonoma Winery Newspaper Ad – 1906
Even though the big earthquake of 1906 practically leveled Santa Rosa, only twenty miles distant, Sonoma was hardly hurt at all. Quartaroli’s new winery and nearby new family home were spared any damage. Public-spirited and a strong advocate for local improvements, he was elected a City Trustee from 1907 to 1909, during which time electricity came to his winery and much of the town, the main streets were paved, and a sewer system was installed. In 1909, he and Amelia opened their refurbished “adobe mansion,” the El Dorado Hotel, on the Plaza. In 1910, Quartaroli sold his Sonoma Winery to wealthy San Francisco businessman William Daly, who hired Quartaroli to manage the operation. Both enterprises thrived until the hardships of Prohibition hit. During the Dry years, Mr. Daly sold the winery to Samuele Sebastiani across the road. In early 1924, the Quartarolis traded their hotel for the Hollenberg Ranch off Guerneville Road in the Willowside-Olivet agricultural district northwest of Santa Rosa, and already planted to orchards and vineyards. (Many of his farming neighbors listed in the 1930 Census were familiar Sonoma Italian names.) Here he realized his life-long ambition and farmed his large ranch of some one-hundred acres for nearly twenty years until his death in 1944, at the age of eighty-four.
El Dorado Hotel, ‘Finest Hotel In The Forties,’ Built c1843 – c1910
Originally constructed c1843 as a two-story adobe home for Gen. Vallejo’s brother, Salvador, the building occupied a large portion of the west side of the Plaza. During the 1870s, it served as a winery for Camille Aguillon (1828-1906), a French immigrant who began his winemaking career in 1865. In her book, 19th-century wine writer Frona Wait recalled her 1889 visit to the “lazy old pueblo of Sonoma, the cradle of the wine industry in California,” where “Aguillon’s famous winery is stored with red and white, dry and sweet wines of the rarest type, and choice Sonoma brandy.” Aguillon did not plant a vineyard, for there was a generous supply of local wine grapes. With his death in late 1906, the largest winery in town became a wine storage facility. At this time, winemaker and hotel keeper Leonido Quartaroli purchased and remodeled the structure into his El Dorado Hotel at the corner of 1st Street West and Spain, one block from the railway depot. By 1909, the hotel was fully opened to the public, operated by Leonido and his wife Amelia, who believed in providing their guests with the best of accommodations throughout their first-class hotel. The spacious dining room, parlor, bar room, and office occupied the ground floor; upstairs were twenty-six beautifully furnished outside rooms. The hotel offered only the leading brands of wines, spirits, and cigars, and advertised “the choicest of imported goods are always on hand,” including Quartaroli’s own Epicurean Squabs, “luscious, large, fat & juicy.” Guest Rate $2 per day. (Today, the building, renovated and upgraded, is the award-winning El Dorado Hotel & Kitchen. $200 per day.)
Blue Wing Inn Hotel, First & Oldest In Sonoma, Built c1840, Postmark 1920
In 1928, eight years into Prohibition, a newspaper interview with pioneer Leonido Quartaroli recalled that the historic Blue Wing Hotel was once used as a winery. Sadly, he mused, “At that time, there were many more vineyards around Sonoma than there are now. The ancestor of the present owner of the hotel, Mr. Pinelli, came in 1887.” Italian-born Agostino Pinelli (1851-1923) was an excellent stonemason who, upon his arrival, managed the Schocken Quarry, contracted quarry work with Gen. Vallejo, and with his crew of eight to ten workers built several commercial buildings around town. The Blue Wing, one of the first hotels in Northern California, was erected c1840 by Gen. Vallejo to provide accommodations for emigrants and other travelers. Located across Spain Street from the Mission, it enjoyed a lively and persistent life into the late 1880s when most of the building became the winery and wine storage cellar of Agostino Pinelli. He later purchased the property in 1895 and continued to make wine in the building until Prohibition. In 1891, he opened the Victoria Saloon in his beautiful new Pinelli Building, built close by of local basalt “plum stone” on 1st St. East. Heroic story. When a wind-driven blaze caught Pinelli’s Spain Street wine cellar roof on fire in 1911, Pinelli helped the firemen connect their hoses to his 1000-gallon tank of wine and saved the building.
Sebastiani Winery, Sonoma, Founded 1904, Pen & Ink Artist: Sebastian Titus, c1970
Samuele Sebastiani (1874-1944), a stone mason from Tuscany, established a winery whose history of several generations has been extensive and colorful, and richly documented in books, family histories, articles, and online sites. Our wine country postcard story will share a few milestones. In 1895, winemaker Agostino Pinelli, who also managed the Schocken Quarry, brought in a number of Italian stone cutters to work the quarry, including young Sebastiani, who toiled, saved, married a local girl, and bought the old Milani Winery near the historic Sonoma Plaza in 1904. Four years later, he had built a new stone winery and began shipping wine in bulk to the east. His first shipment was 500 barrels (P.W.&S.R. 1910). His annual bulk wine production was up to 350,000 gallons when Prohibition struck. His winery was the only one in Sonoma County to continue operations through Prohibition, making sacramental and medicinal wines. The family recalled, “He used to say there were a lot of sick and a lot of holy people, you know.” By Repeal, Samuele Sebastiani was one of the most influential and richest civic leaders in town.
Sebastiani Winery, Old Sonoma Mission Vineyard, Est 1825
A modern-day view of the first vineyard planted in Northern California, looking west from near Sebastiani’s winery front door. When Sebastiani established his winery in 1904, he purchased some of the Mission Vineyard land across from his winery. Later, he obtained the remaining acreage to increase his historic vineyard to sixteen acres, today marked with a California Historic Landmark brass plaque and a wooden sign. The famed vineyard plot is primarily known for its Cabernet Sauvignon planted in 1961. With the death of patriarch Samuele Sebastiani in 1944, son August (1913-1980), famously loved for his trademark bib overalls, and his wife Sylvia purchased the winery from the estate and began an expansion of the facilities and the product line, adding new varietal wines and proprietary blends. In 1954, he began bottling and selling wine under his SS label, and by the 1960s, Sebastiani wines had realized a solid reputation for good varietal wines, mostly red, producing about 25,000 cases.
SS Wines By Sebastiani, Sonoma – c1960s
A brightly colored postcard using the restored Sonoma Mission as background invited travelers to historic Sonoma to visit the Sebastiani “sampling room and try some of the beautiful wines that made Sonoma famous.” The Sebastiani family genuinely welcomed guests to experience their winery. On display in their storage cellars were large, carved oak casks dating from 1823 and still used for aging special, rare wines. The wine boom of the 1970s brought great growth and profits to the winery, and in 1975, annual sales were up to 500,000 cases. August, recognized as a skilled and innovative winemaker, enjoyed bantering with visitors about his little family winery, not revealing, of course, that it was worth millions. The Sebastianis, from the earliest days, were community benefactors. When the combination of Prohibition and the Depression hit hard, and there wasn’t sufficient work at the winery, Samuele initiated major construction projects around the plaza and built a skating rink, hotel, and theatre. To help keep townspeople employed, Samuele put up a cannery near the rail line and canned fruits, tomatoes, and vegetables.
Tasting Room, Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery, Sonoma – c1960s
August Sebastiani died in 1980. His wife Sylvia and the third generation, Sam, Don, and Mary Ann, stepped in to run the company. Sam stayed until 1986, when he left to establish his own winery. Sebastiani grew to almost 15 million gallons before the decision to refocus and go back to operating as one of Sonoma Co’s premier quality wine producers. A 21st century multi-million dollar remodel of the Sebastiani tasting room and hospitality center was completed in 2001. Thousands of visitors have fond memories of the original tasting room, a cozy, stained-glass, and rustic sampling bar tucked into the front corner of the old stone cellar. Foley Family Wines purchased Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery in 2008, with emphasis on making the finest wines in its long history. But, sadly, in the process, it is no longer an active neighborhood family winery.
References
Sullivan, Chas. Wine in California. The Early Years. Mission Wines, 1698–1822, WTQ v.21, #1, p.57-8 (Jan 2011)
Sullivan, Chas. Companion to California Wine. 1998.
Wait, Frona E. Wines and Vines of California, 1889. 1973 reprint. California Digital Newspaper Collection. cdnc.ucr.edu
