During the 19th century of California wine country history, there were a handful of women running wineries, all much respected and all widows whose husbands had been winery owners, e.g. Stuart, Warfield, Hood, Weinberger. We will plan a future visit with these noted ladies and their award-winning wine careers. Our present wine country postcard story was inspired by the fascinating book, Women Winemakers. Personal Odysseys by Lucia & John Gilbert, published in 2020. Lucia is a noted scholar of women’s career pathways in male-dominated fields whose recent research focuses on the progress and prospects of women winemakers in California and internationally. Our vintage tour will feature a selection of these amazing, and esteemed, post-Prohibition wine women.
Simi Winery, Healdsburg, Sonoma Co., c1970, Built 1890
Simi has a great history, a fun history to share. In 1890, on the railroad line just north of Healdsburg, the Simi brothers from Montepulciano erected a large stone wine cellar and named it after the Tuscan winegrowing town where they were born. By the turn of the century, Giuseppe and Pietro Simi had planted over 400 acres of vines and had expanded their winery to a capacity of 3 million gallons. When the brothers died unexpectedly within weeks of each other in 1904, Giuseppe’s daughter Isabelle, born the same year the winery was built, took charge with other family members. And a grand wine legend was born. At Repeal, the Simi name was adopted for their label, and Isabelle offered bottles of 35-year-old Cabernet to taste and purchase from the tasting room she had fashioned using an old 25,000-gallon redwood tank and cracked fresh walnuts for all visitors to enjoy. Beloved Sonoma Co. wine history — including new legends Mary Ann Graf and Zelma Long. In 1970 Isabelle, now age eighty, sold Simi to Russell Green, who modernized the facility and built a new visitor center tasting room, brought in Andre Tchelistcheff as consultant, and began selling premium varietals made by his new winemaker Mary Ann Graf, the first woman to receive an enology degree from U.C. Davis (1965) and the first woman to hold a lead winemaking position in California. She would be given the prestigious California State Fair Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. When she left Simi in 1979 after six years, Zelma Long stepped in, after beginning her wine career in Napa Valley, working the 1970 harvest at Robert Mondavi Winery and then quickly working her way up to chief enologist. At Simi she was winemaker and CEO for nearly twenty years, one of the first women to run both the winemaking and business sides of a California winery. She also bonded her own Long Winery in 1978. In 2010, she was inducted into the C.I.A. Vintners Hall of Fame.
Matanzas Creek Winery, Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa, Est. 1971
In 1971, Sandra McIver founded Matanzas Creek Winery when she bought a rundown dairy farm on rural Bennett Valley Road six miles southeast of Santa Rosa, and planted a 50-acre estate vineyard with a small, ultra-premium winery in mind. The modern 150,000-gallon facility shown on the postcard, drawn by architect Hamilton, was built in 1985. McIver’s first winemaker, hired in 1977, was young Merry Edwards (1977-1984), the first woman to earn a master’s degree in Fermentation Sciences at U.C. Davis — one of three women in her class and the only one to become a winemaker. At Matanzas Creek, Edwards was soon celebrated for her Chardonnay vintages and went on to become a historied leader in the industry, and build her own namesake winery in Sebastopol. In 2013 Merry Edwards was the third woman to be inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame. In 2019, the year she retired from her long and distinguished winemaking career, she received the Wine Lifetime Achievement Award.
Corison Winery, St. Helena, Napa Valley, Est.1987, Winery Built 1999
Securing her M.S. from U.C. Davis in 1978, Cathy Corison was the winemaker at Chappellet for almost ten years before establishing her own label in 1987 and becoming the first woman winemaker-proprietor in Napa Valley — without a winery, she bought grapes, rented winery space and produced some 2,000 cases annually of her highly praised Napa Valley Cabernet. Sauvignon. In 1995, when she purchased a century-old farm in the favored benchland between Rutherford and St. Helena, there was finally an estate vineyard and a place to build the Corison Victorian-style winery barn four years later. Among her many esteemed awards and honors, in 2012 eminent wine historian Thomas Pinney included Cathy Corison as one of thirteen people “who made a difference in the history of American wine.” (The Makers of American Wine. A Record of 200 Years)
Spottswoode Vineyard Estate, St. Helena, Napa Valley, in 1909.
This unidentified postcard view of a 1909 St. Helena vineyard, called Spottswoode today, is the historic wine estate near downtown St. Helena founded in 1882 by German immigrant George Schoenwald (1843–1918), long time manager of Hotel Del Monte in Monterey. Schoenwald named his winery Esmeralda and his beautiful estate Lyndenhurst. The Novak family has owned the property since 1972. Following a U.C. Davis degree in Fermentation Sciences in 1979 and cellar work in several wineries, including Inglenook, where she was introduced to Cabernet Sauvignon, Rosemary Cakebread came into this magnificent setting. She was a highly successful winemaker of Spottswoode vintages from 1997 through 2005 and is credited with bringing Napa Valley Cabernet to prominence. In 2009, she released the first vintage of her own Cabernet label, Gallica.
Domaine Carneros Vineyard & Winery, Carneros, Napa Valley, c1990
Opening its doors in 1989, Château Domaine Carneros is a stunning regional landmark established two years earlier when Claude Taittinger of the celebrated French Champagne house selected a 138-acre parcel in the heart of the Carneros district between Napa and Sonoma. The first-class product crafted from their 400 acres of Carneros vines is referred to as a “California Sparkler.” Following her studies at U.C Davis in the 1970s, Eileen Crane was first hired by Domaine Chandon in Yountville, where she rose to the position of assistant winemaker of their sparkling wines, and then to Gloria Ferrer Champagne Caves in 1980 as winemaker and vice president. In 1987 Crane, often referred to as “America’s doyenne of Sparkling Wine,” was selected as the founding winemaker and CEO at Domaine Carneros to oversee the development of the Taittinger style in Carneros. She held this position for thirty-three years before passing the torch to a new CEO, Remi Cohen, whose role carries on the Taittinger tradition of visionary female leadership.
Firestone Vineyard Winery, Los Olivos, Santa Ynez Valley, c1978.
In 1974, Brooks Firestone, grandson of legendary tire innovator Harvey Firestone, founded the first estate winery in Santa Barbara County. Two years earlier, he had begun planting his certified sustainable vineyard of 345 acres in the Santa Ynez Valley, one of the most desirable California appellations. In 1976, Alison Green-Doran, first drawn into winemaking in 1973 as a harvest intern working next to Andre Tchelistcheff in her father’s Simi Winery vineyards, became Firestone’s first winemaker. She mastered the ladder — lab technician, bottling supervisor, cellar master, then winemaker in 1981. In 2000, she returned to the family ranch and vineyards in Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley to craft wines for a number of artisan wineries in Sonoma and Napa Valleys.
Chateau St. Jean, Valley Of The Moon, Sonoma Co., c1980
Located near the northern end of the Valley of the Moon, this beautiful winery facility sits back from the roadway, surrounded by vineyards tucked up against the Mayacamas Mountains that range between Sonoma and Napa wine country. Originally built on a 300-acre parcel in the 1920s as the Ernest Goff family residence, Chateau St. Jean was established in 1973 and named after a founder’s wife, Jean. Richard Arrowood, hired as the winemaster, produced a variety of white wines that won immediate critical applause. He went on in 1990 to produce award-winning wines at his Arrowood Winery near Glen Ellen. Margo Van Staaveren joined Chateau St. Jean in 1979 straight from U.C. Davis, became assistant winemaker in 1989, and winemaker and director of operations in 2003, her current position in 2020 for the now “large corporate winery.” In 2014, she was named one of “Top 20 Most Admired Winemakers in North America.”
PERSONAL NOTE: I am extremely grateful. Because of my intertwining wine world interests — collector of rare wine books and California winery postcards, wine historian, Wayward Tendrils Wine Book Collectors Society co-founder, John Ash & Co. restaurant, &c — I have been privileged to know several of these wonderful women. After reading Women Winemakers, I appreciate their accomplishments even more. Cheers to all!
