Our tour begins in 1894 when almost half of California’s 200,000 acres of vineyard were producing wine grapes, yet the wine industry found itself in a difficult situation. The country was in the midst of a lingering financial depression; there was continued over-production in the vineyards and wine cellars, and the prices of grapes and a novelty such as wine were at rock bottom. California wines were being sold and delivered in the important New Orleans market for as little as ten cents a gallon, and both the winemakers and the vineyardists were in dire financial difficulties. In an earnest struggle to stabilize skidding wine prices and bring a standard of quality to the California wine industry, seven of the State’s largest and most powerful wine firms incorporated as the California Wine Association. Headquartered in San Francisco, under the brilliant leadership of financier Percy Morgan, this giant organization came to control 84% of all pre-Prohibition California wine and owned vineyards and wine cellars in every major wine-producing area of the State. At the beginning of the 20th century, the C.W.A. had $10,000,000 invested in the industry and controlled nearly eighty of the State’s largest wine facilities. This special vintage postcard tour will visit member wineries from six counties representing one of wine country’s grandest enterprises.
Geyserville Winery, Geyserville, Sonoma Co. – Built 1899
In the heart of premium winegrowing Alexander Valley north of Healdsburg, the small town of Geyserville served as the center of a sizeable dry wine industry, surrounded by extensive vineyards. Several large wineries were built in the area, the first in the 1870s, to handle the impressive annual tonnage of wine grapes. The largest Pre-Prohibition winery at Geyserville was constructed by the C.W.A. in 1899 on the southern edge of town, a sprawling facility that could readily crush “a ton of grapes a minute.” John Bosch, the business-minded manager of the Association’s Windsor plant, closer to Santa Rosa, believed there were enough vines in the area to make the investment worthwhile. Geyserville / Healdsburg growers signed a five-year contract for a guaranteed cash price of $10 to $12 a ton — bettering the $5 to $14 rate received in the previous decade. The new wooden winery, locally known as the Bosch Winery, was outfitted to simultaneously receive grapes from train cars or horse-drawn wagons. By 1905, with improvements and additions, including a new 90′ x 120′ building, the winery crushed four thousand tons of grapes, making some 600,000 gallons of wine. Later, in 1915, when the nearby Italian-Swiss Colony merged with the C.W.A., the area’s output did not warrant maintaining two giant wineries, and the Geyserville plant ceased operation. Over 300,000 gallons of excess cooperage and four 12,000-gallon wine-tank cars were shipped to the Association’s main facility at Winehaven. In 1921, the old winery was sold and dismantled to outfit a new winery for Healdsburg vintners, Scatena Bros.
Napa Valley Wine Co. Board Of Directors Meeting – 1887
A fantastic piece of very early Napa Valley historical wine ephemera. The Napa Valley Wine Co., an entity with eight Napa Valley winery members, was a founding member of the California Wine Assn. The NVWC was originally organized in 1873 by Charles Krug and several of the leading up-valley vineyardists who wanted to market their wines directly to the East Coast “in absolute purity.” Formal incorporation was filed in 1883 with major stockholders Krug, Alfred Tubbs (Hillcrest), Wm Scheffler (Edge Hill), Morris Estee (Hedgeside), James Goodman (Eshcol), J.D. Fry (Vine Cliff), J.B. Atkinson (Ewer & Atkinson), and William Lyman (El Molino), to whom this wonderful postcard is addressed. Tubbs was elected president of the Board of Directors; Emil Priber, eastern marketing director for the NVWC, was named General Manager. The winery was located in Napa City, on the east bank of the Napa River, near Charles Carpy’s Uncle Sam Wine Cellars (another C.W.A. charter member). Built in 1885, the large winery, its distillery, and wharves were strategically located on the river for a convenient shipping point for steamers and sailing vessels to transport their wines and brandies to San Francisco and beyond. Napa Valley grapes were crushed at the Association’s main facility at Greystone, and those wines not given the classification of “the best,” although still high-quality wines, were sent from Greystone to the two Napa River warehouses of the NVWC and Uncle Sam for blending and shipping. The NVWC purchased additional grapes from other valley vineyardists and neighboring counties, and gathered accolades for their Private Stock Burgundy: “good body, rich in color, full, fine bouquet, a fine wine of unusual merit.” [P.W.&S.R.,1894]
Chateau Chevalier, Spring Mountain, Near St. Helena – c1910
About four miles from St. Helena, not a half-hour climb up winding Spring Mountain Road, is located the castle-like Ch. Chevalier Winery, built in 1889 of hand-hewn stone for French-born Fortune Chevalier (1814-1899), who came to California with the gold rush. In 1860, he and partner Auguste Comte established in San Francisco F. Chevalier & Co., importers and wholesale dealers in wines and spirits. By 1889, Chevalier’s son George had become manager, and under his guidance the firm became one of the largest and most widely known in the trade. They moved their operation to a nearby five-story building — the first two floors served as the main depot with a capacity of 250,000 gallons; the third floor was used for filtering, while the two top floors handled the bottling of wines — annually processing one million gallons of wine, “all sterilized in special tanks with electric current.” Earlier, in 1884, Fortune had purchased property on the St. Helena mountain for a vineyard and wine cellar. Notably, part of the
acreage was a pioneer vineyard planted by Jacob Beringer in the late 1870s. Son George increased the vineyard acreage in 1889, and they began construction of their Ch. Chevalier winery, modeled after a French chateau near his birth home, one of the most beautiful wine cellars in America. With soft grey-blue stone, striking turrets, and stained-glass windows by Tiffany, the cellar had 50,000 gallons of redwood and oak cooperage, all surrounded by forty acres of premium wine varieties. Wine writer Frona Wait praised the winery’s worldwide reputation for pure and excellent products, reporting, “Mr. Chevalier personally superintends all operations, so that he is certain of the result. His ‘Castle’ brands of wines, claret and brandies are very superior productions.” One year after Fortune’s death in 1899, the California Wine Assn. purchased a controlling interest in Ch. Chevalier and secured a contract for the grape crop. At the same time, the San Francisco Chevalier firm signed a ten-year agreement to purchase all of their trade wines from the Association. During the 1906 earthquake, the winery suffered extensive damage and was subsequently closed. The vineyards died during Prohibition, and the great wine estate remained mainly untended until 1969, when Greg Bissonette bought the property, restored the winery, and replanted the vineyard. In 1983, four years after his purchase of Far Niente Winery at Oakville, Gil Nickel bought Ch. Chevalier; the property is now part of the Spring Mountain Vineyard estate.
George West & Son, El Pinal Winery, San Joaquin Co. – c1910
Eighty-four harvest trains loaded with grapes arrive at El Pinal Winery, one of California’s largest and most influential wine enterprises, founded by George West (1830-1899) in 1852 near the then small town of Stockton. Four railroad spurs, totaling over two miles of track, were becoming insufficient to accommodate the great inrush of grapes at the height of the vintage. Earlier, in 1858, West had produced the first commercial vintage in the county, small in quantity, but from this humble beginning, a great winery was developed. The Mission vines were replaced with choice varieties from the Bordeaux region, until some 200 acres averaging twelve tons an acre produced well-received clarets and dessert wines, sherries, ports, and brandy. By 1892, El Pinal handled forty-five hundred tons of grapes, and production totaled 750,000 gallons of wine, almost half of which were fortified. The winery’s sweet wine production was the largest in the State, and its sherry output was more than all other wineries combined. The 40′ x 100′ distillery building contained the largest continuous still in the world, converting 20,000 gallons of wine into brandy every twenty-four hours. George West, who was now established as the master of California’s fortified and sweet wine production, was a man of commanding personal appearance and one of the State’s foremost winemen, a revered leading spirit. He was appointed commissioner of the San Joaquin Viticultural District by the State Board of Viticultural Commissioners in 1880, and served for the fifteen years of the Board’s existence. West extended his winegrowing interests into Madera County, ninety miles down the highway in the southern part of the valley, to join with his cousin Thomas Minturn in forming the Sierra Vista Vineyard Company. During this period, West turned over much of the operation of El Pinal to his son Frank, and organized the firm of George West & Son to run the giant enterprise. In the following years, the company built the Lucerne Winery at Hanford and the McCall Road Winery at Selma; in 1906, Kearney Winery west of Fresno was acquired.
Shipping Grapes At El Pinal Winery. Geo. West & Son, Stockton – c1910
In 1902, three years after the death of George West, Frank West and Benjamin Kittredge reorganized the company as a partnership. General manager Kittredge, a wealthy proprietor of a New York bottling firm, was one of the country’s largest buyers of California sweet wines, whose purchases were in lots of 150,000 gallons and more, and a major investor in Geo. West & Son. Soon after their incorporation, the company joined the California Wine Assn. which expressed “great satisfaction” in securing a ten-year contract with “this important factor in the wine business.” In the next few months, the firm acquired two more county wineries. And as San Joaquin Co. grape acreage increased, the El Pinal plant matched the expansion. Another large brandy still was added in 1907, and the capacity increased to 65,000 gallons of wine per day in making brandy, an incredible 100,000 gallons. Around this time, Kittredge left the company to purchase a large estate in So. Carolina, where he transformed its large reservoir into the world-famous Cypress Gardens. George West’s cousin Thomas Minturn became General Manager of El Pinal. A serious setback was suffered in late 1909 when fire destroyed the wine cellars and 1,250,000 gallons of choice El Pinal wines, causing a loss of four hundred thousand dollars. New cellars, with a two million-gallon capacity and a large150′ x 150′ distillery building, were rushed to completion for the following year’s vintage. By 1912 Frank West could boast one of the largest wine operations in California — and one of the largest components of the C.W.A — with five million gallons of cooperage and the newest, largest continuous brandy still. The vineyard reached thirty-six thousand acres, including 11,000 in Zinfandel and 2,000 each of Carignane and Alicante Bouschet. Not to run out of superlatives, the firm also made industry headlines during the year for the first cross-country shipment ever made of wine from California to New York in railroad tank cars, six cars of 6,500 gallons each. West and the C.W.A. virtually controlled the wine industry of the Central Valley. El Pinal continued to make prize-winning wines until Prohibition, when it was closed and never reopened.
Sierra Vista Vineyard Co. Winery, Minturn, Madera County – 1906
These two possibly “unique” postcards are postmarked Sept 1, 1906, addressed to Miss C.M. Laplace (Christine), San Francisco, a twenty-three-year-old recognized artist. The cards are randomly stamped with “Sierra Vista Vineyard Co.” and “California Wine Association” markings. The sender is not identified, but let’s assume “he” was employed by the winery — and had a fascination for postcards. They are the only Sierra Vista Vineyard Co. cards ever seen, and obviously not company-issued. In 1880, George West had enjoyed a steady, successful business at his El Pinal Winery for almost thirty years when wealthy rancher and younger cousin, Thomas Minturn (1849-1904), approached him to establish a wine operation together on Minturn’s vast ranch in Madera County. Ideally situated on the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, they quickly set out a sizeable vineyard of some 1100 acres, and subsequently erected a one-million-gallon winery and a large distillery in the early ‘90s. The community of Minturn itself was essentially a company town built to support the winery and the adjacent huge livestock and grain operations. It wasn’t long before the neighboring 250-acre Sunset Vineyard and the Webster & Sargent Winery were absorbed into the company. The enterprise attracted the attention of pioneer San Francisco wine merchant, Charles Kohler, who purchased a one-third interest in the property. The Kohler & Frohling firm, the state’s largest wine distributor and a founding member of the C.W.A. in 1894, owned or held interests in wineries, distilleries, and vineyards throughout California. In 1902, the California Wine Assn. took a five-year lease on the Sierra Vista operation, based on a minimum yield of 2250 tons, at $35,000 annually.
Lemoore Winery, Italian-Swiss Colony, Lemoore, Kings Co. – 1910
Following their merger with the California Wine Association in late 1900, with infused capital and a growing demand, Italian-Swiss Colony expanded their Central Valley sweet wine holdings to operate four large facilities, in Kingsburg, Selma, Madera, and Lemoore. In 1902, they purchased land at Lemoore in Kings County and erected a large wooden, million-gallon-capacity winery and distillery on the outskirts of town. With the latest in equipment, they were able to crush three hundred tons daily. In 1903, a dozen 30,000-gallon tanks were built for an enlarged facility. Following the manner of the C.W.A., the winery contracted with local growers for their grape crops for a specific number of years (usually five) at a fixed price. Rail transport was readily available to move vast quantities of wine to markets near and far. The Colony added a large 1500-acre parcel of rich bottomland along the Kings River in 1906, and soon had set out four hundred acres in vines to bring their total to over nine hundred acres; by 1910 almost all of the acreage was in grapes. The town of Lemoore, located five miles from Hanford on the shore of Tulare Lake, then the largest body of water in Central California, was originally founded and developed in 1871 by physician Lovern Lee Moore, born in Ohio. In 1877, the railroad reached this rich agricultural land whose semi-arid climate proved ideal for growing wine grapes, table grapes, and raisins. Italian-Swiss was applauded in the local paper for their plant that produced “more than half a million gallons of the finest of wines of various kinds” while providing “a sure market for all kinds of grapes, and a certain income to the vineyardists.” [P.W.&S.R.,1910] A fire destroyed the distillery in 1918, but the remaining plant was kept active until Prohibition, when it was thereafter dismantled and offered for sale at a price of $5000.
Madera Vineyard & Wine Co. Italian-Swiss Colony, Madera – 1910
This San Joaquin Valley wine enterprise was originally established by a group of San Francisco businessmen in 1882 who planted a two-hundred-acre vineyard about twenty miles north of Fresno. They incorporated as the Madera Vineyard & Wine Co. and built a 150,000-gallon-capacity winery and distillery they named Mission Bell Winery. In 1896, in need of a production site for sweet wines, Italian-Swiss Colony purchased the 640-acre property, doubled the vineyard acreage, enlarged the winery capacity to three million gallons, and had Southern Pacific run a branch line from the plant to the town of Madera. The four-story water tower of this sprawling, wood-sided adobe winery complex was a very visible and well-known valley landmark. As a result of the Colony’s merger with the C.W.A. in late 1900, the Madera Vineyard & Wine Co. became yet another C.W.A. facility. The plant’s two
distilleries were kept running day and night to provide brandy for fortifying each season’s enormous output of sweet wines. By 1910 the vineyard had been increased to 1600 acres, and the giant winery was recognized for its production of the “finest qualities of port, sherry, muscat, angelica, and other sweet wines and brandies.” [P.W.&S.R.,1910] At the beginning of Prohibition, Krikor Arakelian, a wealthy valley produce grower, bought the property from I-S-C / C.W.A. for a reported $360,000, and following Repeal, this thrifty and astute Armenian — who became one of the most successful figures in California wine history — further expanded the vineyard, built a jumbo four million gallon winery, and began marketing his Mission Bell and Madera brand wines. The family ran the operation until 1949, when it was sold to Petri Wine Co. of San Francisco, and then back into the fold of Italian-Swiss Colony in 1953, where it flourished until 1968, when Heublein stepped in.
Italian-Swiss Colony, How Barrels Are Made, Madera – 1910
The final stop on this special winery tour features a posed view of the coopers at the Madera Winery of Italian-Swiss Colony. The postcard, extremely rare, is the only example known of winery coopers with their staves and hoops and coopering tools in various stages of crafting or repairing barrels and casks at the winery. Containers to ferment, age, hold, and store wine were constantly needed. In the 1860s, wine pioneers Agoston Haraszthy in Sonoma and Charles
Lefranc in Santa Clara independently discovered the useful qualities of redwood for large, upright tanks, which became standard in virtually all California commercial winemaking until the 1960s, when stainless steel began replacing the older cooperage. And from the earliest days of the industry, a winery’s size is often measured in gallons of cooperage capacity. This is one of the great postcards of California wine history.
References
Peninou, Ernest and Unzelman, Gail. The California Wine Association and its Member Wineries 1894– 1920. 2000. Pacific Wine & Spirit Review. Misc issues. Online.
Sullivan, Charles. Companion to California Wine. 1998.
Note: See also C.W.A. postcard articles, SLO Wine History Project Newsletter, Feb 2024 “From S.F. Earthquake to Winehaven.”; Oct 2024 “Grapes & Wine in Martinez and Alhambra Valley.”; Oct 2024 “California Wines at the P.P.I.E. 1915.”; Aug 2025 “Iconic Wine Country Postcard … ‘Borrowed’ Image’.”
Agoston Haraszthy, Buena Vista Ranch, Label. Port 1859
