From early on, California wineries have welcomed visitors to come and sample their wines, tour the cellars, and learn about wine, its culture, and how it is made. And perhaps buy a jug or a bottle or two to take home. Postcards showing an interior view of a winery cellar or tasting room are more rare and we acknowledge them for recording this chapter of wine country history. On our tour, we will visit several historic winery tasting rooms — variously called the sample room, tasting hall, tasting bar, visitor center, reception room, or tasting lounge. Among cherished wine tasting stories, but lacking a postcard image, is the historic Anton Nichelini place on the mountainous road to Chiles Valley (Napa Co.), who planted his vineyard in 1884 and added his stone winery in 1890. When visited in the late 1960s, his tasting room was outside the winery under the trees and a giant ancient log wine press, on a dirt pad. At Louis Martini Winery in St. Helena, we were welcomed through a small door into the old wooden winery lined with giant redwood vats. Just inside the door there was a thick redwood plank laid across two barrels, open wine bottles gathered on top of several barrels behind, from which we were invited to taste whatever we wanted. Louis Martini behind the bar. He came to Napa Valley in the 1930s from Kingsburg. On the other side of St. Helena, pioneer Charles Krug Winery takes credit for having the first designated tasting room, established in 1882 as a part of the historic Redwood Cellar. [website] In the early 1970s, we visited the winery, and the tasting room was set up in a spiffy railcar parked on the old railroad siding. In 1949, bon vivant Francis Gould came on board at Krug to found their Public Relations program and begin his long, beloved tenure as director. One more short story, from up around Geyserville in Sonoma County in the 1960s, before we begin our postcard tour. Next to Highway 101 was Frank Nervo’s small Nervo Winery, founded in 1908, and famous after Repeal for his fine country jug wines. His tasting room was a very small square “house” of local stone, probably left over from building his winery. He himself tended the bar, passing out tiny plastic tasting cups to sip his signature Old Vines Zinfandel. Today, Nervo’s stone winery is the visitor center for Geyser Peak Winery. If still standing, the little stone house tasting room is retired.
Inglenook Winery: The Captain’s Room, Napa Valley – c1960
Millionaire Finnish sea Captain Gustave Nieman (1842–1908) had made his fortune early in the Alaska fur trade when he purchased the Inglenook property and 1000 adjoining acres by 1881, and soon planted his vineyard to premium varieties brought from France. In 1886, he began construction on his massive, stately winery, which included the Captain’s Room, a wine sampling room — just inside the winery front door, to the right — designed by Niebaum after the wardroom of a ship, including the railings on the shelves and special cupboards. Furnishings are antique and rich, 17th-century Dutch stained glass windows, heavy German carved chairs made in 1810, 15th-century casks and steins of many sizes … and other Old-World treasures collected by Niebaum during his earlier sea-faring days. In this setting, Niebaum sampled his wines with friends, wine merchants, and similar honored guests. During the days pre-Prohibition, the winery annually set aside a reserve stock of 25,000 gallons of red and white wine for aging. Visitors were encouraged to sample from these wines “to feel what joy the product of the noble vine brings into human life.” [P.W.S.R. 1913] Niebaum’s winery sampling room is the earliest and oldest preserved on a postcard. There are “tons” more vintage Inglenook postcards waiting to tell their story. We will visit them on an upcoming tour.
Grey Stone Winery: Wine Vaults, St. Helena – 1906
From its beginning in 1889, magnificent Greystone was advertised as the “largest wine cellar in the world,” and demanded attention. Constructed just north of St. Helena by Bourn & Wise from large blocks of local cut stone, an imposing three-story structure with a storage capacity of four million gallons, all oak cooperage. Inside the ground-floor entrance was “the office, handsomely paneled in antique oak and luxuriously furnished; the sample room is paneled in mahogany.” [StHelenaStar1894] Over the decades, local and national postcard publishers have issued a bountiful crop of Greystone postcard views. Our photo postcard is the only interior view of the wine tunnels so far seen, issued locally a few years after the California Wine Assn. acquired the winery in 1894. A postcard view, or any other view, of the sample room has yet to be seen. But there are numerous early Greystone postcards whose messages tell us wonderful snippets of tasting pre-Prohibition wine at Greystone, like our postcard of the wine vaults: “This gives you some idea of the size of these wine cellars.” Surely the visitor had toured the impressive cellars with their endless 200-foot-long tunnel rows of large casks, and chose this postcard to send home. Another early Greystone visitor boasts, “Have been to one of the wineries & sampled some.” One 1905 postcard showing Greystone’s arched entryway remembers: “This is where you hit the grape. Gotten over the effects yet?”
Christian Bros. Winery: Visitor Lounge, St. Helena – c1960
Following their purchase in 1931 of the Theo. Gier Vineyards & Winery on Mt. Veeder in Napa Valley, the Christian Brothers acquired in 1950 the historic Greystone Winery. Their popular “visitor lounge” and handsome tasting bar were constructed five years later inside the winery entrance, using the original old oak paneling. Tours of the winery were also begun at this time. The room connects to one of the several ageing tunnels lined with giant oaken casks (as seen in our previous postcard). Tourist traffic in Napa Valley in the late ‘50s was noticeably light, maybe a dozen people a day during the week, a few more on the weekend. Steadily, the visitor count grew until, in the 1960s and ‘70s, over 100,000 people visited the paneled tasting room and toured the noble Greystone wine cellars every year. Fast forward through two decades of Christian Brothers as a hallmark for quality wines, to 1993, when the landmark Greystone-Christian Bros. winery was sold to be home to the Culinary Institute of America–Greystone. [With thanks to Carl Wehr, who developed the Christian Bros. visitor lounge, tours, and retail sales in 1956, and his detailed memoir, Twenty Years at the Helm: A Story of Greystone, c1980.]
Italian Swiss Colony: Original Wine Sampling Room, Asti. – 1936
In my mind, during its lifetime, Italian-Swiss-Colony at Asti was the “King of Hospitality.” When Andrea Sbarboro developed the concept and founded I-S-C and Asti village in 1880, it became his personal mission to let the world know about this beautiful wine country and the superior wines it produced. He employed private Asti railcars to bring guests, including American dignitaries, politicians, and captains of industry up from San Francisco for weekend picnic feasts under the stretching grape arbor behind his Villa Pompeii country home, and drink I-S-C wines. From the early 1900s, several hundreds of colorful postcards have chronicled the wonders of the winery at Asti. Soon after Repeal Italian-Swiss-Colony was one of the first wineries to open a public tasting room, a small room next to their laboratory. By 1936, the number of visitors required a formal tasting bar (seen above), and before the end of the year, some ten thousand people were visiting the wine sampling room each year. The war years slowed the stream of visitors, but by the mid-fifties the tasting room-hospitality center was hosting almost 200,000 visitors a year who consumed over 4,000 gallons of wine. In 1960 “The Little Old Winemaker, Me!” was introduced to millions of television viewers. The Little Old Winemaker became one of America’s most beloved characters, and a wine tasting host would often play the part at Asti to the greatest delight of all: “The samples are very nice and we saw the Little Old Winemaker!”
Visitors Sample The Fine Wines of I-S-C, Asti. – 1960s
By 1962, over 250,000 people were visiting I-S-C winery each year — an estimated ten percent of the cars traveling on scenic Highway 101 turned into the winery driveway. After a conducted tour of the historic winery, including being atop the world’s largest underground wine vat built in the 1890s, visitors enjoyed the traditional hospitality of the picturesque Tasting Room, where they could relax, sample fine wines, and send home free postcards of I-S-C. By the 1960s, two spacious tasting rooms were available, staffed by at least a dozen employees dressed in their age-old Italian – Swiss wear, while over three thousand postcards were mailed on-the-house daily from the Asti post office. In our postcard, to the right, you can see a gentleman standing at the postcard counter, with a rack of postcards above to choose from, writing a card: “Going through this winery in a few minutes…They give free samples here.” Another happy visitor wrote: “Whoopie! Here we are in the sample room!”
Napa & Sonoma Wine Company: Tunnel Tasting Room, Sonoma – c1930s
The Napa & Sonoma Wine Company was originally founded in 1896 by Emil Priber, with his cellars in San Francisco. Priber had arrived in the city from his native Germany in 1870 and soon embarked on a lengthy and prominent career in the wine industry, becoming a Napa Valley vineyardist and one of the original stockholders in 1883 of the Napa Valley Wine Company. In 1890, he was appointed to the California Board of State Viticultural Commissioners as Commissioner for the Napa District. His Pre-Prohibition company was recognized as one of the better wine merchants, doing much of their own blending and bottling. Following Repeal, the company was purchased by Paul Rossigneaux, from a long line of Burgundian vintners; he moved the operation to Haraszthy’s old tunnel cellars just east of the town of Sonoma. On the back of this postcard, Rossigneaux “Cordially invites you to visit the historic cellars built in 1864 by Colonel Agoston Haraszthy … and enjoy the unusual and picturesque tunnel tasting room, where you may sample such fine California wines as Green Castler (dry, light, fresh white table wine), Rubio (soft, velvety, full-bodied red table wine), and Pink Castler (light, crisp, delicate, charming pink table wine).”
Buena Vista Winery: In the Underground Tasting Room, Sonoma – 1954
Following its famous historical founding in 1857 by Agoston Haraszthy, we fast-forward to 1906 when the great earthquake caved in much of the winery and some of the storage tunnels. Except for the Napa & Sonoma Wine Co. operation early post-Repeal, a dormant period in its history remained until 1943, when career newsman Frank Bartholomew acquired the estate and restored the winery facility and much of the former vineyards. During the next twenty-five years Buena Vista made prize-winning wines and by the late 1960s had enlarged their tasting facility into the old winery. Our vintage 1954 postcard and its message recall a fantastic sample of Buena Vista sampling room lore: “Here we are in Sonoma. Al took us over to the winery that he has charge of. That is Al pouring the gal a drink. His is the oldest winery in Calif & has quite a history.” In the 1950s, Mike Bertolucci was manager of the winery, so probably Al was in charge of the Tasting Room. A fun, and special, postcard that is rarely seen postmarked, let alone with a message connected to the winery visit, and this specific tasting room scene. Today Buena Vista owner Boisset Collection has converted the original Haraszthy Cellars into a tasting experience surrounded by history.
Sebastiani Vineyards: Tasting Room, Sonoma – c1970
Samuele Sebastiani (1874–1944), a stone mason from Tuscany, came to California in 1895, worked the quarries, and saved to buy an old winery building near historic Sonoma Plaza in 1904. Four years later, he had a new winery of local stone and began shipping wine in bulk to the east. He continued to prosper, even during the Dry years, when he made sacramental and medicinal wines while shipping large quantities of grapes out of state. By the 1930s, he was one of the most influential and richest civic leaders in town. Following his death, son August, famously loved for his bib overalls, took over the winery and some 300 acres of vineyards around Sonoma, including the next-door Sonoma Mission vineyard planted in 1823 by the padres. The Sebastiani family genuinely welcomed visitors to their winery to taste their wines. Our 1970s postcard recalls the rustic, welcoming tasting room located along one side of the old stone winery, highlighted by a beautiful, locally crafted stained glass window. On a tour through the historic aging cellars, visitors walked amongst the largest collection of hand-carved wine casks in America, the work of renowned master-carver Earle Brown, who lived nearby. A later visitor wrote home: “On the door of this winery and all over inside are carvings made by an 83-year-old man. One barrel here holds 95,000 gallons. At a bottle a day, it would take 800 years to empty it.” Fifty years later, Sebastiani offers a fancied-up tasting room with various-priced, reserved sit-down tastings — as is the norm in 2025. Pleasantly, walk-ins are welcome at the tasting bar.
Paul Masson Champagne Cellars: Visitors’ Gallery Overlooking … 200 Oak And Redwood Vats – 1960
First-generation Paul Masson, called a great Californian, gentleman, and winegrower, created his “Pride of California” Masson Champagne house in the late 1890s. (You can read his postcard story, “…From Historic Hilltop to the Vast Valley Floor” in the November 2024 SLO Newsletter.) Almost twenty years after the death of the Burgundian Champagne master, the second generation, Paul Masson Champagne Cellars & Visitor Center, was founded in 1959 by a giant corporation as the most modern in the U.S. If we can crown Italian-Swiss-Colony at Asti the “King of Hospitality” in the wine world, we can proudly name Paul Masson the “Crown Prince.” The distinctive, beautifully designed, massive, and innovative structure was built to attract and welcome visitors to tour and taste while some 216 million gallons of wine were being finished and bottled annually. This outstanding Ansel Adams photo postcard shows the cleverly developed cat-walk for visitors to tour the facility, including views of the wine cellar, blending, finishing and bottling rooms, and the Champagne ageing and processing room. At the end of the self-guided tour, visitors were warmly welcomed into the Tasting Hall to sample the wines.
Paul Masson Cellars: Visitors Sample Wines In Beautiful Tasting Hall, Saratoga – c1960s
Often, as many as sixteen or seventeen different wines, including Champagnes, were offered from the long sampling bar (running along the left side of the postcard). Hanging on the wall behind the tasting bar are attractive lighted glass cabinets that prominently displayed many Paul Masson award-winning bottles and their ribbons — a beautiful decorative history of the wines. Visitors also noticed the airy, relaxed table & chairs atmosphere. Not just any table and chairs, the chairs were carefully chosen, designed by Harry Bertoia, the Italian-born American artist and “metal worker ahead of his time.” He said of his polished-steel mid-century-modern mesh chairs, “If you look at these chairs, they are mainly made of air, like sculpture. Space passes right through them.” Today Bertoia’s chairs, highly sought after by furniture afficionados, are quite valuable finds. A toast to taste, and tasting! Unfortunately for everyone, except a new freeway, this remarkable house of wine was demolished in 1990.
San Martin Winery: World Famous Tasting Bar, Near Gilroy, Santa Clara Co – c1960
Shortly after the 1900 boom in new vineyards in the southern Santa Clara Valley, a group of San Jose businessmen planted a 200-acre vineyard some six miles north of Gilroy in the San Martin Tract, which was incorporated as San Martin Wine Company in 1908. They made mostly bulk wines to compete with the nearby giant California Wine Association’s Las Animas Winery, established in 1905. In 1933, Bruno Filice bought San Martin Winery, and with his family developed it into a famous visitor attraction on Highway 101. They built a massive tasting room in 1958, with a remarkable interior — decorated with a big “Bonded Winery No.81” sign, old wine barrels, wicker-covered demijohns, and straw-covered Chianti bottles, enhanced with large, hanging salamis and cheese wheels in the corner 1892. Old Wine Cellar. The Filice approach was “be all things to all wine drinkers.” He had earlier brought Guasti Winery’s bulk Champagne-making equipment to his facility, knowing there was a ready market for sparkling wine. Ten percent of the winery’s production went through the tasting room, and when they expanded their vineyard holdings in 1960, they increased the winery capacity to almost two million gallons. By the end of the decade or early ‘70s, the tasting room offered almost fifty different wine products, and thousands of travelers stopped in. The winery introduced Pink Champagne, and visitors wrote home about the famous Malvasia Bianca, slightly sweet. My cherished three tasting room postcards purchased in the 1960s were 25¢ each. The Filice family sold out in 1973, and a succession of changes and unsuccessful owners led to its closing in 1991, and the building was eventually torn down. Wine Fact: In the 1930s, when Bruno Filice acquired San Martin Winery, there were over twenty small country wineries in the Gilroy area, every one run by Italian-Americans.
Sylvester Dusi Winery: Wine Room, Paso Robles, Built 1950
Located on the same scenic Highway 101 as Italian-Swiss-Colony at Asti in Sonoma Co. wine country, but some 260 miles to the south in Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo Co., patriarch Sylvester Dusi (1883–1964) arrived in America in 1910, and planted his vineyard in 1926 on ninety acres along the Salinas River Bench, purchased a year earlier. The vines, an Italian field blend of primarily Zinfandel with Alicante Bouchet for color and some Carignane, are head-pruned and dry-farmed in the Old-World style. Five Dusi generations have worked this historic vineyard, growing grapes that became known as among the best Zinfandels in California. Primarily grape growers of premium grapes, the Dusi family ventured into winemaking for almost a decade from the mid-fifties to 1963-‘64. Under the giant oak behind the family home, they built a simple cinder-block “Wine Room” in 1950. Here, the family openly welcomed travelers and locals alike to taste the vintages and purchase the popular jugs of Sylvester Dusi wines in half or full gallons. The family fondly remembers the soldiers who came often from Camp Roberts, the National Guard post about 15 miles north, to spend the day, socialize, enjoy Dusi wines, and buy jugs for their soldier friends back at the base. The tasting room was also popular with European visitors, tasting the wine from the grape vines that surrounded them, and of course, late in the afternoon, the Italians came by after a day at the local cattle auctions. With its cellar-cool temperature, the Wine Room has often done double-duty as a familiar gathering spot for family and friends on warm Sunday afternoons, always with ample chilled wine at hand. In 2013, Janell Dusi, great-granddaughter of Sylvester, established her own winery and beautiful tasting room a few miles away on Highway 46 West. [Dusi images courtesy Cindy Lambert, Curator, SLO Wine History Project. See the “Dusi Family Story” by Libbie Agran in the SLO Wine History Project Newsletter.]
