Franciscan friar Junípero Serra planted that first vineyard at Mission San Diego, using vines carried up from Mexico. The variety took hold so thoroughly that it became known simply as the Mission grape, and it stayed the dominant grape in California vineyards until around 1880. The wine served a practical purpose at first, supplying sacramental wine for Catholic mass, and vineyards spread up the coast as more missions were founded.
Everything changed after 1848, when gold turned up at Sutter’s Mill and roughly 300,000 people flooded into California within a few years. San Francisco alone grew from about 1,000 residents to 25,000 in a single year. That kind of population boom created a huge demand for wine, and commercial vineyards spread through Napa, Sonoma, El Dorado and Sutter counties, regions still known for wine today.
Hungarian immigrant Agoston Haraszthy founded Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma in 1857, one of the state’s first commercial operations, and by 1900 California wine was shipping as far as England and Australia.
The 18th Amendment ended that momentum in 1919. Prohibition all but shut down commercial wine production, and by the time it was repealed in 1933, output had dropped 94% from where it stood in 1919. Of the more than 2,500 wineries operating before Prohibition, fewer than 100 made it to repeal.
Recovery came slowly and with some awkward timing. California vintners formed the Wine Institute in 1934 and the Wine Advisory Board in 1938 to rebuild the industry’s image and get more Americans drinking wine, and then World War II broke out. The board leaned into it anyway, running ads that framed a glass of wine as good for wartime morale and a way to stretch rationed meat into a decent dinner.
National Wine Week launched in 1939 as an annual promotional push, and once the war ended the campaign shifted its aim to young suburban couples setting up their first households, the exact audience the postwar ads on this page were built to reach.
That groundwork paid off decades later. In 1976, California wines beat top-tier French Bordeaux and Burgundy in a blind tasting in Paris that came to be known as the Judgment of Paris, an upset that stunned the wine world and ended any lingering idea that California wine was a cheap stand-in for European imports.
UC Davis had spent the years in between building a serious viticulture and enology program, training the winemakers who helped get the state’s wine to that point. Today California produces roughly 80% of all wine made in the United States, a dominance that traces straight back to those Gold Rush-era vineyards.
Here we’ve collected photos and ads capturing California wine mid-rebuild, from a 1943 wartime pitch about stretching ration points to a 1958 Almaden ad selling chilled rosé as the easiest wine in the world.
Spark up mealtimes with California wines! (1956)
Today, do this: Have a glass of California Sherry as you relax before the meal… or a Burgundy, Sauterne or Rose, in your cooking and on your table… or a California Port after your meal… and you’ve got the easy recipe for good living — just pour, sip and enjoy!
California’s versatile, economical wines are for all America, anytime… Let wine spark up your mealtime, every day.
Vintage California Port Wine ad from 1949
Port Wine! Costs so little… adds so much.
Serve rich full-bodied Port wine is an old and honored way of saying “welcome.” And nowadays Port is being served in more and more homes — more and more often.
For Port wine fits so well into today’s way of living. lt adds so much to the warmth and friendship you want when folks come visiting. And since it costs only a few cents a glass to serve, Port wine helps you entertain smartly and all keep within your budget.
Port is one of the great wines of California — the wines favored by seven out of eight American families. The cool coastal hillsides and the warm valleys of California give ideal soil and climate to over 125 famous wine-grape vintners.
The Wines of California ad (1955)
Something exciting happens to brighten the flavor of food when you add good, sound California Wines to your recipes, and when you serve California Wines regularly on your table.
Enjoy the one you like best, without waiting for special occasions or bothering about the formalities of what wines to serve with certain foods… Never worry about special glassware, either.
And with all the pleasure California Wines give in your home, you will be delighted to find they are so very reasonable in cost — just a few cents a glass.
California Wine — friendly as a New Year’s call (1940s)
Wine is made for the moderate, relaxing occasions we all need nowadays.
As often as you can these days, drop in on your friends, or ask neighbors over to your house. Share some talk and a bit of food with them. Ease up.
It’s one of the better ways, you’ll find, to keep up good morale and good cheer. With many people, wine is a favorite when gathering together this way. Because over good food and wine everyone can relax in moderation, and enjoy himself.
That’s what wine is made for — to help bring out friendship. And nothing is easier than to serve wine in your home.
Next time friends drop in, bring on this fragrant, full-bodied Port wine. It’s good with fruitcake, sandwiches, or cheese sticks — and equally good served this easy way are Sherry and Muscatel. With dinner or luncheon, or course, you’ll prefer a lighter table wine like the hearty red Burgundy or the golden delicate-flavored Sauterne.
Fun with wine – Almaden wines (1958)
Appetizing, refresing, crisp and cold…
Dry Sherry, especially Almaden Solera Cocktail Sherry, belongs in the refrigerator. Even your staunch Martini drinkers will go for it if it’s iced. Made by the slow Spanish process, solera-blended, aged in small oak butts, very pale, bone dry.
Easy does it… and easy is good.
About the easiest wine in the world, and easily one of the most popular, is Almaden Grenache Rose. The hardest thing about it is the name — say Atmo-dén Gren-ash Rose-A. Pink and fresh and charming, easy to serve (just chill and pour) it’s ONE wine that goes with everything.
Little party or big occasion…
Nothing is ever quite as festive as Champagne. For the gay evening, the big moment, Almaden Brut. Many experts call it this country’s best.
Made in California’s Santa Clara foothills by the traditional French process — the méthode champenoise.
Wine changes war dishes into “food for kings” (1943)
The day’s tension seems to ease off when folks we’re fond of come to dinner. Over food and friendly talk, we can’t help relaxing… the very sharing of good food refreshes us.
You’ll find you need to use but few ration points to turn out wartime dishes your friends enjoy, for out of the emergency of war have come many excellent low-ration-point recipes.
Each of these main dishes boasts a special touch from wine used in the cooking. Note, too, each dish is served with moderate glasses of the same wine the recipe calls for… that’s for good cheer.
Wine lends a hand to wartime cooks (1943)
Good cheer is a weapon, too! And perhaps the best of all places to build cheer is at your own dinner table, sharing food with your friends.
So invite people to your house often. There are many grand-eating main dishes that will keep a watchful eye on your ration points. Nourishing war dishes that rake on extra delicacy of flavor when a little wine is used in the cooking!
You not only make these dishes with wine, you serve the same good wine at table. An ages-old custom for building morale, it’s hard to improve upon today.
