The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series. Six Decades of Making Wine in Mendocino County, California

The California Wine Industry Oral History Series, a project of the Regional Office of Oral History, was initiated in 1969 through the action and funding of the Wine Advisory Board, a government-owned marketing organization that ceased operations in 1975. In 1983, it was renamed The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series by donations from The Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation. The purpose of this series is to record and preserve information about the cultivation of grapes and winemaking in California, which existed only in the memories of winemakers. In some cases, their memories date back to the early years of 20th century, before the Prohibition. These memories are of particular value because the period of ban resulted in the disruption not only of the industry itself, but also of the orderly registration and retention of records of its activities. From the end of the 19th century until the abolition of the law on this industry, little has been written. There was very little information on this during the Prohibition years (1920-1933), although some commercial winemaking continued under the supervision of the Prohibition Department. The material in this series, devoted to that period, as well as the discussion of the significant development of the wine industry in subsequent years (which is still analyzed analytically in several works) will be useful to historians. Of particular value is the fact that often several people discussed the same topics and events or expressed opinions on the same ideas, each from their own point of view. The research underlying the interviews was conducted primarily at the University Libraries of Berkeley and Davis, the California State Library, and in the Wine Institute library, which in many cases made this collection of unique materials readily available for the purpose of the Regional Oral History Office and created to record autobiographical interviews with people who have made significant contributions to recent California history.