About the interviews

The Wine in California project is the digital home of the The California Wine Industry Oral History Series, a project of the Regional Oral History Office (the former name of the Oral History Center). It was initiated in 1969, the year noted as the bicentenary of continuous winemaking in the state. It was undertaken through the action and with the financing of the Wine Advisory Board, and under the direction of University of California faculty and staff advisors at Berkeley and Davis. 

The purpose of the series is to record and preserve information on California grape growing and winemaking that has existed only in the memories of winemakers. In some cases their recollections go back to the early years of the 20th century, before Prohibition. These recollections are of particular value because the Prohibition period saw the disruption of not only the industry itself but also the orderly recording and preservation of records of its activities. Little has been written about the industry from late in the last century until Prohibition was repealed. There is a paucity of information on the Prohibition years (1920-1933), although some winemaking did continue under supervision of the Prohibition Department. The material in this series on that period, as well as the discussion of the remarkable development of the wine industry in subsequent years (as yet treated analytically in few writings) will be of aid to historians. 

This project continues into the 2020s, and a more focused project, called Napa Valley Vintners, is ongoing as of 2026. 

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