Musing: Vintage Festival grows back to its roots

It was announced this month that the 125th Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival, set for fall of 2022, will be produced by the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers Alliance. The nonprofit Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival will close operations and turn its assets over to the vintners this year, following an abbreviated one-day festival tentatively set for Saturday, Oct. 9.

It is a natural evolution from its earlier roots. Our first-ever wine grape harvest celebration, the oldest festival of its kind in California, was celebrated here on Oct. 11, 1897 at Rhine Farm by the founders of what is today Gundlach-Bundschu Winery. It was a celebration of the vintage produced by Sonoma’s earliest winemakers. But phylloxera, prohibition and the Great Depression and World War II, devastated our wine industry. There was no good cause for celebration for several decades.

But in 1947 the festival was revived by community leaders who saw it as a celebration of the Valley’s place in California history, including the birth of our state’s wine industry. It has been an annual last weekend of September event in our Plaza ever since.

Although local vintners, like the Sebastiani and Bundschu, were involved in that revival and served on some of the committees in those early years in the 1950s, the festival was based more on local history than wine. There was no vintners alliance at the time. The festival nonprofit was operated by small group of volunteers, most of whom were not involved in the wine industry.

Nevertheless, it was a popular event and a big deal for a great part of the 20th century, enthusiastically supported by local businesses, our Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce and merchants association. The parade, the pageant and many Plaza events were well-attended.

In 1971, I’d only been back from Vietnam and out of the Navy a little more than a year when I was recruited by Sonoma Police Chief Gene Cartwright to join the Vintage Festival committee. Gene was vice president of the festival board at the time. I asked why there was almost no vintage in our vintage festival. His answer was to put me in charge of resolving that question.

Up to then, the vintners had declined to participate due to the fact that the harvest was still underway. I thought we could get them to attend an evening wine-tasting event if it helped them promote their wines. The idea was approved by the Vintage Festival board, which set the Friday night of Vintage Festival weekend for a wine tasting event. They decided to make it a fundraiser for the festival and secured permission from the state to hold the party at Vallejo’s Home.

My job was to go to each winery and convince them to introduce their wine and pour it at the event. Today, that would be a huge task; in 1971 not so much. There were only six working wineries in the Valley: Buena Vista, Sebastiani, Kenwood, Valley of the Moon, Zellerbach (Hanzel Winery today) and ZD (Zepponi-Deleuze).

I went directly to the owner of each. None of them would agree to attend the patrons party and pour wine. They all said they were too busy with the harvest.

I managed to persuade them to donate several cases of their wine to the party if I could find people to pour it. They agreed but added the requirement that I personally pick up each case (they didn’t have anyone to deliver it) and put their brochures on the table where the wine would be served.

Fortunately, I had lots of friends who willingly volunteered to pour the wine.

So, when the first-ever Vintage Festival Patrons Wine Tasting event was held that year, every operating winery in the Valley at the time, except Zellerbach, was represented by Sonoma volunteer wine-servers staged at tables, one for each winery.

From that first patrons party through 2018, the event grew from wines from five vintners poured by volunteers to many dozens poured by winery representatives themselves. The patrons party became a highlight of our local festival.

Starting next fall, it appears that the Vintage Festival will have come full circle from its 19th century beginnings.

The vintage will have come all the way back to our Vintage Festival.