Vintage Wine Bottles
This California Wine bottle Collection has been procured and brought together over many years. There are more than 500 examples; this historical assemblage is a “see it in your hand” history of the California wine bottle from the California Gold Rush through Prohibition and into the period of the resurgence of wine in America in the 1960’s. It includes bottles of many wineries, wine associations, distributors and wine merchants. The “early” bottles outside of the California domain are from the late part of the 18th century to the mid 1870s. Bottles were part of the marketing of wine and their artistic and utilitarian endeavor speaks for each one by way of whether it is a seal or slug, embossed or a labeled bottle. A bottle can be differentiated by whether it is free blown, blown into a mold, how many parts to the mold there are, what type of pontil scar it might have on its bottom or whether the bottles base is smooth. How was the bottle manufactured? Does it have an applied or tooled top? How was it finished and identified. Bottles are complex! Enjoy the tour and buy history.