Souvenir Post Card From Italian Swiss Winery, Asti, California, About 1960.The Italian Swiss Colony
Souvenir Post Card From Italian Swiss Winery, Asti, California, About 1960.The Italian Swiss Colony Winery with its vineyards in the northern Reaches of Sonoma County was one of the first large-scale wine producers in California. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Asti winery was said to have been the second most visited attraction, after Disneyland, in California. By current standards the wines were probably abysmal. I remember hearing as a young teenager allowed to do the tour (but not, of course, the tasting) that the company specialized in producing sacramental wines for Roman Catholics and other christian cults using actual wine for communion. My staunchly Presbyterian great-grandmother was appalled that we visited such a place and was proud her church used unfermented grape juice for the sacrament.The winery continues to operate now under the name Cellar 8 and is owned by an Australian beverage conglomerate Fosters.See: http://www.sonomauncorked.com/wine-country-wine-blog/asti-winery-reopens/ -- source link
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