Amerine (Maynard) Wine Label Collection
Owning Institution: UC Davis, University Library, Special Collections
About this Collection
Includes labels from domestic and foreign wines and spirits. Most labels date between 1874-1969, though some date as late as 1992. In 1935, Amerine was hired by the fledgling University of California, Davis’ newly formed Department of Viticulture and Enology to help establish a solid technical foundation for the California wine industry. As he traveled California and the world, educating and counseling winemakers on how to improve the quality of their wines, he collected over 5,000 wine labels. These labels tell the story of the growing wine industry during a pivotal time. The majority of the labels are from the 1930s and ’40s, but the collection spans nearly one hundred years, from the late 1800s to the 1960s. Many of the labels in Amerine’s collection are from bottles he enjoyed at San Francisco’s Bohemian Club, and others were individual gifts, sometimes from private cellars. The collection is representative of the wines he preferred and had access to, and thus is heavy in California wines as well as an Amerine favorite — French wines. Amerine pasted the labels into black spiral-bound notebooks, organized by region (usually country), divided into red or white, and in some cases further divided into sub-regions or ‘appellations.’ Some of the labels are annotated by Amerine, who gave the wine a letter grade or specified when, where and with whom the bottle might have been drunk. View this collection on the contributor's website.View collection guide.
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