One afternoon in the fall of 1853, three German musicians–Charles Kohler,

John Frohling, and John Beutler–enjoyed a picnic together on the ocean-side promontory above Seal Rocks in San Francisco, where the legendary Cliff House now stands. Admiring the perfect cluster of fresh grapes Kohler had brought to the feast, Beutler, who had grown up in German wine country, was immediately inspired, and at that moment convinced Kohler and Frohling that they should go

into the wine business. Beutler insisted that a country that could produce

such fine fruit was destined to become a great wine-growing region.

Sadly, Beutler was forced to abandon his friends and California the following spring,

due to his wife's illness. But Kohler and Frohling persevered, scouring the state

for a suitable place to start their new enterprise. In the spring of 1854,

Frohling found what they were looking for.

"I have bought a vineyard," he wrote Kohler from Los Angeles,

"Send me four thousand dollars."

That fall Kohler & Frohling Pioneer Wine House crushed its first grapes and put up its first cask. By the time Prohibition closed the company's doors, Kohler & Frohling was the most famous winery in America, and the most

famous American winery in the world.