Contra Costa Wine Group History

In 1975, the Wednesday edition of the Contra Costa Times featured a Food and Wine Column and included an invitation to learn how to make wine. The classes were scheduled on three Wednesday evenings in August at the Pleasant Hill Library . Steve Cisler, librarian at the Pleasant Hill Library, was instrumental in promoting the classes and was the instructor for the fifteen wine enthusiasts. The first session covered the principles of winemaking, the second and third evenings the making of red and white wines. A challenge for home winemakers is finding grape sources as farmers are reluctant to sell small volumes to them. As part of the class, Steve Cisler arranged for three grape sources during the September and October harvest of 1975. Barbera grapes came from Dr. Al Lippincott's vineyard in Pleasant Hill, Shirley Eichar sourced Riesling white grapes from Sonoma, and Richard Shoun's vineyard on the Napa Silverado trail was the source for the Cabernet Sauvignon Grapes. Ingenuity and perserverance were at work as the new winemakers searched for de-stemming, crushing and pressing opportunities for their newly acquired fruit. They chose champagne yeast for inoculation. It would be a few years before UC Davis offered evening and Saturday classes relating to the principles of sterilization, fermentation and clarification. In the interim, the upcoming vintners experimented with citric, lactic and malic acid. Home winemakers continued their experimentation exercises with test kits or lab samples, a decade or so before hydrometers were the norm. The Contra Costa Wine Group Bylaws were approved in 1976, officers were elected terming on a cursh-to-crush cycle and ten issues of the Contra Costa Grapevine Newsletter were published from harvest to harvest. On a Sunday afternoon in July, 1976, Steve Cisler invited the "1975" class of winemakers to bring a sample of their wine to his residence for a tasting and sharing of stories on their winemaking journey. From this sharing, the budding of the Contra Costa Wine Group (CCWG) was formed and the first wine tasting and potluck was held in Benicia on January 15, 1977. CCWG became a thriving and educational realtiy.
A special thanks to Carolyn Schick, a founding member of CCWG. for saving and sharing this history.
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