By: Virginie Boone

There are two public wine libraries in America. The Sonoma County Wine Library on Piper Street in downtown Healdsburg is one of them (Napa Valley Wine Library in the St. Helena Public Library is the other).

With a local history collection and access to historical records in addition to plenty of books, magazines, bottles, wine labels, maps and photos, there’s simply no better resource locally for anything related to wine, home to one of the most comprehensive collections of wine information in the world, with 6,000 books dating from 1514 to today.

The Biblioteca Vinaria Sonoma is a collection of historic books and documents that cover viticulture and winemaking, beginning with King George III’s proclamations on wine regulations, all the way to temperance operas and nursery catalogs.

Many of the books have also been digitized and are available online. Materials can be checked out by anyone with a library card from Sonoma, Lake, or Mendocino counties at any branch in those three counties.

The Wine Library Collection is supported by donations and volunteers. With a mission to preserve local history, it also accepts donated wine books and historical materials about Sonoma County wine. The library will even help answer questions about how to grow grapes or make homemade wine.

The Sonoma County Wine Library Association is holding a festive holiday gathering this Thursday, December 4, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to celebrate tradition and toast to tomorrow for anyone interested in what’s ahead. Tickets are free but should be reserved.

The association was created in 1985 as an independent non-profit to support the library, after its founding, that same year by local journalist Millie Howie. It opened its doors in 1988 and underwent a renovation last spring.

A native of San Francisco born in 1922 who worked in commercial radio during World War II, Howie, in 1950, was the first female writer-producer hired at KGO TV before founding her own public relations firm. She helped promote a “K.O. Polio” campaign for the federal government, then went on to work for S&W Foods, arranging wine tastings with fruit, developing recipes and marketing, her first foray into the wine world.

In 1971 she moved to Alexander Valley after being hired to promote Geyser Peak Winery as an in-house PR rep, when it was owned by Schlitz Brewing. She had never even sipped wine before, admitting at the time that she couldn’t tell a red wine from a white unless she could look at the glass.

One of her innovations while at Geyser Peak, according to a 1989 Press Democrat piece, was staging a monthly “Moon Walk,” a “goodwill event timed so exactly that visitors could wend their way up a hillside trail and emerge on a plateau above the winery just as the giant moon rose over the mountains across Alexander Valley and the vineyards below.” And then the group would walk back down again and have a nice dinner, “all for a small charge,” as she told the paper.

In good time, she helped create Sonoma County’s first wine map as another way to attract visitors and was a catalyst behind the Russian River Wine Road, as well as writing a column over three decades called “Wine Words” for the Healdsburg Tribune, Sonoma West Times & News, and Windsor Times.

It was in one of her columns that she wrote of the wine library: “There are scoundrels and saints, stories of plodders, and dreams of visionaries, a scoop of laughter, a lot of sweat and a good smattering of tears in the decades of wine history in California, and it is good to know that the people most intimately involved with that history are protecting the recordings of the words and deeds for future generations. Scholars, writers, scientists and just the casual and curious reader will benefit from the efforts of those… who will make the Sonoma County Wine Library a physical reality.”

Howie was honored as a “Living Treasure in Literature” by the Luther Burbank Foundation in 1993. She died in 2011 at the age of 88. Since then, the Wine Library has raised thousands of dollars for the Millie Howie Memorial Garden and Patio, a pollinator garden with outdoor seating. A demonstration vineyard of Russian River Valley grapes is a planned addition.

In 2014 the Wine Library began recording and sharing stories of Sonoma County wine industry people via its Visual Oral Histories, a series of video interviews available on YouTube. Gary Heck, Zelma Long, Lee Martinelli Sr., Mac McDonald, Jim Pedroncelli, Joel Peterson and David Stare are just a few of the many histories that can be seen. To date, it has done 89 of these histories.

This winter, make a point of visiting, or peruse the online collection at your leisure. This is an amazing treasure trove of all things wine housed right here in Sonoma County. Who knows what you might find.

Photo By: Sonoma County Wine Library