Harold H. Price

The Book Club of California's annual keepsake series for 1955, designed and printed by Adrian Wilson, is entitled "The Vine in Early California". Each of the 12 individual keepsakes is finally printed and illustrated and includes an essay on a notable California winery or other notable wine topic. Keepsake # 6 features an essay on Buena Vista winery by Harold H. Price. Price, a debonair San Francisco lawyer, was an early and important post-prohibition wine expert in California. He was a founding member of the San Francisco Wine and Food Society, a judge at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, and a noted collector of food and wine books. His most important influence on the wine of food world, however, was likely his connection to, and influence on the renowned food writer M.F.K. Fisher. Fisher and Price met while she was working in Hollywood as a Paramount script writer. According to Fisher's biographer Joan Reardon, at his invitation she spoke about Burgundy wines in April 1943 at San Francisco's Bohemian Club. The morning after the presentation, Price and a few other members of the Wine Society took a tour of the Napa Valley wine country. This was Fisher's first visit, and she fell in love with the country, leading her to move there with her daughters in 1953 after her father's death. Fisher eventually was viewed as a wine expert in her own right, having accepted the commission to write The Story of Wine in California, at the request of the Wine Society, which was published by the University of California Press in 1962. Two decades later in 1984, she wrote the essay "Wine is Life" for the introduction to the University of California/Sotheby Book of California Wine.… (más)