The wine industry appeared early
around Sonoma City, and the area remains an important wine producing district to this day. General Mariano Vallejo was one of the first to plant vines in the late 1830s. In 1857 Agoston Harazsthy followed with the renowned, though short lived, Buena Vista Vinicultural Society. Jacob Gundlach established the Rhine Farm with Emil Dressel in the 1870s, and later partnered with his son-in-law Carl Bundschu in 1894.

Kohler & Frohling established the important Tokay Vineyard near Glen Ellen in 1874. Names still familiar today, Korbel, Buena Vista, Gundlach-Bundschu and Italian Swiss Colony (now Cellar No. 8) established wineries in or before the 1880s, but few wineries survive operating under their original names.