San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition

Founded in 1983 as the Cloverdale Citrus Fair Wine Competition, the event has evolved over the years, broadening its base to a greater number of wine regions. In 2000, the Cloverdale Citrus Fair entered into a title naming sponsorship agreement with the San Francisco Chronicle with the wine competition. The wine competition was renamed the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition with the award tasting of the medal winning wines to take place in San Francisco. In 2006 over 900 United States wineries entered a record breaking 3,318 wine entries for the competition from wine regions throughout America. The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition is the largest wine competition of American wines in the world.Established in 1892, the Cloverdale Citrus Fair is one of the oldest municipal fairs in California. It takes place every President’s Day weekend, giving it the distinction of being the first fair of the calendar year. The Cloverdale Citrus Fair is located in California’s Sonoma County Alexander Valley, named after a prominent grape growing pioneer, Cyrus Alexander.In 1982, two wine industry insiders sat down over a glass of zinfandel and laid plans for the first Cloverdale Citrus Fair Wine Competition the following year. At that time, Cloverdale Citrus Fair board members Bob Del Sarto which was currently the general manager of the historical Italian Swiss Colony winery in Asti, California and Bob Bogner (general manager of one of the largest grape grower cooperatives of that day, Allied Grape Growers) conceived the competition to fulfill the needs of the burgeoning wine industry in northern Sonoma and southern Mendocino Counties.Del Sarto and Bogner considered Cloverdale to be the hub of some historical but growing wine regions of that immediate area which included the northern area of Sonoma County (primarily Alexander and Dry Creek Valley’s), Mendocino County (which included the Anderson Valley and Hopland wine regions) and Lake County which included the Guenoc