California Wine Bitters

MK Monogram

California Wine Bitters

M. Keller

Los Angeles

C 24

M. Keller & Co., Los Angeles, California

Olive-Yellow Cylinder

Provenance: Richard T. Siri Collection

California Wine Bitters is an extremely desirable, top-25 western bitters that is considered very rare. The round cylinder bottles are typically found in beautiful shades of green. A western collector once noted that of the ten or so examples he had either owned, handled, or seen, each was a different green color.

Of the specimens that are known, the bottles have been found in the eastern and western United States. It was reported that a whole example was found at a mining camp near Desert Hills, Arizona, 35 miles from Apache Junction and one example came from an early river town in the northern Sacramento Valley. Broken examples have been found in San Francisco and a few examples have even been found under buildings in New Hampshire.

Matthew Keller

Matthew Keller was born in 1810 in Queenstown, County Cork, Ireland, and studied at Trinity College in Dublin. In 1832 he emigrated to New York, then continued on to Texas quite possibly to San Patricio de Hibernia, an Irish colony established in 1828 just a few miles south of San Antonio. When the Mexican War broke out, Keller accompanied the United States forces as a trader to Mexico. At the close of the war, he returned to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in New Orleans in February 1849. Later that year Keller joined the rush for California’s gold and worked for a brief period in the northern mines.

Now in Los Angeles, Keller opened a general store at the corner of Los Angeles and Commercial Streets and also purchased ten acres from Manuel Requena at Alameda and Aliso Streets, where Union Station is now situated. There he built his home, planted fruit trees, and vineyards. In 1852 he established his winery and brandy still, to be known as the Rising Sun and Los Angeles Vineyards. He also had warehouses in San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia. He was selling his native California wine and brandies, Angelica wine, white wine, Port wine, Sherry wine, Eldorado wine, Madeira wine, wine bitters, grape brandy, and touted that their wines and brandies were guaranteed strictly pure and over three years old.

Keller also experimented with various agricultural crops such as fruit trees, castor oil plants, hops, and cotton. It was said that “At full capacity, the winery could turn out 200 gallons of brandy and 1,000 gallons of wine daily. Keller’s sherry was particularly good and won many awards at county fairs.”

Keller was called the “father of horticulture in Los Angeles” because, as writer Stanley Gordon put it, “In 1853 he planted orange trees from seeds obtained in Central America and Hawaii. He experimented with exotic trees, cotton, rice, and tobacco.” When he sent a bunch of his grapes to the U.S. Patent Office in 1856, “it was almost doubted . . . if such products are common in California.”

Matthew Keller became a major force in the California wine industry along with early pioneers of winemaking like Kohler & Frohling and the Sainsevain Brothers who were the largest wine manufactures in California in the early 1860s. Interestingly enough, these two pioneers also produced a different California wine bitters.

M. Keller & Company

M. Keller & Co. was located in Los Angeles, California on the corner of Alameda and Aliso. At that time they were noted as wine growers and brandy distillers. The company was also located at 24, 26, and 28 South Fifteenth Street in Philadelphia which explains the eastern connection.

It was only natural for Keller to experiment with a bitters product produced from his vines as the 1860s and 1870s were the zenith of bitters production and consumption in the United States.

M. Keller wines eventually found favor with the eastern cities in 1871 and 1872. During those years, Keller and Isador Landsberger began shipping thousands of gallons of wines by rail and steamer to New England, including his wine bitters. This certainly explains bottles being found in the east.

Note that the advertisement below refers to “M. Keller’s Premium Wine Bitters, The Great Tonic for the Hot Weather.” This is simply an alternate name for his California Wine Bitters.

The bottles for California Wine Bitters were made at Pacific Glass Works in San Francisco, California. Advertising for the bitters centers around 1875 though reference to the bitters is found as early as 1862 and when Keller’s product was exhibited at the California State Agricultural Society Exhibition of 1867, which noted, “Matthew Keller, San Francisco, for California Wine Bitters, a most excellent article and worthy of especial mention.”

Keller was an original director of the Farmers & Merchants Bank and of the Pioneer Oil Company. In 1857 he purchased the 13,000-acre Rancho Malibu, “whose title was finally confirmed to him in 1864 after much litigation regarding its clouded title.” He sold it to Frederick H. Rindge.

Keller was the Public Administrator for Los Angeles County from 1854 to 1858 and on the Board of Supervisors from 1864 to 1867. He was a member of the Los Angeles Rangers, a Vigilance Committee and the fire department. He was also a member of the Los Angeles Common Council, the governing body of the city, from 1852 to 1853 and again from 1868 to 1869.

Keller was married twice, and when he died in 1881 he was survived by three children, Caroline E. Shafer, Alice Shafer, and Henry Workman Keller. As a mark of respect, Keller was known as Don Mateo (Spanish for “Matthew”).

We have a second California Wine Bitters example in the Virtual Museum from the Steven Hubbell collection.

The Carlyn Ring and W.C. Ham listing in Bitters Bottles is as follows:

C 24 CALIFORNIA ( cu ) / WINE BITTERS ( cu ) / motif geometric design / M. KELLER / LOS ANGELES ( cu ) // c //
// s // motif MK monogram in shield // c //
L … M. Keller’s Celebrated Los Angeles Wine Bitters
M. Keller & Co., Corner of Battery and Washington Streets
12 ¼ x 3 ½ (7 ¼)
Round, ARM, Green and Aqua Yellow-green, Applied mouth, Very rare
One dug in an old mining camp near Desert Hills, Arizona, 35 miles from Apache Junction. Four specimens found in New Hampshire must have had an Eastern Agent.
1871 St. Louis Directory: McGrade Thomas dealer in California wines and brandies, sole agent for M. Keller’s Celebrated Los Angeles California Wine Bitters, wines, brandies, and champagnes.
1867 Newspaper advertisement: California State Fair award for Wine Bitters to Matthew Keller of San Francisco.
1877 Salt Lake City advertisement for the California trade, M. Keller, proprietor of the Rising Sun and Los Angeles Vineyards. Depot for the sale of his native wine and brandies, Angelica wine, white wine, Port wine, Sherry wine, Eldorado wine, Madeira wine, wine bitters, grape brandy. All our wines and brandies guaranteed strictly pure and over 3 years old.

Primary Image: Both California Wine Bitters bottles imaged by the FOHBC Virtual Museum Midwest studio by Alan DeMaison.

Support: Reference to Don Mateo Keller: His Vines and His Wines by Jane Apóstol

Support: Reference to Bitters Bottles by Carlyn Ring and W. C. Ham. Use of California Wine Bitters illustration courtesy Bill Ham.

Support: Reference to Western Bottle News

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