CATAWBA WINE BITTERS

  
 

The Catawba Wine Bitters was made by the Longworth and Grew Company of Cincinnati, Ohio and marketed on the west coast by sole agent George Grimes of San Francisco. The Catawba Wine Bitters comes in various shades of green and amber colors and the earliest examples have an iron pontil. These bottles are considered rare with possibly only twenty to thirty examples known in any color. These bottles are highly prized by both bitters and western glass collectors.

 

                                                            Relation to Sierra County

Broken examples of the Catawba Wine Bitters have been found in the North Yuba Country of Sierra County. The author broke an iron pontil emerald green example while digging a root cellar in the ghost town of Chaparral Hill. After relating the broken Catawba story to a well known advanced bitters collector and bitters book author, he walked the two miles into Chaparral Hill to recover the broken shards of the bottle to catalog it for a revised addition to his bitters book – now that’s dedication in my opinion. Broken pieces of smooth base Catawba’s have also been found at Chaparral Hill. A broken smooth base green Catawba Wine was discovered at a cabin site above Indian Valley in the spring of 1993. Broken pieces of the Catawba bottle have also been found in the early gold rush settlements of Morristown, Craigs Flat, Forest City, Poker Flat, Brandy City and Downieville. A intact example was found in 2010 in Downieville next to the Yuba Theater.