Jesuits from Santa Clara College bought Harvey Wilcox’s 40-acre hillside ranch in 1886 and built a novitiate where young men trained for the order. They paid for it with wine: novices picked the grapes on the terraced slopes, and the first harvest was on October 11, 1888.
Demand for altar wine soared during Prohibition. The college closed in 1968, the winery in 1986, and the building is now a retirement home for Jesuits. Much of the old hillside vineyard became town open space.