Wine in Early California
How the wine industry got started in early California.
The first vineyards and wines of early California.
It's a common belief that the widespread enjoyment of wine came to America in recent times. The U. S. and Canada were often thought to favor beer and spirits over wine until the current generation discovered the pleasures of wine, and in particular, the magical way wine can raise the enjoyment of food to new levels.
Few of us are aware of the burgeoning wine industry in California that existed prior to Prohibition
in the 1920s. The number of wineries in Napa Valley alone had grown to over 140 as early as 1889! But efforts had already been established all over the state of California long before that.
The Spanish government disallowed winegrape cultivation in Mexico after an incipient wine industry began to compete with Spanish imports in the late 16th century. The effects of that prohibition continued in Mexico well into the 20th century.
But wine was needed on a regular basis by the California missions throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. It's not surprising to learn that California's first vineyard was planted by Fr. Junipero Serra at the Mission San Diego de Alcala in 1769. Fr. Serra introduced the
Mission grape to California, presumably from cuttings brought from South America. This grape was not well suited for table wines, but by the mid-19th century there were over 4,000 acres planted, mostly around the missions.
Vineyards were planted all over California in the decades immediately following.
in 1804. And vineyards sprouted up all over the Santa Cruz mountains in the years following, as trees were removed by the new lumber industry. Twenty years later Padre Jose Altimira planted several thousand grape vines at their northernmost mission, San Francisco Solano in Sonoma.
1833 saw the first planting of European table grape varietals in Los Angeles by Jean-Louis Vignes. Three years later George Calvert Yount (after whom the city of Yountville was named) planted the first vineyard in Napa Valley.
Just a year later, in 1834, Richard Henry Dana discussed the wine of early California in his historic account of life on the California coast, Two Years Before the Mast. He Opined in Chapter XIII that "the Californians are an idle, thriftless people," and goes on to say that while "the country abounds in grapes, (emphasis mine) yet they buy bad wines made in Boston [and brought around Cape Horn], at an immense price, and retail it among themselves at a real (12.5 cents) by the small wine-glass."
Much of the table wine drunk in California in the mid-19th century consisted of Portuguese imports, often gone bad from travel. Early examples of Portuguese red wine, cooked in the sun on sailing ships and inadvertently oxidized, were sweetened to be made palatable. This led to the commercialization of Madeira wines, which were the favorite wines of the American founding fathers. Even today, when wines take on a browning tinge from poor cellaring or old age, they are said to be maderized.
Had Mr. Dana stayed in California 25 more years, instead of returning to Boston, he would have seen the explosion of interest in wine that led to the development of one of the world's most important wine regions.
