Top Wine Producing Regions
California wine is popular all over the world because of its many wonderful varieties and consistently excellent quality. If California were a country, it would be the fourth largest wine producing country in the world. However, how did California make the transformation from a largely uninhabited wilderness producing only rough mission wine to the fourth largest wine producing country on the globe?
California Wine Pioneers
California wine history began when Father Junípero Serra, a Franciscan missionary, planted the first vineyard in California in Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1769. He build eight more vineyards and missions in his lifetime. These mission grape vineyards dominated California wine production until the late nineteenth century.
Jean-Louis Vignes planted the first imported European wine vines in 1833. A Hungarian soldier and merchant named Agoston Harazthy imported a hundred and sixty five different European vine cuttings. He promoted hillside planting, extensive cellaring caves, non-irrigation of vineyards, and the use of redwood casks when there was not enough oak.
Another of California's wine pioneers, Charles Krug established the first commercial Californian winery in St Helena in 1861. Two years later, a root louse called phylloxera destroyed many European vineyards. This louse is indigenous to North America but some American grapes were taken to the Botanical Gardens in England and the disease spread as far as Provence. The only way to get rid of it was to grape European vinifera vines on to American rootstocks, which was finally done twenty years later.
The California Wine Revolution
Captain Gustave Niebaum established Inglenook Winery in Rutherford in 1879. This was the first Bordeaux style winery in the United States and these wines won gold medals at the Paris World's Fair in 1889. By the beginning of the twentieth century, California was a successful commercial wine-producing region. Californian wines were winning medals in European contests and the wines were exported to Canada, Central America, Mexico, Australia, the Orient, and Europe.
Prohibition was introduced in 1919 and most California wineries were closed down. Some stayed open by producing grape juice or sacramental wine. Only a hundred and forty wineries were still running by 1933, when prohibition came to an end. The California wine industry took several years to get back on its feet.
California wine in the 1960s was rich and sweet. The wine was made in a port wine style, from Thompson seedless and Carignan grapes. A new wave of wine makers arrived around this time, bringing new ideas and plenty of enthusiasm. Frank Schoonmaker, a wine writer, suggested the German idea of labeling wines with their varietal, such as Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, rather than with their semi-generic names borrowed from Europe, such as Chablis and Burgundy. This idea helped to promote, and raise awareness of, California wine.
The Judgment of Paris
By the 1970s, some California wines were excellent but they were still relatively unknown. A blind tasting was held in Paris in 1976. The panel consisted of French wine experts. Six California Chardonnays were compared with four French Chardonnays. Three wines in the top four were Californian. Napa Valley immediately gained popularity and people realized that top quality wine could be produced in many places in the world, not just in France.
California Wine Today
The California wine industry has skyrocketed in the past thirty years. Newer award-winning wine regions include the Santa Ynez Valley and the Temecula Valley. California wine makers continue to experiment and innovate to raise the competitiveness and quality of their wines. There are over twelve hundred California wineries today, ranging from small, family run wineries to huge corporations distributing globally.
Author: California Wine Guide Staff Writer
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