[PDF] THE VIGNOBLE VALLEY: A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIAS WINE

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WINE INDUSTRY AND THE ROLE OF THE

CENTRAL VALLEY, 17691980

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty

of

California State University, Stanislaus

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History By

Clayton P. Gomez

May 2022

CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

WINE INDUSTRY AND THE ROLE OF THE

CENTRAL VALLEY, 17691980

by

Clayton P. Gomez

Dr. Philip Garone

Professor of History

Dr. Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt

Associate Professor of History

Dr. Bret Carroll

Professor of History

Date Date Date

Signed Certification of Approval page

is on file with the University Library

© 2022

Clayton P. Gomez

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

iv

DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to my family, particularly my parents, who have continued to support me in all endeavors, educational and otherwise. v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Dedication ............................................................................................................... iv

Abstract ................................................................................................................... vi

CHAPTER

I. Introduction ........................................................................................... 1

II. Swell: The Mission Period to the Gold Rush, 17691849 ................... 12 III. Budburst: Statehood to the Turn of the Century, 18501900 ............... 42 IV. Bloom: University Farm to the Great Depression, 19001940 ............ 80 V. Veraison: World War II to Commercialization, 19401980 ................ 115

VI. Conclusion ............................................................................................ 148

References ............................................................................................................... 152

vi

ABSTRACT

This thesis highlights

California wine industry from the Spanish mission period to the vast commercialization of the late twentieth century. Many histories of the industry emphasize the southern beginnings of the industry in Los Angeles, or the contemporary northern coast centers of Napa and Sonoma. While this work presents the history surrounding those developments as well, its focus is on situating the Central Valley within that south to north trajectory. This account highlights -s role as a center of scientific research and instruction, and the commercial power of ModestoWinery as leading examples of the Central Vlong-lasting influence. 1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

When a new periodical aiming to further the development of the United States called the Overland Monthly published its second issue in August 1868, it contained an article directed at prospective emigrants to California. Contrary to the air of excitement and promise that continued to envelop the name of the western territory, still in the adolescence of its statehood, this article at first presented a dreary image. The verdant hills and meadows green, the babbling brooks and velvet lawns, that make gay the drapery of summer time, and wed us to our rural homes in other lands, are all unknown in California. A dull and dusky brown pervades the face of light and temporary, but costly beyond conception. The houses are equally monotonous, comfortless, treeless, sun-stricken, fly- beset cabins. This is the general aspect of three-fourths of the present agricultural country along the hundreds of miles of the great farming valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin.1 A balance was struck when the author next explained that unbounded prosperity could indeed be retrieved from the plentiful lands so long as the emigrant was prepared to tackle the harsh realities. Toughened, but not degraded, it seems were the characteristics liver not entirely leathered and lungs not over half- Such was the prospect of the Central Valley of California a century after European colonization began on the Pacific Coast. While the coastal areas of the state, including the port cities of Los Angeles, Monterey, and San Francisco, had in

1 Overland Monthly 1, No. 2 (August 1868), 176.

2 many ways prospered in development throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods, the vast inland valley remained comparatively unsettled. Approximately 430 miles in length with an average width of fifty miles, the 13 million acres of land that make up the Central Valley of California had remained a remote and, in many cases, rather inhospitable place. The expanse of land that makes up the Central Valley can be better understood geographically as three distinct regions: the Sacramento Valley at the north, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the western center, and the San Joaquin Valley to the south. Each of these regions possess their own history of development and challenges, as does the Central Valley as a whole. Over millennia, rain and snowmelt rushing down the Sierra Nevada mountains that dominate the lands to the east of the valley, as well as those that ran down the Coast Ranges that gird the the richest soil in the western states. As the valley flattened with the addition of these sediments, the water that continued to rush from the Sierra each year created a web of waterways that wind their way across the valley and toward the delta, where they converge with Pacific inlets. The result was an area that contrasted arid land, and low rainfall, with areas of swampy wetlands caused by annual flooding as the Sierra snowpack inundated waterways. During the nineteenth century developments in irrigation would help to bring moisture to the arid lands while flood control measures 3 and efforts at reclamation, or the draining of wetlands areas for agricultural use, would transform this environment. In the earliest periods of European contact overland access to the Central Valley was more difficult than it was to the coastal areas that could be supplied by sea. It would take over a century for the valley to emerge from its character as a tierra incognita, as the Spanish might have said. By the twentieth century, however, the valley had risen from that dull and dusky brown to be the epitome of the mythic agricultural Eden that captured the imagination of humanity for centuries. Among the agricultural products that would flourish was one that graced the soils of California long before recorded history conceived of its potential: the grape. As European colonists accustomed to rich traditions of winemaking and consumption joined the , the wine produced from the juice of the grapes developed a trajectory and history of its own. By the time of the Overland Monthly article of 1868, the author could factories, and they do not pay yet; though as California wine is fast finding favor 2 They would come to pay in ways that had only been imagined. Wine has globally acclaimed industries. In 2017, 829,000 dedicated to grapevines, producing an estimated 6.5 million tons of grapes and $5.7 2 82. 4 billion of revenue.3 While the overall grape crop is used for a plethora of industries, such as table grape and raisin production, wine has steadily maintained a majority of grape usage. More than half of the 2017 vineyard acreage, 460,437 acres, were characteristics most beneficial to the production and flavor of wines. Other varietals might still be used in the blending of wines or experimentation with different flavors, and of the 6.5 million tons of grapes produced in the state for 2017, 4,031,684 tons were crushed for the production of wine.4 authority would discount the impact of the Central Valley, the historical richness of the earliest beginnings in Los Angeles and the intriguing sensationalism of Napa and Sonoma in the late twentieth century, often imbue accounts with a south to north trajectory. It sometimes seems as if the Central Valley becomes a new version of a tierra incognita, with its history lost somewhere in between Los Angeles and Napa. Attention that is given to the area, moreover, is often heavily focused on contemporary periods, concentrating on Robert Mondavi in Lodi and the impact of the Gallo family in Modesto. The area, however, deserves much more credit. While it may not have found its footing as early as Los Angeles or made as glamorous a name for itself as Napa or Sonoma, the Central Valley, through its agricultural, legislative,

3 Grape and Wine Production in California, in California Agriculture:

Dimensions and Issues, ed. Philip L. Martin et al., (Giannini Foundation Information Series, 2020), 183.

4 Grape and Wine Production, 193.

5 innovative, educational, and commercial roles, lent a unique and significant hand to the development of the formidable industry that we recognize today. The history presented here parallels the development of the vine. In viticulture, or grapevine cultivation, the grape develops in specific stages, from the reveals the first signs of fruit, and the period of ripening called veraison, after which point the harvest is conducted. In each of these stages, there are threats to the vine which it must battle for survival, including disease, pests, stress from an excess or lack of nutrition, weather, and human interactions such as pruning. Similarly, the dormancy of an era without wine, to the harvest of the heavily commercialized and widely respected industry that we recognize today. In each of the periods during which it developed, moreover, there existed unique advancements and challenges. Following this introduction, Chapter II addresses the period dating from the introduction of wine with the arrival of the Spanish to the coming of the American Gold Rush. This period parallels the swelling of the buds on a vine, only the first sign that dormancy has ended. Through the missions of the Spanish empire, California was developed according to a system that included wine in its religious traditions. These beginnings wer produced in this period was only traded between Spanish entities and did not necessarily entail a commercial venture. The arrival of a new administration following the declaration of M 6 first substantial challenges. The Mexican authorities, seeking to distance themselves from the traditions of the Spanish, secularized the missions. With wine production to that point largely being relegated to the mission properties, the abandoned missions were accompanied by severely degraded and unattended vineyards. A few government leaders who had championed the Mexican cause, however, saw to the survival of the vineyards and were joined by interest from newly arrived immigrants. From the wine-laden, old-world traditions of Europe, arrived immigrants, such as Jean-Louis Vignes, who took some of the first commercial interests in wine. As wine production in California found a place in civilian hands, it benefited from the drastic population increase that resulted from the discovery of gold in the late 1840s. the arrival of the twentieth century and is aligned with the period of budburst. It is during budburst that the swelling buds transition into new growth and leaves that, Following the Gold Rush transformation of the economic scene surrounding wine, California statehood pushed the interest in viticulture even further. Agriculturally focused legislation, including tax exemptions, organizations, and state supported exhibitions all promoted the vine as a means of creating the agricultural Eden that it was believed California could easily become. The Central Valley would here exert its first influence as agricultural developments increasingly accumulated around, and emanated from, the Sacramento Valley. Some of the legislation resulting from that seat of government brought to the fore the labor issues resulting from the 7 Americans. On the opposite end of the spectrum, legislation created leadership for the industry under Agoston Haraszthy, whose commission to document European vinicultural traditions was Developments surrounding the industry, however, needed their own improvements first. Mechanical innovation provided the Central Valley with an additional line of influence as Stockton became the seat of new farming technology that developed around the uniquely flat and unobstructed soils that make up the Central Valley. While individual patents and innovations moved forward, general industrialization in Transcontinental Railroad found its western terminus in the Central Valley, providing it with additional means of access as well as means of exporting its increasing amount of produce. For the decades that remained before the arrival of the twentieth century, railroads continued to wind their way through the valley, bringing interest in wine to new parts of the state and providing the industry with the means to further its development. Chapter IV addresses the role of the University of California in the Central Valley at the turn of the twentieth century until the end of Prohibition in 1933. The period here represents a bloom in which the industry could finally find its footing and ed to an

Department of Agriculture found its

foundation on an experimental University Farm in the Sacramento Valley town of 8 Davis. Eventually transforming into a satellite campus, Davis became the fount of -world viticultural techniques on a sound basis. The information, while immensely beneficial in the end, fell on deaf ears for a period after the temperance movement accumulated power and presented the industry with what seemed to be its most formidable obstacle: Prohibition. Ironically, and fortunately for the wine industry, loopholes in the legislation surrounding Prohibition prompted intense interest in home winemaking and while wineries themselves might have suffered, grape-growing saw a dramatic increase as demand for grapes skyrocketed. While the quality of winemaking suffered, palates changed, and grape varieties shifted, the industry not only survived but also positioned itself to emerge from Prohibition with a foundation that was stronger than it had ever been. It was during Prohibition that the final highlighted influence came to the fore in the example of Gallo. With its vast expanse of land, the Central Valley today plays a unique role in the quantity of its yield and the power of its growers. Among the largest producers, Central Valley growers lend a uniquely commercial character to the industry, one that would come to be indisputable in the latter half of the twentieth century. Overproduction following the home winemaking trends of Prohibition caused market fluctuations that seemed dire as the United States was plunged into the depths of the Great Depression. Similar to the threat of Prohibition, however, the Depression actually worked in an advantageous way for the industry, narrowing the market and eliminating amateur, inexperienced, or inept winemaking ventures. 9 -of-age throughout the years of World War II and up to the vast success and commercialization that arrived at the end of the twentieth century. Similar to veraison, when grapes achieve ripeness and change colors, so the industry during this period changed into a full-fledged and formidable industry that was prime for harvest. The consolidation of the Depression was necessary, but it was only the start of a trend that came to be seen as hostile as the industry struggled to navigate through the years of World War II. Making what direct contributions they could to the war efforts, including the production of tartrates for medications and requisitioning brandy stills to the production of industrial alcohol for fuel, an indirect effect of the war had the greatest impact. The wartime need for industrial alcohol more dramatically affected the large distilling operations of the United States, which began to purchase wineries in an attempt to supplement their lost income. Marketing campaigns begun in this period, whether spurred by the that allowed a few leading wineries to gain a firm business foundation, began the slow push of expanding the American public familiarity with wine. The campaigns culminated in the wine boom of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when marketing and new products met a public whose social inclinations were transforming through the cultural revolutions of the era. The wine boom was perpetuated by intense public interest sparked by a 1976 blind tasting that s beginnings could have predicted, only imagined. Today, American wine is 10 nearly synonymous with California as the state accounts for, what in 2020, was eighty-eight percent of wine production in the United States.5 The interest in wine following the wine boom and the udgment of Paris came so quickly that credit is often given to events that occurred immediately before the explosion of interest at the end of the twentieth century. The truth, however, is that the boom was built on the centuries of advancements, innovations, knowledge, and determination that will be recounted here, developments in which the Central Valley continuously had a definitive influence and presence. This history does not attempt to argue that the Central Valley played the leading role in the development of the industry but highlights the unique roles it has played and attempts to ensure that an area often lost in the historiography of California wine can exhibit its rightful place. Neither does this account claim nor aim to be exhaustive. While the presence of an illegal Indian slave trade within the Central Valley is addressed, for example, the complexities of the larger labor , including discussions of Chinese and Mexican labor, are ones that go beyond the scope of this thesis. In many ways, it is nearly impossible for a history of the industry in its entirety to ever be exhaustive. The story of wine is as complex as the delicate product that is swirled in the vinicultural development, but also intricacies of national and state governments, war, economics, legislation, demographics, science, mechanization, agriculture, business,

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11 labor, and social and cultural movements. In many ways, the history of California wine is a larger history of the state and the nation at large. It reveals the dreams of an immigrant and westward-moving population, the determination of leadership that resulted from those in legislative, innovative, and instructional positions, and the potential of a commodity that can be not only a significant economic resource, but also a unifying power that can bring together a diverse expanse of global palates. 12

CHAPTER II

SWELL

THE MISSION PERIOD TO THE GOLD RUSH

17691849

The image that has often been painted of pre-statehood California is a romantic one from the serenity of the Spanish missions and the magnificent dreams of the Gold Rush to the hand-sown fields of an agricultural Eden. The reality, however, was truly a period of tribulations from the limitations of early settlement agricultural innovation. The period was one in which many of the resources of fully commercially developed. An eight-decade span of colonization and settlement development, however, brought the energies of production to nearly every part of the state. With those developments came both the introduction of winemaking and the basic foundations of what would rise to become a world-class industry. While the elements is often dated back to their Spanish origins, the colonial period prior to statehood would simply be the swell of the vine a period of mounting agricultural interest that was never fully able to commercially materialize yet set the stage for its future arrival. Perhaps the only period in which the Central Valley failed to make a definitive appearance in terms of wine production, the Spanish and Mexican periods of California history must still be presented here as the 13 stage upon which all the sta

Valley, would play out.

Although the land that now makes up California has a rich cultural pre-history -colonial understanding of concepts such as land ownership and agriculture were not comparable to Spanish understandings.6 Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that the grapes native to California were ever used to produce wine or wine-type beverages prior to the arrival of Europeans. These differences ensure that an examination into the history of the century Pope Alexander VI had drawn the line between the old world and the new. Dividing undiscovered territory between the powers of Spain and Portugal, the Papalquotesdbs_dbs24.pdfusesText_30

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