Craiker on growing wine grapes: Why the Vikings tried it but California mastered the idea

Wines in America have a complex history. The Vikings visited North America and called it Vinland because of the profusion of grape vines, none of which made good wine.

The earliest traceable winemaking is to the 1562 French Huguenots settling near Jacksonville, Florida. Using wild muscadine grapes, still used in Florida wine.

Growing the familiar European Vitis vinifera grapes started in 1619 but the crop failed after native pests and plant disease decimated the crop.

Interestingly, in the 1650s Spanish missionaries planted vineyards at their missions with varieties native to Baja California as they conquered California and New Mexico. Wine then was supposed to be for sacrificial rites but really for the monks benefit. The first vines of Vitis vinifera origin were planted in 1629 near San Antonio, New Mexico and is considered America’s earliest wine industry.

It wasn’t until 1683 that William Penn planted a vineyard of French grapes in Pennsylvania and the first commercial winery in the U.S. was in 1787 by Pierre LaGoues. Most of the East Coast still uses the French American highbred grapes.

The first secular California vineyard was established in Los Angeles by a French immigrant, Jean-Louis Vignes, who imported vines from France. By 1851 he had 40,000 vines under cultivation and was producing 1,000 U.S. barrels of wine per year.

In Northern California, with its excellent climate for growing grapes, General Mariano Vallejo, former Sonoma Presidio commander, became the first, large-scale winegrower in the valley.

While General Vallejo had extensive vineyards and wine production throughout Sonoma, he did not sell to the public locally.

In 1857, Agoston Haraszthy bought 520 acres (2.1 km2) near Vallejo's vineyards. In contrast to Vallejo and most others, Haraszthy dry planted his vines on hill slopes without irrigation.

Haraszthy’s Buena Vista Winery in the small town of Sonoma did create the first premium wine to attract locals and visitors traveling over 100 miles for a jug of wine

In 1854, John Patchett planted the first commercial vineyard in Napa Valley and in 1858 established the first winery. In 1861 Charles Krug, a Prussian farmworker for Haraszthy and Patchett, founded a St. Helena winery to mentor the industry to this day. Karl Wente, Charles Wetmore, Jacob Berringer and Robert Mondavi, all of whom became important vintners.

The medal performance of Napa wines at the 1976 “judgment in Paris,” is much more well known. But in 1889 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Napa Valley wines won 20 of the 34 medals or awards, including four gold medals.

Napa wines showed their superiority then, but harder times follow with the outbreak of phylloxera that destroyed most Vitis vinifera vines, severe frosts, droughts, the Great Depression and the San Francisco Earthquake where an estimated 30 million U.S. gallons of wine were destroyed.

The biggest political disaster was Prohibition (1920 to 1933). That limited wine making and purchase to, guess who? The missions and monasteries. This crippled the wine industry for 50 years. Of the 2,500 pre-Prohibition wineries in America, 100 survived.

In 1966 Robert Mondavi and his sons created Robert Mondavi Winery.

Up until then, winery architecture was industrial and functional. To design his vision, Mondavi hired Cliff May, a renowned California architect, famous for designing ranch homes.

The style was loosely called “Mission style” or “modernistic adobe” with the massive Spanish-inspired arch and Italian-inspired campanile that crossed cultural lines to provide a beacon to curious wine enthusiasts. It wasn’t monastic or chateau-ish. The unusual architecture was a brilliant combination of California’s history and desire to showcase better wines.

In 1976 the famous judgment of Paris, not only celebrated Napa wines but put the entire industry in high gear to not only create better wines but also build bigger shrines to show them off.

Next time, we will look at what makes good winery architecture.