Welcome to Wine Country History Tours, a new blog. Here's a toast to our launch!
This blog is devoted to wine history in Northern California - I'm working on a book on historic wineries to tour. History is never dull when you're drinking your way through it!
My journey in wine history began over 30 years ago when I first started coming to Napa and Sonoma. My first adventure was reading Napa by James Conaway, and then its sequel. Suddenly the wineries on Route 29 and Silverado Trail became a lot more alive - this one was run by a Republican against the Ag Preserve, that one from a whole-hearted supporter of it. I could now see the post office as the nexus of environmentalism, and the return of the fish to the river as the positive outcome from environmentalists who sued the county. We live and learn.
This spring I launched a number of tours on Vayable.com, including mostly tours on organically grown wines in Napa and Sonoma, but I did include one history tour on the famous Judgment of Paris (1976) when California wines came of age on the international stage.
In March of this year, I discovered the fabulous Napa County Historical Society. I went on their first ever annual two-day tour - visiting five wineries all designed by Hamden McIntyre, with a three course lunch cooked by a three Michelin star chef. Not too shabby. It seemed to me this was the best of both worlds - mixing learning and pleasure.
The more I read, the more I became - not obsessed, but definitely deeply intrigued. There were so many old wineries, so many great stories. I set out to find my way into the history by visiting wineries. Then I started going to research libraries (Napa Historic Society, San Francisco Public Library, Yolo County Archives) and talking to wineries' historians (a most interesting bunch).
Now I'm writing a series of books. The first book will be an overview guidebook of Napa's historic wineries. In addition, there will be a series of in-depth Exploring Wine Country History: A Touring and Tasting Guide, each based on a specific theme and designed to be, like the Missing Manual computer software series, the Missing Guide's narration. If I were leading you on a tour of wine country (and I do offer group tours for $500 a day, exclusive of transportation), these are the places we would go and the things I would tell you about.
The first tour is centered on sparkling wine history, which I became inspired about after visiting the newly restored Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma and reading the wonderful new book A Toast to Eclipse by Brian McGinty. This fascinating book traces the history of one of America's most famous wines of the 1880s-1900. Its rise - and fall - make for great reading. It led me to trace history back to the ghost vineyards and ghost winery of Orleans Hill in Esparto (near Woodland and Winters) in Yolo County. Like Napa today, Woodland, as the Sacramento County seat, was once a thriving grape growing and winemaking region - the richest agricultural county and city in the country.
It's also where chemical farming was adopted and refined and where America's love affair with industrial farming took hold.
Until 1945, all wine history was about organically grown wines, a subject near and dear to my heart (and which I blog about at Organic Wine Uncorked).
Stay tuned to this blog to learn more about tasting and touring your way through wine history.
