In the 1950's Ernest & Julio Gallo became the top producer of wine. Much to their embarrassment today, their success was largely based on a product designed to target the so called "misery market," a cheap fortified wine called Thunderbird. Thunderbird was apparently developed as a result of market research that showed that homeless men in San Fransisco needed something cheap and easy to carry to drink. The Thunderbird bottle was designed to be flask shaped so it could easily fit into a back pocket. Gallo also introduced a very successful product called Hearty Burgundy, which had nothing in common with anything from France, but was a better quality than most domestic table wine available in that time.

Andre Tchelistcheff was a winemaker who started at Beulieu vineyards in the 1940's. His influence was massive, as he taught many of the best California winemakers the trade for the 30 years that he worked there. At the same time, the Mondavi family began to make wine. They purchased the Charles Krug winery in 1943, where they were until 1966, when the family split due to a famil dispute. At this point Robert Mondavi was forced out of the company and went off on his own. In 1967, he started the Robert Mondavi winery in Napa, which was designed not only as a winery, but as a tourist destination. Mondavi was a true visionary, as at that time there were no tourists in Napa. He was also the first California wine maker to experiment with French oak barrels, and smaller production scales designed to make high quality wines worth of export. His success and ability to market led many other winemakers to the area through the 1970's and 80's.

The biggest thing to happen to wine in the early 20th century was Prohibition, in the 1920's. While Prohibition made the sale or use of alcohol illegal, there were a few loopholes, which often led to hilarious business ventures. Wine was allowed to be grown for sacramental and "medicinal" purposes, and home wine making on  a very small scale was also allowed. Some wineries were able to stay in business because of this. One of my favorite examples of this was called Chateau Le'chaim, a San Fransisco winery that supposedly provided wine to Jewish temples. In addition, many wineries would package grape must and ship it along with yeast tablets to home wine growers. Along with the package they would include a note that warned NOT to combine the yeast with the grapes, or else alcohol would be created!

Prohibition also had effects that lasted way past the 1920's. As a result of the poor quality of the wine being drank during that time, the American palate drifted away from wine. Most bathtub gin tasted a lot better than the wine people had access to, and cocktails became all the rage in the popular speakeasies. After prohibition was repealed, some states, such as Mississippi, chose to remain dry. Mississippi, in fact, didn't repeal prohibition until 1966! Those that did repeal the law started the arcane and confusing liquor laws that still exist today, designed to discourage liquor sales and consumption.

Wineries that had survived prohibition had many problems to deal with. Because of the decrease in revenue from low sales, wineries had fallen into disrepair. Their tanks and pumps had become rusty and infected with bacteria, and their barrels had started to rot. The great depression also had a devestating effect on the wine industry, as people could not afford to buy wine. A huge majority of the wineries went out of business in the first 4 years of the depression. Large Coporations, such as Seagram, Hiram, Walker, Schenley, and National, that had enough money to last through the downturn became the only source for wine through the 1940's.

This week I'm learning all about Napa Valley. First I'll start with a bit of history about wine in California in general.

California's history dates back to the 18th century, when, much like in South America, Jesuit monks established missions all along the coast of what we know as California today. The grape they planted they called Criolla, which is the same grape called Pais in Chile and Criolla Chica in Argentina. Today it's called the Mission grape.

California was for a long time a province of Spain, along with Mexico. In 1821, when Mexico achieved independence from Spain, California became a province of Mexico. The Jesuit missions were secularized and land grants were handed out under the direction of General Mariano Vallejo. One of these land grants went to George Yount in 1836. He called his land Rancho Caymus, and this land today is the center of Napa's best wine producing areas.

A lot of people began to arrive in California between the 1830's and 1860's. Jean Louis Vignes was the first to bring clippings of vitis vinifera vines from Bourdeaux. Later on, Charles Krug (not related to the Champagne Krugs), Joseph Schram, Gustave Niebaum, and Hamilton Crabb also came to the state. Hamilton Crabb started the Tokalon vineyard, which is still to this day a source for grapes for the very good Mondavi Reserve wines.

One very interesting winemaker during this time was Count Agoston Haraszthy, from Hungary. The count had previously made attempts to grow grapes in Wisconson and San Diego, without too much success. Then in 1856, he established the Buena Vista winery in Sonoma. Although his wines were doing well in California, he strongly believed that wines would never do well there until the Mission grape was abolished. He persuaded the governor to give him a commission to explore Europe and return with vine cuttings. He came back with over 100,000 vines, but unfortunately many of them were damaged irrevocably by the trip, and those that did survive were terribly mislabeled and disorganized. The trip left the count so poor that he left California to go to Nicaragua to start a sugar plantation, where he was promptly eaten by an alligator!

In the 1880's, the wine industry in California was rapidly expanding. The combination of the drop in imported European wine (due to phylloxera) and the new addition of transcontinental railroads, meant there was a newfound demand for wines from California. Many famous vineyards that still exist today, such as Chateau Montelena, Mayacamas, Simi Ridge, and Beaulieu, were established during this time. Phylloxera had actually begun to arrive in California in the 1860's. While it was positively identified in 1873, it didn't really have a widepsread effect on wine production until the 1880's. At this point, winemakers incorrectly believed they would be able to use vitis californica rootstock, which turned out not to be resistant to phylloxera at all. By the time they realized this, it was too late and the California wine industry was just as devestated by phylloxera as the rest of the world.  In 1897, the St. George du Lot rootstock was developed in France, and gradually vineyards were replanted. The positive side of the pest for California was that many of the Mission grape plantings were then replaced with grapes like Zinfandel, Sylvaner, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Due to the exchange of ideas neccessary to come up with the cure to phylloxera, many French techniques came with the vines, and the replantings were done more densley and frequently trained to wires. The one downside of these replantings was that many smaller wineries could not afford the expense and had to go out of business.