A vintage L.A. story
As wine historian Thomas Pinney, author of the massive “A History of Wine in America,” has observed, “For most of the 19th century, if you said California wine, you meant Los Angeles wine.” Here is a timeline for the divine drink in the City of Angels.
1778: The first vine cuttings are brought to the Alta California missions from, most likely, Baja California, and planted at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
1781: The new pueblo of Nuestra Señora de la Reina de Los Angeles on the bank of the Los Angeles River is founded by settlers from Sonora and Sinaloa who stopped at San Gabriel Mission and most likely brought vine cuttings from the Mission with them.
1782: The first Alta California vintage is made at Mission San Juan Capistrano.
mid-1790s: José Maria Verdugo plants the first secular vineyard in California on his Rancho San Rafael north of the pueblo where downtown Glendale is today.
1833: Frenchman Jean-Louis Vignes establishes his winery El Aliso on the site of what is now Union Station.
1840s: Antonio Pelanconi, an Italian immigrant, starts the first winery on Olvera Street (originally called Calle de los Vignes). Several other wineries were located within and near El Pueblo.
1848: Los Angeles winemakers begin shipping wines north to thirsty miners in the Gold Rush. But the demand eventually means wine production moves north.
1850: California becomes the 31st state in the union. Los Angeles County has approximately 100 vineyards and wineries, 85 in the pueblo alone. In the same period, Northern California had a couple in Napa, two in Sonoma and a handful in the Santa Clara Valley around San Jose.
1857: The demand for wines from Los Angeles is so high that vintners look for property elsewhere and establish huge plantings in Anaheim.
1858: Hungarian-born Agoston Haraszthy of Buena Vista winery in Sonoma writes a “Report on Grapes and Wine in California.” In it, he decries the dominance of the Mission grape and recommends blending.
1860: Wine production census shows a total of 246,518 gallons of wine produced in California, with Los Angeles producing 162,980 gallons of that, or well over half.
1870: Los Angeles is producing 531,710 gallons of wine a year, making it effectively the center of wine in California.
1882: “Anaheim disease” (later renamed Pierce’s disease), is discovered in Anaheim and within a few years decimates vineyards in the Los Angeles basin.
1917: Italian immigrant Santo Cambianica puts an old railroad boxcar on a tiny lot on Lamar Street and paints “San Antonio Winery” on its side. That’s the beginning of the downtown Los Angeles winery that’s still in operation today.
1920: Prohibition is voted in, dealing California wineries a decisive blow. San Antonio Winery survived because it had contracted with the Catholic Church to produce sacramental wine. To read more about the fascinating (and complicated) history of wine in our town, see the book “Los Angeles Wine: A History from the Mission Era to the Present” (The History Press, 2014) by Stuart Douglass Byles.