Soft Soil, Black Grapes: The Birth of Italian Winemaking in California

Conclusion: Work, Social Capital, and Race in the Experience of Italian Winemakers in California

 227  Conclusion Work, Social Capital, and Race in the Experience of Italian Winemakers in California The story of Italian winemakers in California presents an interesting case for historians of ethnic entrepreneurship and immigrant work in the United States. The “Pavesian paradigm”—the discursive notion according to which Piedmontese immigrants came to the United States already possessing a wine culture that could then blossom in ideal environmental conditions under a placid Californian sun—is a convenient but misleading shortcut to explain why such a small number of immigrants from a single Italian region emerged as key protagonists in the modern history of American wine. Being from Piedmont did not automatically mean one had knowledge of the winemaking process, let alone the kind required by a modern wine industry. This was as much the case in the era of Italy’s great migration as it is today. The narrative that described California as a Piedmont on the Pacific Ocean because of similarities in environment, climate, and landscape was just that, a narrative—one that brought together various ideas and images to form a convincing but largely deceptive overall picture. More important, the interpretive expedient of the Pavesian myth 228  Conclusion does little justice to the agency, work, and cultural imagination of the flesh-and-bone people who actually participated in the story. Those who would eventually become the leading Piedmontese producers of California wine relied far more on their entrepreneurial skills, tenacity, and business savvy than on their almost nonexistent technical expertise. Their lack of significant financial capital also meant that, at least in the beginning, the land they acquired was marginal and ill suited to be transformed into vineyards. The only reason their highly risky investment paid off at all was their access to and accumulation of another type of capital—social capital. The ability of Piedmontese wine entrepreneurs to procure intensive, low-paid work from rural Piedmont-born immigrants made all the difference in the development of their nascent enterprises. Not only did their ethnicity help them to recruit new employees from Piedmont and form professional chain migrations, but it also allowed them to organize their workforces and limit conflict to a degree that would have been impossible for winemakers of other ethnicities. Their social capital would in fact prove important in many different ways, often helping them transform the significant disadvantage of being a foreign entrepreneur in the United States into an advantage. A fine example of this is the role that the Italian Swiss Colony’s Pietro Carlo Rossi played as a major point of reference in California for the Italian government and winemaking industry, not to mention the audience he secured with important European experts during his travels throughout the Continent. The epic story of Piedmontese winemakers in the American West needs to be considered within its general historical context, which in turn it helps to illuminate. When the first Piedmontese immigrants arrived in California, they encountered a largely rural region with obvious, immense potential, in which European colonizers had been questioning and debating who would perform the labor required Conclusion  229 to exploit its resources. Black slaves, as occurred in the rest of the Southern United States (until 1865)? The Chinese, who were arriving to the United States in a semi-servile condition? Mexicans, who had been annexed through conquest? Or free European immigrants, as was taking place in the Northern states of the Union? By the late nineteenth century—when the first big Piedmontese wineries began to develop—the young state of California already hosted an extraordinarily composite population, and it was taken for granted that notions of racial difference would heavily influence economic development and the division of labor. The case of Piedmontese winemakers in California confirms not only how central race was in determining the socioeconomic success of various ethnic groups in the United States, but also how much it affected the formation of entrepreneurial and professional niches in which specific groups predominated. The trajectories and fortunes of ethnic enterprises need to be deconstructed and examined from different perspectives, since differences of class and gender do not disappear within the boundaries of economic niches. From the point of view of Piedmontese immigrant workers, for example, coming to California around the turn of the century meant occupying an inbetween bracket of a rural labor market that was structured according to racial hierarchies. European farm laborers were in high demand in California after...