Salud!: The Rise Of Santa Barbara's Wine Industry

Chapter 1. Northern European Roots and the First American Wine Culture

Salud! America’s post–World War II middle-class, freed by its car culture and disposable income, sought new and exciting ways to relax and enjoy an acquired appreciation of self-indulgent recreation. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s “back-to-nature” enthusiasts planned vacations and short escapes to family wine farms to imbibe wine and enjoy the good life at its source.Visitors marveled at the wine artistry of individual and family wine growers, and secretly (sometimes openly) dreamed of owning their own wine business. In the 1980s and 1990s this oenophile dance between consumer and winemaker continued as tourists faithfully flocked to what looked like a family wine business. In reality, the image of a family wine farm, with its vineyard, tasting room, and tour, had become an advertising strategy for large corporate wine enterprises. Regional wine escapes had become part of a planned complex combination of agriculture, industry, and tourism orchestrated by vintibusiness corporations.1 An examination of wine destinations like Santa Barbara, California, can help tell this story of the loss of many family wine farms to corporate wine giants. By the 1980s the United States—more specifically, California—had assumed a leadership position in the wine business. Winery corporations crafted an industry compatible with the nation’s economic pax Americana and capable of profiting from what historian Olivier Zunz has characterized as a business relationship among national wealth, personal freedom, and well-being. This new international viticultural leadership exemplified Henry Luce’s concept of the “American Century,” and the everyday business of wine came to portray Zunz’s description of middleIntroduction 2 h salud ! class consumerism enhanced by corporate managers, engineers, social scientists, and scientists.2 A blend of consumerism, agribusiness, government , science, and higher education would convert wine-farms into vintibusinesses. In the second half of the twentieth century wine agribusinesses and family corporations mastered the basic tenets of capitalist efficiency (vertical integration of grape growing, wine production, and distribution). The cost of doing business at this level proved to be beyond the financial capability of common family farms, and vintners quickly learned to mimic nineteenth- and twentieth-century merger techniques.3 A Vintibusiness Case in Point: Santa Barbara, California The business evolution from grape grower to family wine farm to wine business can be illuminated through the story of the Santa Barbara, California , wine industry. This region, with its Mediterranean climate and history of viticulture, provided the nurturing environment for an industry responding to increased consumer demand. In the end, it became a story of small family vineyards and wine farms being swallowed up by the voracious appetite of Napa mega-wineries and regional artisan vintibusinesses that utilized vertical integration, high levels of capitalization, and large doses of the mystique of wine. Our story begins in the 1960s, when shortages of winegrapes created “induced innovation.” This phenomenon sent viticulturists on a statewide search for regions capable of supporting premium winegrapes.4 Some growers turned to the state’s viticulture tradition. Many others relied on trial and error to discover locations that supported agricultural economic growth, offered tax advantages, contained ample inexpensive land, and provided a good overall economic climate for winegrapes. A few early pioneers found that Santa Barbara County provided a promising climate and economic infrastructure. Two regions within Santa Barbara County—Santa Maria Valley and Santa Ynez Valley—surfaced as prime locations for the expansion of California’s winegrape vineyards . The case for expansion into Santa Barbara County in the 1960s was bolstered by the fact that it ranked twentieth (out of California’s fifty-eight counties) in agricultural production; in 1965, agriculture had generated a introduc tion g 3 record $71.2 million for the county’s economy. A well-developed infrastructure to support a new major agricultural industry existed by 1965, and rapid post–World War II population growth (40 percent) provided a local consumer base.5 Wine Farms, Santa Barbara Style High start-up costs for wineries and land-use policies meant local operations would remain smaller than those of northern competitors and resulted initially in two distinguishable forms of premium wineries in Santa Barbara County: small commercial (producing 50,000 to 100,000 cases annually) and artisan (fewer than 50,000 cases). The Santa Maria region, with its large commercial vineyards and cheaper land, drew high-caseproduction wineries while maintaining...