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

8. Italian Winemakers and the American System

 151  chapter 8 Italian Winemakers and the American System The Irresistible Appeal of Mass Production During the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, Piedmontese winemakers operated under unique conditions dictated by the U.S. wine market. Not only was the industrial production of alcoholic beverages shadowed by the moral and religious condemnation of American politics and society, but Italian winemakers also rarely hired non-Italian workers or sold their products to non-Italian customers . Yet despite all this, or perhaps precisely to counterbalance the fact that they traded in a product that was so disputably “American ,” Piedmontese winemakers earnestly embraced the dictates of U.S. capitalism and the mass market. They constantly innovated and mechanized their methods of production, preservation, and long-distance transportation. They also integrated their companies into the country’s economic system by paying close attention to the dynamics of both the wine market and public regulation. Indeed, they often 152  Italian Winemakers and the American System represented the avant-garde of American winemaking in fields like research, product development, marketing, and advertising. In the historiography of California wine, the Italian Swiss Colony , and more specifically its first president, Pietro Carlo Rossi, is unanimously considered a leading figure in the modernization of the American wine industry. The giant size of its wine-storage tanks, for example, was widely publicized by industry journals as a clear indication of the Asti company’s production power. By 1891, “the twins”—two large tanks as tall as two-story houses, with the capacity of twenty-five thousand gallons each—had already transformed the Asti site into one of the main attractions of Sonoma County.1 A few years later, the company built a cistern that was promptly baptized the largest in the world. Made of Portland cement and located underground , the enormous tank could hold up to five hundred thousand gallons. Sbarboro had asked superintendent Luigi Vasconi to build it for him in a record forty-six days to store the exceptional harvest of 1897. Rossi had the walls covered in paraffin to maintain ideal conditions for the wine’s insulation.2 The mechanized systems used in Asti were also decisively groundbreaking . The company was already using steam pumps by the turn of the century and introduced electricity to its grape-pressing process shortly thereafter. At a time when most other wineries were still lighting huge bonfires to ward off nighttime frost, the Asti company had already started using portable kerosene heaters.3 The Italian Swiss Colony’s new, futuristic premises, built in San Francisco in 1903 and housing high-capacity tanks, also made news. For one thing, the building was constructed using such advanced materials and criteria that it survived the devastating earthquake that destroyed two-thirds of the city three years after it was built. The survival of its structure and contents gave the winery a considerable advantage over competitors who had suffered serious damage from the quake.4 Italian Winemakers and the American System  153 Rossi also applied the results of the most up-to-date chemistry research to the winemaking process. In particular, the Dogliani-born immigrant was one of the first to use sulfur dioxide to counter the effects of yeast on the grape must during fermentation and thus stabilize the wine. Thanks to him, the Italian Swiss Colony became a leader in the industrial use of refrigeration, which promotes the formation of tartrate crystals and better preserves wine. Rossi was in fact a tireless researcher who traveled throughout Europe to study the most advanced winemaking methods of the day. His interest in warm-climate wine production—stemming from the expansion of the Italian Swiss Colony’s business to Madera and other vineyards in Southern California—led him as far afield as Algeria.5 Rossi’s experience is an excellent example of how Piedmontese winemakers in California fervently sharpened their technical and Visitors of Asti on the top of the “world’s largest wine tank,” built to store the 1897 harvest. In the background, the flag of the Kingdom of Italy waves. Ca. 1905. Collection of the author. 154  Italian Winemakers and the American System merchandizing skills despite having inherited so little knowledge of wine from their early years in Piedmont. It also shows how, at the turn of the twentieth century, being a “foreigner” who spoke English as a second language gave immigrant winemakers a certain advantage when it came to...