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

Chapter 3. The California Wine Revolution

38 h salud ! nia Mechanics’ Institute, purchased the San Jose vineyard in the Goleta district of Santa Barbara County. He quickly added 3,300 vines and built a 25-by-45-foot adobe winery complete with wine presses and open-top fermentors. When McCaffrey died in 1900 his widow sold the winery to Michele Cavaletto, an immigrant from the Italian Piedmont region, who ran the winery until the beginning of Prohibition.29 By the late 1860s Santa Barbara County ranked third in California wine production: The region’s small wine entrepreneurs produced 5 percent of the state’s wine. Most famous was Albert Packard, a Rhode Island lawyer, who purchased 250 acres and established what was probably the first successful commercial winery in Santa Barbara. Packard planted his vineyard on the west side of the city (west of De laVina Street between Carrillo and Canon Perdido Streets) where the property’s previous owner, Felipe de Goycochea, second commander of the Santa Barbara presidio, had established a vineyard in the late eighteenth century. Packard understood European winegrape growing and applied the technical and scientific knowledge of the time. He knew that premium wines required a cool growing region and was quoted in a local newsAlbert Packard established the region’s first successful commercial winery, La Bodega, in 1865. Photograph courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Society boom and bust g 39 paper, saying that“the wine making season is several weeks later here than elsewhere in California, owing to our proximity to the sea coast.”30 Packard believed he could make a fortune with viticulture and planted his estate with vines imported from Spain. As the vines came into production in 1865 he constructed the two-story adobe La Bodega winery with a capacity of 80,000 to 90,000 gallons.With the help of Boston winemaker Ed Breck and a Mr. Goux, a winemaker from Bordeaux, Packard produced his wines under the El Recedo (The Corner) label and shipped most of his wine to Los Angeles, to San Luis Obispo, and as far away as Texas. The winery produced a quality Claret that commanded prices double that of its Los Angeles competitors. By the turn of the century local speculation suggested (though it was not documented) that Anaheim disease had destroyed the vineyard, much as it had devastated the vineyards of Los Angeles.31 Local records do not reveal outbreaks of Anaheim disease in other Santa Barbara County vineyards. In fact, despite the Packard setback, Santa Barbara County moved forward in its quest for a modern wine industry , and by the l890s an estimated forty-five vineyards, on about five thousand acres, had been planted in the area. While many were located behind the coastal range in the sparsely settled Santa Ynez Valley, optimistic winemakers had not given up on the south-facing coastal shelf in and around the small town of Santa Barbara. Small vineyards still dotted the city itself, and there was plenty of evidence that the grapevines could thrive there. The huge Montecito vine, planted (legend has it) in 1812, produced six tons of grapes per harvest and was cut down in 1876 to serve as a display at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition to lure investment money for the development of the area’s agricultural enterprises. A larger Carpinteria vine planted in 1842 developed a trunk with a circumference of nine feet and by the l890s was said to produce ten tons of grapes a year. Yet, the south-facing coast of Carpinteria proved to be inhospitable to ambitious grape farmers. Colonel Russell Heath’s ten thousand vines and two-story winery, for example, were brought to ruin as coastal moisture nourished destructive mildew in the vines and grapes.32 Perhaps the most successful commercial vineyard in the area was planted twenty-two miles off the coast of Santa Barbara on Santa Cruz Island . In the l880s French immigrant Justinian Caire planted a vineyard 40 h salud ! with premium European varietals such as Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon , Pinot Noir, Petite Syrah, Muscat, and Riesling on his island property. Caire managed his six hundred acres of grapes with Italian workers, and by 1910 his winery averaged 83,000 gallons of wine per year. Santa Cruz Island wine pleased loyal wine-drinking customers between Los Angeles and San Francisco.33 Prohibition ended the profitable enterprise. Maria Louisa Dominguez seated under the La Parra Grande grape arbor in Montecito...