California

In a similar way to European wine regions, California’s wine history dates back to monks and missionaries in the 1700s. As California was being colonised, Spanish missionaries to the state would plant vineyards near every mission they founded, as the wine they made was used for religious services. These very first grapes in California, the common black grape, were brought to California from Mexico, which themselves were descendants of grapes from Spain, brought to the country by the conquistador Hernan Cortes in 1520.

While the next one hundred years or so in Californian winemaking were quiet, the California Goldrush – from 1848 to 1855 – brought thousands of new people to the state, searching for their fortune. These people increased the demand for wine and the winemaking industry began to take hold in Sonoma and Napa Valley in Northern California. Also around this time, Chinese immigrants to the country also helped to establish California’s wine country by building wineries, planting vineyards and harvesting grapes.

In the late 1800s, the phylloxera epidemic swept across Europe and the United States. However, where European vineyards were decimated or even destroyed, California wineries recovered relatively quickly. This is partly due to the fact that American grape vines are resistant to phylloxera, so by grafting American rootstock onto European vines, the vineyards were able to resist such destruction.

While California’s winemakers were able to survive the phylloxera relatively unscathed, many weren’t so lucky during Prohibition, which came into effect in January 1919. Vineyards were made to uproot their vines and destroy their cellars. Some vineyards converted to grape juice production or produced sacramental wine, which was allowed under the new law. Unfortunately, many vineyards didn’t survive the stringent regulations and went out of business. Only 140 wineries were left in the state in 1933, the year Prohibition was repealed.

In the 1960s, a new generation of winemakers moved into California in an effort to revitalise the state’s wine growing region, which still hadn’t recovered from Prohibition, decades after it had ceased to exist. It was then that California wines began to be known as top shelf wines. Their place was truly secured in 1976, however, when a British wine merchant, Steven Spurrier, came up with the event known as the Judgment of Paris.

The Judgment of Paris put top wineries from the French wine regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy in a blind taste test against top California wines. During the event, California wines swept French wines in both the red and white wine categories, solidifying the state’s spot as one of the world’s premier wine regions.