California Vintage: Wine and Spirits in the Golden StateThe Great Depression

Maxine Albro, Grape Harvesting Scene, (detail) California Agriculture, 1934

Public Works of Art Project (PWAP)

“Wine is a habit, an industry, and an art,” wrote the editors Fortune Magazine in 1934 as the Great Depression (1929–39) ravaged the country. It was a statement the public had not heard very often during the prior decade under Prohibition, but nevertheless it hinted at the industry’s possibilities.

The fresco painter Maxine Albro saw the industry’s importance to the Golden State. Her 1934 mural California Agriculture joined 26 others by Bay Area artists commissioned to adorn the walls of San Francisco’s Coit Tower—the first and largest New Deal federal recovery program for artists.

The winemaking scene in Albo’s 42-foot mural, which she based on her visit to Sonoma County’s wineries, celebrates an industry historically considered California’s most prosperous.

 “We Want Wine,” 1933

http://sanantoniowinery.com/history/

Though California had been making the majority of the country’s wine, the industry took many years to recover from Prohibition (1920–33). Obstacles included legal restrictions (wine was legal in only 26 in 1934) as well as costly repairs to reopened wineries and lack of knowledge by new winemakers. As Paul Garrett, considered the dean of American Wine Growers, wondered in 1934, “if wine were properly presented to the American people might they not accept it for what it is—a wholesome, health-giving accompaniment of good food?”

Dorothea Lange, The White Angel Bread Line, San Francisco, 1933

Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration

It was also hoped that Prohibition’s repeal in 1933 would help solve the devastating unemployment following the 1929 stock market crash. As Garrett proposed, “The development of a wine industry in this country comparable to that in France would wipe out unemployment and provide a shortage of labor able to absorb further technological unemployment for a generation to come.”

But during Prohibition, Americans had become used to drinking sweet, high-alcohol wines. The “art of wine”—and the idea of wine as a daily beverage—had yet to reemerge after Prohibition’s repeal in 1933.

Lehmann Printing and Lithographing Company Label, Baronet Apple Wine Label, 1930s

California Historical Society, Kemble Collections on Western Printing and Publishing

Wine historian Thomas Pinney explains further:

There was some uncertainty about, and some variety in, the sorts of wine offered immediately after Repeal. It is interesting to note that some Prohibition wine was advertised—that is, wine that had been made during the Prohibition years but that could not then be sold. Perhaps most of that wine was of doubtful character, being “pricked,” or on its way to vinegar. But some was put out for sale. 

Then there were novelty wines: carbonated “champagne” was one. Around 1936 there was a flurry of interest in orange wine, an alcoholic beverage fermented from oranges and then fortified with spirits distilled from the resulting “wine.” I suppose that the attraction for the winemakers was a glut of oranges to be had cheaply, the sort of abundance in the midst of want that so often occurred in the Depression years. 

Advertisement, Puma’s Orange Wine, 1937

Collection of Thomas Pinney

Nevertheless, there was hope for the diminished wine industry. It came with the growth of industrial methodology, the establishment of the Wine Institute (1934) and the Wine Advisory Board (1938), and the California Agricultural Marketing Act of 1937, which under the agricultural umbrella of the state gave new status to winemakers as “winegrowers.”

Victor W. Geraci, University of California, Berkeley food and wine historian, explains:

For an industry just emerging from the repression of Prohibition, this agricultural status was important in relaxing a “crazy-quilt” of local, regional, and state laws restricting growing, making, and distribution of wine. Eventually, over two hundred fifty wineries and ten thousand growers (nearly 90 percent of all the state’s industry) took advantage of the 1937 California Agricultural Marketing Act that allowed agricultural specialty groups to form a Marketing Order for Wine. The wine industry now had a uniform voice.

Ruth Taylor White, Wine Map of California, 1935

Published by the Wine Advisory Board, San Francisco

Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection; www.davidrumsey.com

In 1934, only about 11 million cases of wine—most of them dessert wine—were sold. The policies originated during the Depression slowly achieved results, and with the victory of California in the 1976 Paris wine tasting, the industry would never be the same.

Watch for the next blog in our series California Vintage: Wine and Spirits in the Golden State on December 19.

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources
Editors, “Can wine become an American habit?” Fortune Magazine (1934); http://fortune.com/2012/03/25/can-wine-become-an-american-habit-fortune-1934/

Victor W. Geraci, “Fermenting a Twenty-First Century California Wine Industry,” Agricultural History 78, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 438–65

Oral history interview with Maxine Albro and Parker Hall, 1964 July 27, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-maxine-albro-and-parker-hall-12350

Thomas Pinney, City of Vines: A History of Wine in Los Angeles (Berkeley: Heyday Books/California Historical Society, forthcoming September 2017)

Wine Institute, Milestones in California Wine, 1934–2009; www.wineinstitute.org

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Love Wine and Spirits? Don’t Miss These CHS Events!

December 10, 2016–April 16, 2017
California Historical Society, 678 Mission, San Francisco

CHS’ new exhibition, Vintage: Wine, Beer, and Spirits Labels from the Kemble Collections on Western Printing and Publishing


December 13, 6:30 pm
California Historical Society, 678 Mission, San Francisco

The California Historical Society’s annual holiday party
Craft cocktails, legendary California wine, innovative brews, and live entertainment

Read more

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Thomas Pinney’s City of Vines: A History of Wine in Los Angeles is the winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award. Read more about the Award

https://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/publications/book_award.html 
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Celebrate California Wine Month!

“Rustic Courtship," Tipo Wine, Italian Swiss Colony Winery, Asti, California, c. 1910

California Historical Society

Rustic. Hearty. Bright. These are only some of the commonly used descriptive words that evoke our state’s love affair with wine—a romance that began even before California achieved statehood in 1850.

Every September, when California wineries are busy harvesting their grapes, we celebrate California Wine Month. This September is the 12th annual California Wine Month, when wineries all over the state welcome visitors and stage numerous events—from tastings, to classes, to tours.

Grape Cluster Carried by Children, c. 1898

California Historical Society Collections at University of Southern California

Created by the Wine Institute in honor of the country’s foremost wine-producing state, the month-long celebration “recognizes the contributions of vintners and growers to our state economy, culture and lifestyle,” explains said Robert Koch, Wine Institute president and CEO.

Portrait of Grape Pickers on Hastings Ranch, near Pasadena, c. 1898

California Historical Society Collections at University of Southern California

The California Historical Society is pleased to whet your appetite with the following selection of wine labels. They were created during the 1930s by anonymous artists and designer employed by CHS’s collection of the Lehmann Printing and Lithographing Company in San Francisco, one of the country’s largest label plants of that era.

More examples of these labels are in our book, VINTAGE: California Wine Labels of the 1930s, edited by Christopher Miya and Ashley Ingram and published in collaboration with Heyday, available this Fall.

  

Shelly Kale

Publications and Strategic Projects Manager

skale@calhist.org

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More about the history of wine in California from the California Historical Society:

·        CHS is the repository for the California Wine Association Records, 1894–1936. Read about this collection on our blog, http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2012/12/california-wine-association-records.html and at the Online Archive of California http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf667nb130

·        Save the date! California Wine Month, September 2017, brings the publication of our 2016 California Historical Society Book Award, The City of Vines: A History of Wine in Los Angeles, by Thomas Pinney, the author of the definitive, two-volume account of winemaking in the United States, A History of Wine in America. The City of Vines is a rediscovery of where California’s wine industry began and its 100-year role as leader of our state’s viticulture industry. Read more about the CHS Book Award at http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/publications/book_award.html

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For a full listing of statewide events listing during California Wine Month, visit http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cheers-to-california-wine-month-this-september-300315221.html

or visit: http://www.discovercaliforniawines.com/californiawinemonth/ 

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For more information on VINTAGE: California Wine Labels of the 1930s, see https://heydaybooks.com/book/vintage/

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See more wine labels from CHS’s Lehmann collection on our Flickr Commons page, https://www.flickr.com/photos/chs_commons/albums/72157644930685916 

California Wine Association Records, 1894-1936

Lackman & Jacobi business card, circa 1885, California Business Ephemera Collection.

With our vast viticultural districts and varied regional climates, California is known as an exceptional place to grow wine. Lesser known, however, is that the history of the state’s early wine production is largely connected to the history of the California Wine Association (1894-1936). With this in mind, the California Historical Society is pleased to announce that the California Wine Association records have been reprocessed with a finding aid available on the Online Archive of California.

The 1890s were a turning point for viticulture in California. The State’s wine industry was in a seemingly perilous position. California’s 200,000 acres of vineyard were overproductive, the country was in the middle of a depression, and California wines were sold cheaply without much regard to quality. In 1894, in an attempt to secure favorable options from grape growers and winemakers, and to raise prices and stimulate trade, seven leading wine firms joined together to form the California Wine Association. Their action, however, had an unintended consequence: winegrowers formed their own interest groups, which, in turn, led to the wine wars of the 1890s. In order to successfully negotiate grape and wine prices, the two factions came to agree upon standards for terms such as “hill grapes” and “valley grapes,” and stabilized the quality of California wine in the process. The C.W.A. would eventually control over eighty percent of wine manufactured in the State.

The California Wine Association records chronicle this fascinating history. Bound volumes of meeting minutes contain contract negotiations and correspondence between growers and firms, and document internal conflicts within the Association, responses to Prohibition, and, finally, the litigious dissolution of the Association itself.

The new guide to the collection can be found on the Online Archive of California at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf667nb130

Megan Hickey Nespeco 

Library Volunteer