They came to Lodi and Amador County for Gold … and became farmers. The History of Winemaking in Lodi and Amador County
California’s nascent wine industry took flight during the Gold Rush of the 1850s, amid the rugged western foothills of the majestic Sierra Nevada mountain range. As fortune seekers, many of them European, flocked to the Sierras to prospect for gold.
But as a visit to the Kennedy Gold Mine revealed, the only people really getting rich from the gold rush were the people selling shovels to the miners.
Most of the immigrants became farmers … but many became winemakers, making the varietals from their homeland (mostly Italy).
This included Robert Mondavi’s family! As it happened, Robert Mondavi attended high school at Hutchin’s Hall, the very site of our Wine Blogger’s Conference (it was changed from a high school to a community center a few decades ago)
The Thursday morning seminar was titled “History of Grape Growing and Wine Making in Lodi.” We heard from a panel of some of the original modern-era players in the Lodi grape growing and winemaking scene how Lodi came to be one of the preeminent grape production areas. The moderator was Mark Chandler, Mayor, City of Lodi, and former Executive Director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission (1991-2011). On the panel were Aaron Lange, Vineyard Manager with Langetwins Winery and Vice Chair, California Association of Winegrape Growers (CAWG); Kevin Phillips, Vice President of Operations at Michael-David Winery and Phillips Farms, and Markus Bokisch, Owner/CEO/Vigneron at Bokisch Vineyards.
Each of the panelists spoke about their family’s history in Lodi, most of them having four or five generations with the new generation on its way. As a testament to their passion for the region, the men all rushed in to speak to us, even though it was the middle of harvest and they had no sleep the night before.
In true cowboy fashion, the panelists told it how it was, without any sugar coating. In that brief hour, they told us about their childhoods (put behind a tractor as soon as they were able) and family dynamics. I couldn’t help think how different this is from a presentation of this type in Bordeaux, where the winemakers would be dressed in their best suits and, as the custom there, accentuate the fantasy.
The panelists discussed the downturn with prohibition, where to survive they made sacramental wine. Prohibition devastated this frontier wine community, which remained dormant until the late 1960s. Then, a new generation of pioneers began migrating to the Gold Country’s Amador County, this time drawn by the region’s rolling, sun-drenched hillsides, warm daytime temperatures, and volcanic, decomposed granite soils – ideal conditions for producing top-quality wine grapes. When their robustly flavored wines, especially zinfandel, began attracting the attention of wine lovers throughout California and the U.S., the historic Sierra Foothills wine region was reborn.