A History of Wine in America, Volume 1

A History of Wine in America, Volume 1
Author: Thomas Pinney
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2007-09-17
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 052093458X

The Vikings called North America "Vinland," the land of wine. Giovanni de Verrazzano, the Italian explorer who first described the grapes of the New World, was sure that "they would yield excellent wines." And when the English settlers found grapes growing so thickly that they covered the ground down to the very seashore, they concluded that "in all the world the like abundance is not to be found." Thus, from the very beginning the promise of America was, in part, the alluring promise of wine. How that promise was repeatedly baffled, how its realization was gradually begun, and how at last it has been triumphantly fulfilled is the story told in this book. It is a story that touches on nearly every section of the United States and includes the whole range of American society from the founders to the latest immigrants. Germans in Pennsylvania, Swiss in Georgia, Minorcans in Florida, Italians in Arkansas, French in Kansas, Chinese in California—all contributed to the domestication of Bacchus in the New World. So too did innumerable individuals, institutions, and organizations. Prominent politicians, obscure farmers, eager amateurs, sober scientists: these and all the other kinds and conditions of American men and women figure in the story. The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of American origins and of American enterprise in microcosm. While much of that history has been lost to sight, especially after Prohibition, the recovery of the record has been the goal of many investigators over the years, and the results are here brought together for the first time. In print in its entirety for the first time, A History of Wine in America is the most comprehensive account of winemaking in the United States, from the Norse discovery of native grapes in 1001 A.D., through Prohibition, and up to the present expansion of winemaking in every state.

A History of Wine in America, Volume 2

A History of Wine in America, Volume 2
Author: Thomas Pinney
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2005-07-05
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0520941489

A History of Wine in America is the definitive account of winemaking in the United States, first as it was carried out under Prohibition, and then as it developed and spread to all fifty states after the repeal of Prohibition. Engagingly written, exhaustively researched, and rich in detail, this book describes how Prohibition devastated the wine industry, the conditions of renewal after Repeal, the various New Deal measures that affected wine, and the early markets and methods. Thomas Pinney goes on to examine the effects of World War II and how the troubled postwar years led to the great wine boom of the late 1960s, the spread of winegrowing to almost every state, and its continued expansion to the present day. The history of wine in America is, in many ways, the history of America and of American enterprise in microcosm. Pinney's sweeping narrative comprises a lively cast of characters that includes politicians, bootleggers, entrepreneurs, growers, scientists, and visionaries. Pinney relates the development of winemaking in states such as New York and Ohio; its extension to Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, and other states; and its notable successes in California, Washington, and Oregon. He is the first to tell the complete and connected story of the rebirth of the wine industry in California, now one of the most successful winemaking regions in the world.

The Makers of American Wine

The Makers of American Wine
Author: Thomas Pinney
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2012-05-07
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0520269535

Praise for Thomas Pinney's "A History of Wine in America" "Exhaustively researched. . ..invaluable to serious scholars of the grape. Fascinating reading." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "Revealing a sharp eye for detail and a dry, low-key wit, Pinney writes in an engaging style and with remarkable clarity." --"Wine Spectator" "Definitive. . ..an important work of historical literature." --"Wine & Spirits" "An indispensable view of. . .a remarkable time." --"Decanter"

A Short History of Wine

A Short History of Wine
Author: Rod Phillips
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2002-11-12
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 9780060937379

Variously regarded as a sacred, religious drink, an inebriant, and even the work of the Devil, throughout the ages wine has generated passions that verge on mania. In A Short History of Wine, Rod Phillips tells the story of wine in the Western world with all its grandeurs and miseries. Packed with fascinating stories, unexpected insights, and the myriad tricks of the trade, A Short History of Wine is an essential book for anyone who treats this most venerated drink with the zeal it deserves.

The City of Vines

The City of Vines
Author: Thomas Pinney
Publisher: Heyday.ORIM
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2017-12-07
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1597144266

The author of A History of Wine in America recounts the beginnings of California’s wine trade in the once isolated pueblo now called Los Angeles. Winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award! With incisive analysis and a touch of dry humor, The City of Vines chronicles winemaking in Los Angeles from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century through its decline in the 1950s. Thomas Pinney returns the megalopolis to the prickly pear-studded lands upon which Mission grapes grew for the production of claret, port, sherry, angelica, and hock. From these rural beginnings Pinney reconstructs the entire course of winemaking in a sweeping narrative, punctuated by accounts of particular enterprises including Anaheim’s foundation as a German winemaking settlement and the undertakings of vintners scrambling for market dominance. Yet Pinney also shows Los Angeles’s wine industry to be beholden to the forces that shaped all California under the flags of Spain, Mexico, and the United States: colonial expansion dependent on labor of indigenous peoples; the Gold Rush population boom; transcontinental railroads; rapid urbanization; and Prohibition. This previously untold story uncovers an era when California wine meant Los Angeles wine, and reveals the lasting ways in which the wine industry shaped the nascent metropolis.

Empire of Vines

Empire of Vines
Author: Erica Hannickel
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-10-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812208900

The lush, sun-drenched vineyards of California evoke a romantic, agrarian image of winemaking, though in reality the industry reflects American agribusiness at its most successful. Nonetheless, as author Erica Hannickel shows, this fantasy is deeply rooted in the history of grape cultivation in America. Empire of Vines traces the development of wine culture as grape growing expanded from New York to the Midwest before gaining ascendancy in California—a progression that illustrates viticulture's centrality to the nineteenth-century American projects of national expansion and the formation of a national culture. Empire of Vines details the ways would-be gentleman farmers, ambitious speculators, horticulturalists, and writers of all kinds deployed the animating myths of American wine culture, including the classical myth of Bacchus, the cult of terroir, and the fantasy of pastoral republicanism. Promoted by figures as varied as horticulturalist Andrew Jackson Downing, novelist Charles Chesnutt, railroad baron Leland Stanford, and Cincinnati land speculator Nicholas Longworth (known as the father of American wine), these myths naturalized claims to land for grape cultivation and legitimated national expansion. Vineyards were simultaneously lush and controlled, bearing fruit at once culturally refined and naturally robust, laying claim to both earthy authenticity and social pedigree. The history of wine culture thus reveals nineteenth-century Americans' fascination with the relationship between nature and culture.

Wine Heritage

Wine Heritage
Author: Dick Rosano
Publisher: Board and Bench Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2000-10-01
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 1891267132

Mondavi, Martini, Sebastiani, Gallo, Bargetto and Perelli-Minetti. Who could deny the importance of Italians to the development of America’s wine industry? It is little known that Italians have been planting vineyards and making wine in America since the early colonial days when Filippo Mazzei was the vineyard consultant for Thomas Jefferson. Grapes were planted and nurtured in virtually every corner of America where Italians settled. Wine making was as sacrosanct as making bread or pasta. Here is the story of Italian immigrants whose descendants now dominate American wine making. How they struggled and endured. How they persisted in the face of Prohibition and facilitated legislation permitting home wine making of 200 gallons per family. The intrigue, the feuds, the love affairs and financial triumphs are all in this authenticated history from the earliest days of America to the new Italian/American wine makers.

A History of Wine in America, Volume 1

A History of Wine in America, Volume 1
Author: Thomas Pinney
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 1989
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0520254295

"Completely fascinating, Pinney's History of Wine in America combines a myriad of facts about all the states that have endeavored to grow grapes at any time since colonial days into a readable and coherent story. The only study to approach wine through its historical aspects, it will be invaluable to wine writers who want to include historical perspectives in their articles and it will be seized upon by grape growers and wineries throughout the country who want to discover their region's historical roots in viticulture and winemaking. A significant contribution to scholarship, this book should have broad appeal."—John R. McGrew, USDA Agricultural Research Service (retired)

Zinfandel

Zinfandel
Author: Charles L. Sullivan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0520239695

This concise and accessible history of a true American, and Californian, wine grape varietal illuminates its mysterious origins and relates its compelling journey from humble obscurity to cult following.