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California wine has a long and continuing history, and in the late twentieth century became recognized as producing some of the world's finest wine. While wine is made in all fifty U. S. states, up to 90% (by some estimates) of American wine is produced in the state. California would be the fourth largest producer of wine in the world if it were an independent nation.

Although conflicting accounts exist, the first recorded planting of a vineyard was probably by the Spanish Jesuit Missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino at Misión San Bruno in Baja California in 1683 implanting the first variety named "Misionéro". In 1779, Franciscan missionaries under the direction of the Spanish Father Junípero Serra planted California's first vineyard at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Journals kept at San Juan Capistrano show that between May 1779 and 1781, the padres supervised six campesinos from Baja California in planting 2,000 grapevines at the mission. The first winery in Alta California was built in San Juan Capistrano in 1783; both red and white wines (sweet and dry), brandy, and a port like fortified wine called Angelica were all produced from the Mission grape. Father Serra founded eight other California missions. Hence, he has been called the "Father of California Wine". The variety he planted, presumably descended from Spain, became known as the Mission grape and dominated California wine production until about 1880. The oldest vineyard in California is the San Jose Vineyard situated under the mountains in Santa Barbara county, between Goléta and San Marcos Pass. It was the property of the Church up to 1853, when it was sold by the Archbishop of the Los Angeles Diocese to an eccentric old pioneer named James McCaffrey, who, with his sons, now cultivates the old vines, producing annually about 8,000 gallons of the best vintage. One of the strangest things to be mentioned concerning this ancient vineyard is this: It has not been plowed or cultivated for 30 years. It produces a good crop of wild oats for hay year after year, but no plow is permitted to disturb the soil. The old man declines to explain how he never fails to have a full crop while his neighbors have none. Here upon the sides of an ancient old adobe building is a vine which starting near the door, divides and sends a branch in opposite directions, and after making a circuit of the building, more than 100 feet, both ends have been grafted together, forming a complete hoop around the building.

In 1829, 17 acres of Mission Grape vines were planted in Pueblo de Los Angeles by Ysidro Reyes, (grandson of Juan Francisco Reyes the 3rd & 5th Alcade de Pueblo) Ysidro Reyes had been born at Mission San Gabriel where he had learned to cultivate and ferment this hardy grape. All of the Missions raised this grape for sacramental wine, but the residents of the Pueblo developed a taste for drinking wine. The fermentation process consisted of placing the grapes into a cowhide hung loosely from four trees or posts. A popular drink was the fortified wine known as Angelica It is unknown if Reyes was the first commercial winemaker in Los Angeles, but he appears to have supported his family solely from his role in producing wine. In 1831, Reyes had the good fortune of becoming the neighbor of newly arrived French cooper and distiller Jean Louis Vignes who would serve as a mentor to young Reyes. Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1831, Jean Louis Vignes had bought and cultivated 104 acres of land located between the original Pueblo and the banks of the Los Angeles River. He named his property El Aliso after the centuries old white alder tree found near the entrance. He planted a vineyard and started preparing to make wine. Vignes's early experiments, while waiting for his own vines to mature, were with his neighbor Ysidro Reyes' newly producing vineyards. During the three years that it took for Vignes' vines to begin producing grapes, the two men worked well together and became friends with Vignes serving as a mentor to Reyes in improving the quality of the wine. The Mission grape grew well and yielded large quantities of wine, but Vignes was not satisfied with the results even after attempting to discern if aging it would improve the taste. The common practice at the time was to drink the wine as soon as it was fermented unless it were to be made into Angelica, a fortified wine distilled similarly to Port. Vignes decided it was necessary to import better vines from Bordeaux, Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc. The vines transited around Cape Horn. To preserve their roots during the long trip, they were inserted in moss and potato slices. Vignes became the first Californio who grew quality vines, and the first who aged his wines. By the time Ysidro Reyes left Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1839 to plant the vineyard of his newly awarded Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, he had become a skilled vintner, with an excellent source for aging barrels and a wagon load of grafts from Vignes' European Bordeaux grapes that would flourish in the fertile Santa Monica Canyon. The exact date of Vignes first vintage from the European vines is unknown. However, it was may have been 1837, because in 1857 he ran an advertisement claiming that some of his wines were 20 years old. The wood for the barrels came from land Vignes owned in the San Bernardino Mountains. Thus in the early 1800s California commercial viticulture was mostly based in Southern California. While Jean Louis Vignes is recognized as California's first documented importer of European wine vines, planted on his land in Los Angeles in 1833. he was quickly followed by William Wolfskill, another major early wine maker in California, who purchased his first vineyard in 1838 in the Los Angeles area. By 1858 he owned 55,000 vines across 145 acres. By 1842, he made regular shipments to Santa Barbara, Monterey and San Francisco. By 1849, El Aliso, was the most extensive vineyard in California. Vignes owned over 40,000 vines and produced 150,000 bottles, or 1000 barrels, per year. As a prominent citizen of Los Angeles, Jean Louis Vignes met and entertained such well known men as General William Tecumseh Sherman, Thomas Larkin, William Heath Davis and Thomas ap Catesby Jones. His wine was drunk all over California and samples were sent to President Tyler in Washington, D. C. and to France.

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) had a major effect on the geography, economy, and history of wine growing in California. The discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutter's mill, El Dorado County, triggered the wine industry of California. The Gold Rush brought an influx of people to Northern California, many of whom arrived and settled in San Francisco (whose population grew from 1,000 to 25,000 between January 1848 and December 1849). This resulted in a significant increase in demand for wine and spurred wine production in the area within 100 miles of San Francisco. In the earlies 1850, local wineries mainly supplied gold miners. The historic wine production site in Santa Clara County was situated on the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains where today resides winemakers and growers of the Santa Clara Valley AVA. On this site, in 1852, Charles LeFranc made the first commercial planting of fine European wine grapes in Santa Clara County to found Almaden Vineyards. In 1861 Charles Krug who previously had worked for Agoston Haraszthy and Patchett founded his namesake winery in St. Helena and began making his own wine. Originally a Prussian political dissident, Krug learned the trade of the vintner as an apprentice to Haraszthy in the Sonoma Valley. The land on which Krug founded his winery was part of his wife's (Carolina Bale's) dowry. Krug became an important leader of winemaking in the Napa Valley. He was also a mentor for Karl Wente, Charles Wetmore and Jacob Beringer, all of whom became important vintners. In 1863, species of native American grapes were taken to Botanical Gardens in England. These cuttings carried a species of root louse called phylloxera which attacks and feeds on the vine roots and leaves. Phylloxera is indigenous to North America and native vine varieties had developed resistance. European vines had no such evolutionary protection. By 1865, phylloxera had spread to vines in Provence. Over the next 20 years, it inhabited and decimated nearly all the vineyards of Europe. Many methods were attempted to eradicate phylloxera but all proved temporary and none economical. Finally Thomas V. Munson, a horticulturist in Texas, suggested grafting the European vinifera vines onto American riparia rootsocks. So, there began a long, laborious process of grafting every wine vine in Europe over to American rootstocks. It was only in this manner that the European wine industry could be retrieved from extinction. In the 1870s, El Dorado County was California's third largest wine producing area. organized the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976 where renown French oenophiles participated in a blind tasting to compare the best wines from California's wine regions and France's prestigious Bordeaux and Burgundy regions. After the judges compared ten Chardonnays (white) vintages, six Californians and four French, the California wines placed three of the top four. Six of the nine judges ranked Chateau Montelena's '73 vintage number one; Chalone Vineyard came in third and Spring Mountain Vineyard fourth. When ten Cabernet Sauvignons (red), six Californians and four French, were sniffed, sipped, swished and spat, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars' '73 vintage ranked number one. George Taber, the sole journalist who attended the event, penned the article Judgment of Paris in Time magazine reporting the shocking results with the California wines sweeping primer French vintages according to local judges. As Jim Barrett, general manager/part owner of Chateau Montelena said: "Not bad for kids from the sticks." The 1976 event led to expanding the recognition and prestige of vintners in the New World, specifically, the Golden State. The San Francisco Wine Tasting of 1978 was conducted 20 months after the seminal Paris Wine Tasting. Spurrier flew in from Paris to participate in the evaluations, which were held at the Vintners Club. The California wines swept the rankings in both red and white categories. The pearl anniversary event organized by Steven Spurrier, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, was entitled, The Tasting that Changed the Wine World: 'The Judgment of Paris' 30th Anniversary, occurring simultaneously on 24 May 2006 at the Copia in Napa, California, and at Berry Bros. & Rudd, Britain's oldest wine merchant, in London, England. Five Californian reds finished in the top spots before the highest ranked Bordeaux, a 1970 Château Mouton Rothschild, placed sixth. Ridge Vineyards' 1971 Monte Bello received the number one honor. In Oz Clarke's New encyclopedia of Wine, Mr. Clarke writes that California "was the catalyst and then the locomotive for change that finally pried open the ancient European wineland's rigid grip on the hierarchy of quality wine and led the way in proving that there are hundreds if not thousands of places around the world where good to great wine can be made." He observes that "until the exploits of California's modern pioneers of the 1960s and '70's, no one had ever before challenged the right of Europe's, and in particular, France's vineyards, to be regarded as the only source of great wine in the world." Fred Franzia and his Bronco Wine Company has caused recent waves in the business of California wine marketing. The company's low priced Charles Shaw wine which is sold exclusively by Trader Joe's markets along with the company's other labels have attracted new entry level wine consumers to the fold but also has alienated many of the smaller vintners in the state by placing some downward pressure on pricing. Newer regions, producing award winning wines, have entered the California wine industry, including Temecula Valley county in the south, the Santa Ynez Valley in the Central Coast, and the Red Hills Lake County in the north. In the early 21st century, vintners have begun reviving heirloom grape varieties, such as Trousseau Gris and Valdiguié.

The Californian wine industry has had a long history of employing migrant workers to tend to the vineyards and assist at harvest time. Its close proximity to Mexico has opened the possibility to some of those workers being classified as undocumented or illegal. Karen Ross, president of the California Association of Winegrowers, has estimated that as of 2007 the number could be as high as 70% of the employees in the California wine industry may be illegal. New immigration regulations announced by the Department of Homeland Security required all employers to fire illegal workers or face paying a fine up to $10,000 for each infraction. In August, following a lawsuit by the AFL–CIO union, a federal judge placed a restraining order on the enactment of the new regulations pending further review. Industry experts predict substantial changes will come into the Californian wine industry as results of the changing labor and immigration laws which will result in higher prices for consumers in the public market.