City of Vines : A History of Wine in Los Angeles

by Thomas Pinney

Winner of the 2016 California Historical Society Book Award! The latest title from the author of A History of Wine in America recounts the beginnings of California’s world-renowned wine trade—a story set not in Napa but in the isolated pueblo now called Los Angeles. 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.

Published in collaboration with the California Historical Society

Genres: History

353 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 7, 2017

Reviews

[Amy Luftig · Rating 5 out of 5]

It doesn't feel quite right to say this is a book about the history of Los Angeles wine making.

First and foremost, this is a book about the history of Los Angeles. Yet what is so compelling about Dr. Pinney's telling of Los Angeles history - and what most Angelenos don't realize - is that you can't talk about the history of Los Angeles without talking about wine.

In this book, Dr. Thomas Pinney succeeds at telling the story of Los Angeles' origins from the unique and fascinating perspective of wine production. With his witty and honest writing style, he engagingly demonstrates how Los Angeles quickly came to be - and then ceased to be - the epicenter of California wine making.

If you didn't know that Los Angeles was producing millions of bottles of wine before Napa had their first commercial winery, if you didn't know that California wine used to mean Los Angeles wine, or if you didn't know that the streets behind Los Angeles' Union Station are named for old winemakers, then I would read this book.

Any person interested in Los Angeles history should read this book. Any lover of wine should read this book. The book is excellent. It is well written and meticulously researched. Most importantly, I am so glad and grateful someone told this story ....or it would have been lost forever.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than a few spots where Pinney recites numerous examples of a particular phenomenon (such as the rapid failure of Los Angeles wineries after repeal of Prohibition), this book paints a clear, well documented and engaging history of wine making in Los Angeles county, giving perspective on a forgotten aspect of Los Angeles' history. For wine lovers, a little more perspective on the market for mass wine (the main production in Los Angeles throughout its history) versus premium wines and the development of the market for premium wines would be useful.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

One wouldn’t call this a masterpiece, but it’s a fine and revelatory bit of local history done in proper academic style.