South Valley Wineries
Rich in History
An excerpt from Images of America, Wineries of Santa Clara Valley by Bev Stenehjem
Verde Vineyards
2143 Buena Vista Gilroy • 408.848.5907 verdevineyards. com
Open: 12-5 pm First & Third Weekends
Founded: 2017
“ We are excited to be a new part of the South Bay wine scene and look forward to positively contributing to the Santa Clara Valley wine industry. Our first releases have already received 90 + point wine ratings and gold medals and our new vintages will be even better.”
Lynda & George Green, Owners
Most Celebrated Wine Our 2015 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon.
Future Plans We are getting ready to bottle some new wines to add to our award winning current releases that will give our customers even more to taste. As our vineyards mature, our production and quality will continue to rise.
Wine Club: Coming Soon
The wineries of Santa Clara Valley have a rich history, dating back to the 1700s. First came the Spaniards, then the Frenchmen, and finally the Italians. The secret was out, the mild climate here in Santa Clara Valley was ideal, not only for growing vines, but also for living comfortably. The Spanish padres founded Mission Santa Clara in 1777 and seeing snarls of native grapevines climbing the trees along the creeks and valley, they knew that their grape cuttings would thrive here. Although the quality of the wine varied, much of it was crude and mostly used for religious purposes.
In the mid-1800s, the French started to arrive, first lured to the Sierra Mountains by the Gold rush and then settling in the San Jose area for all the good land available. The French greatly improved the quality of wines by planting the right varietals and employing years of established techniques to improve vineyard health and grape quality.
By 1880, the Italians came in droves, bringing their fruit-growing skills and hard work ethic to share in the bounty of the Santa Clara Valley. The Italians did most of the pruning, with centuries of best practices behind them.
Thousands of acres were planted in grapevines. Most of the young wine was sold to the growing population and restaurants in San Francisco-oftentimes finished and blended there for further sale and shipped off to other parts of the country.
The booming wine industry almost ground to a halt in the early 1900s. First, phylloxera appeared-a tiny, sap-sucking aphid that threatened to wipe out most of the vineyards. As winemakers struggled to stop the devastation of this pest, in 1906, the San Francisco earthquake hit. The resulting fires destroyed 15 million gallons of wine and several major wine cellars.
With little time to recuperate from phylloxera and the earthquake, Prohibition started in 1920, criminalizing the manufacture and sale of wine. And to cap it all off, the Great Depression began in 1929. People could hardly afford bread, let along wine.
Many of our wineries tore out their remaining vineyards and sought other ways to make a living. However, more than a few of our valley winemakers stayed the course, keeping their vineyards alive by either selling their wine to a church( which was legal) or secretly selling their wines to people of all walks of life, including the police and other government officials. Trapdoors, secret cellars, and get-away cars were the name of the game. With the end of Prohibition in 1933, the wineries slowly made a comeback. For the next 30 years or so, most wine was called jug wine. People would bring their own jugs to the wineries and ask for a fill up. They had two choices: red or white. Wines were usually a blend of several kinds of grapes, and the varietals or vintage years were not specified.
In the mid-1900s, the Santa Clara Valley was a profusion of orchards and vineyards from one end to the other. Our wine region famously became called the Valley of Heart’ s Delight.
When the Judgment of Paris occurred in 1976, the California wine industry exploded. At a blind tasting of French and American wines, an all-French panel of wine experts award d the top honors to several California wines. Mayhem ensued when the French wine judges learned that the California wines had won. Several of the judges stormed out in protest, bitterly denouncing the contest.
The mystique of Old World, French wines gave way to the New World of California wines as the finest in the world. In fact,
Continues on Page 107
76
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2018 gmhtoday. com