Chinese Labor and California Wine Industry

The content of this post is gleaned from the article, "Wine Makers of the Past" by Margie Lew, published in Gum Saan Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, August, 1977, pp2-3, Chinese Historical Society of Southern California.
 
A group of 228 persons got together for a gourmet Chinese dinner with wine at the Golden Palace Restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown May 14, 1977. Among the guests were:

Elne Meline, President of the Conference of California Historical Societies; Merrill Baugham, Vice-President of Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society; Claire Crain, Conference Vice-President (14B). There was a large number of people from the wine making regions of California. The guest speaker was William F. Heintz (1933-2012) of Glen Ellen (Sonoma Valley) who had the distinction of being the only professional wine and viticultural historian in the country at the time of this dinner. I do not know whether this distinction still hold true today.

Below are excerpts from the above mentioned article.

“Through diligent and persistent research, Mr. Heintz has discovered that the Chinese built many of the wineries in California, as well as working on numerous wine cellars (also known as tunnels) which entailed a great amount of blasting and excavating. These buildings and tunnels were so well buiolt that many of them are still standing and are being used.”

“Mr. Heintz states, ‘It is my conclusion that most of the wine made in California during the 19^th century was made by Chinese or with Chinese help. This is based on the simple, inescapable fact that Chinese made up 90% of the vineyard and winery help in those years. They not only pruned the vines in the spring and picked the grapes in the fall, they made or helped make the wine in the wineries in the 1880’s”

“Without reservation, Mr. Heintz feels that viticulture in California would have been set back 30 to 50 years were it not for the Chinese vineyard worker. At least two circumstances bear this fact:

For the first 40 years of grape-growing in California, it was believed that the vines should be no higher than 18 inches from the ground. Picking grpaes required continuous bending and stooping in addition o lifting 30-50 lb boxes of the fruit under a hot sun for hours at a stretch. Caucasian laborers could not work under such conditions, so it was the Chinese who did this heavy, painful work from the 1850’s to about 1890.

In the 1870’s, a vine disease called “Phylloxera” (native to our East Coast) threatened to wipe out the vineyards in California. Twenty years of experimentation finally brought forth the discovery that Eastern American grape roots, grafted with the fine European grape, was the only solution. Since most of the grapevines had been wiped out by the phylloxera, the vineyards had to be replanted. Thi was done by the Chinese laborers, who also took over the tedious work of grafting the vines, a delicate the technical undertaking. (Field grafters of vines today are among the most highly paid professions in viticulture). Mr. eintz further states, ‘The phylloxera story is one of the highlights in the history of the grape and win in this state. You can read about it in most history books. But nowhere will you find any reference to the Chinese contribution.’”

Mr. Heintz’s books include “California’s Napa Valley: One Hundred Sixty Years of Wine Making,” which was published in 1999.

He also wrote “Wine Country - A History of Napa Valley (the Early Years 1838-1920)” and “San Francisco’s Mayors 1850-1880.”

Last but not least, he published “The Chinese in California, a brief bibliographic history,”  by Gladys C. Hansen (selected by) & Heintz, William F. (annotated by) Heintz (Jan 1, 1970)