Simone Cinotto. Soft Soil, Black Grapes

This beautifully typeset book, with well-chosen black and white illustrations, draws the reader into the entrepreneurial spirit and immigrant group dynamics behind the success of California Italian wines. Engagingly written, Simone Cinotto's account deserves a wide distribution among economic, cultural, and migration historians and all who love wine. The book blends rich and colorful descriptions of food history with business intrigues and family passions. It is a story of high-stakes risks and economic rewards. Cinotto focuses on three of the biggest wine producers in American history: the Italian Swiss Colony, which created the towns of Asti and Chianti in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco; Secondo Guasti in Rancho Cucamonga, east of Los Angeles; and Ernest and Julio Gallo in Modesto, in the Central Valley. As Cinotto explains, two historical events proved decisive for the California entrepreneurs: the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, and national prohibition of alcohol from 1920 to1933. The canal extended the possibilities for California agriculture; the criminalization of alcohol also benefited Italians. Well-resourced German and French producers were intimidated by the looming prospect of Prohibition and abandoned the field. Since grape growing remained legal, the Italian Swiss Colony and Guasti's Italian Vineyard Company remained open through the thirteen years of Prohibition, and the Gallo brothers founded their enterprise immediately thereafter, in 1933.

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