Wine and Immigration in American History

Pour a glass of American wine and you are drinking the history of immigration. From the Spanish friars who planted the first vines to the Italian families who founded great wineries, the refugee geniuses who lifted its quality, and the Chinese and Mexican hands that built and still tend the vineyards — American wine has been, from the beginning, an immigrant achievement¹.

The missions

American wine began with immigrants of a particular kind: Spanish Franciscan missionaries. When Father Junípero Serra founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1769, he planted vines to make sacramental wine, and the hardy “Mission grape” they spread along the mission trail dominated California wine for more than a century².

The founders

California’s first great wine boom, in the nineteenth century, was led almost entirely by immigrants: the flamboyant Hungarian Agoston Haraszthy, often called the father of California wine; the Germans Charles Krug and Jacob Beringer; and the Frenchmen Charles Lefranc and Paul Masson¹. Then came the Italians — the Gallos, the Mondavis, the Sebastianis — whole families who arrived with little, made wine in barns and community cellars, and went on to build some of the most famous names in American wine³.

American wine was built, from the missions to the fields, by immigrants.— the immigrant story of American wine¹

The émigré geniuses

The twentieth century added a different kind of immigrant: the exile of rare talent. The Russian aristocrat André Tchelistcheff remade Napa; the Ukrainian scientist Konstantin Frank conquered the frozen Finger Lakes; and the Croatian refugee Mike Grgich made the very Chardonnay that beat France at the 1976 Judgment of Paris⁶. Men who had lost everything gave American wine its confidence and its craft.

The hands in the fields

Behind the famous names lies the harder, quieter labour of immigrants whose names rarely reach a wine list. Chinese labourers dug the wine caves and carved the terraces of early California, including Haraszthy’s cellars at Buena Vista¹. And for more than a century, workers of Mexican descent have made up the backbone of the vineyard workforce — many arriving through the Bracero guest-worker program — planting, pruning and picking the grapes⁴. Some of their families have since become vineyard owners and winemakers in their own right⁵.

A nation in a glass

This is the deeper truth of American wine: there is no such thing as an American wine untouched by immigration. Friar and financier, aristocrat and farmworker, German brewer and Croatian refugee — each wave added something, and together they turned a young country into one of the great wine nations of the world. Every bottle is, in its way, a story of people who came from somewhere else and made something new.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• The German brothers who founded Napa’s oldest winery
• André Tchelistcheff, the émigré maestro
• Konstantin Frank and the Finger Lakes

References

1. Boom California — Deeply Rooted: Immigrants and the Hidden Histories of California’s Wine Industry. ↑
2. American Historical Association — What’s in a Bottle? Conquest and the Origins of California Wine. ↑
3. Empire Wine — Migration and Memory: How Immigrant Winemakers Changed California. ↑
4. Smithsonian National Museum of American History — Deep Family Roots: Mexican American Stories from California Vineyards. ↑
5. The Washington Post — Mexican Migrant Workers Came to California to Pick Grapes. Now They Own Wineries. ↑
6. Wine Spectator — Mike Grgich, Croatian Émigré to Napa, Dies. ↑

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine

Hugh Johnson

Traces how immigrants carried the vine to America and built its wine industry.

A Short History of Wine

Rod Phillips

Strong on the waves of immigration that shaped wine in the New World.

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