SIDELIGHTS ON THE WINE INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA.
By Mae Guthrie Tongie
[Mae Guthrie Tongie, in the Union Signal.] To ONE who views the landscape from a car window in the month of May, the foothill region of Sonoma County in Northern California presents a scene of picturesque beauty. The vine-clad slopes stretching away in peaceful perspective; the valleys dotted thick with orchards of prune and peach and pear trees, and marked by gleaming waterways; the graceful hop-fields showing at intervals their tender green—the whole framed by the blue peaks of the Coast Range mountains—make a picture which once seen will never be forgotten. This is the great viticultural center of California. Here are produced the best (?) American wines, the bulk of which are shipped to Europe. California produces more wine to the acre than any country in the world. Certain kinds of grapes will average 600 gallons per acre. The total acreage of wine grapes grown in Sonoma County is 25,000. A considerable acreage of hops for brewing purposes is also grown. The number of wineries in the county is variously estimated at from 150 to 200. Last year 100,000 tons of grapes were manufactured into wine, yielding a total product of 15,000,000 gallons. The average price paid was twenty dollars per ton, which means $2,000,000 for the season's crop. Thus, from a purely monetary standpoint, it pays to grow wine grapes in California, but from an ethical point of view the baneful effects are everywhere apparent. Almost everyone is mixed up in it in some way. The wine-grower's money goes into the church treasury, the preacher is silenced, and religious energy practically paralyzed. The cause of education is correspondingly affected. "This is a very prosperous community," was the information volunteered at one town visited by the writer. I looked about me for evidences of the boasted prosperity. "Where are your school buildings?" I ventured to inquire, and for reply an old ramshackle, wooden affair was pointed out, within which eighty children of all ages and conditions of life, are inadequately housed, while one teacher struggles vainly to meet the exigencies of the case. It is significant that this town forms a center, outside of which, within a circle twenty miles in diameter, are twenty-seven wineries and twenty-six distilleries. In another town I was reliably informed that among the boys of high-school age, all but one are habitual wine-drinkers. Indeed, in these great viticultural districts, wine-drinking is common among all classes. Men, women, and children indulge in it. The flush of wine is seen upon the faces of old and young alike. Much has been said and written in praise of our California wines. Their virtues have been widely extolled through the press and from the platform, but the fact remains that drunkenness, immorality, and crime are undeniable accompaniments of the wine industry in the State, and a curse seems to rest upon those who engage in it. Many of the vineyards are owned and managed by Italian capitalists, the most noted of these vineyards being the great Asti Vineyard, so called from its marked likeness in climate, topography, and soil, to Asti, in Italy. Here is located one of the largest wineries in the world, where every year enough wine is manufactured to float a battleship.