LA-based wineries cultivate the area’s history as a wine-growing region – Press Enterprise

Armed with garden shears and garage stepladders, a dozen or so volunteers have arrived at the San Gabriel Mission, some 12 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, to recreate history by harvesting grapes from the original or “mother” California vine.

“Doing this is a real privilege, as well as a great fun,” says Amy Luftig, one half of the Angeleno Wine Company, which in 2018 opened the first winery in downtown LA since the days of Prohibition.

Known as “the Ramona vine”, she is almost 250 years old, and clumps of small, dark purple grapes hang from her thin branches. Many are bigger than usual, due to the excessive rain earlier this year.

“That means they have more juice,” notes Luftig, “and since they stayed on the vine for longer than ever this year too, they will produce an even riper, sweeter dessert wine called Angelica.”

The vines stretch along overhead wooden trellises in several areas of the Mission, yet it is barely three hours before the volunteers have filled about half the large, square bin sitting on the bed of Mark Blatty’s truck.

“There’s about 500 pounds there,” says Blatty of Blatty Wines, the Highland Park-based boutique maker that is looking to open its own formal tasting room when the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control processes the paperwork.

“Whether it’s getting a license, harvesting, crushing, bottling, corking or labelling, everything takes time, especially in a small winery,” notes Jasper Dickson, the other half of Angeleno Wine Company.

Alongside Cavaletti Wines, based in Moorpark, these three companies are the founders of LAVA, the Los Angeles Vintners Association, a five-member group that is dedicated to growing and promoting wines from within Los Angeles County.

They work with the growing number of young, experimental viticulturalists that are also determined to show the California grape still thrives in terroir closer to home.

“It has never been lost or forgotten,” notes Patrick Kelley of Cavaletti. “It’s just being discovered again.”

Emptying another bucket of grapes into the huge bin, Dickson explains to a new volunteer that most people don’t realize the roots of the now-huge California wine industry were, literally, hundreds of miles south of the now-famous places like Napa Valley, Santa Barbara or Paso Robles.

Downtown Los Angeles was once lined with vineyards due in part to the water that the L.A. River could supply, and in 1833, Jean-Louis Vignes built the first winery there beneath a giant sycamore named “El Aliso.”

“The original LA County seal was a bunch of grapes, and LA was known as the “city of vines”, but there were problems besides those of occasional extreme weather. In the 1880s Pierce’s disease killed off dozens of vineyards, and then there was Prohibition,” he explains.

The Los Angeles wine industry did not disappear when alcohol became illegal. A handful of wineries moved into providing sacramental or “medicinal” wine, and it was not illegal to sell grapes for thirsty people to make their own wine at home (up to 200 gallons per year).

The expansion of Los Angeles did much damage too, with all but a few of the 100 or so local vineyards disappearing, and growers further north were more than happy to step into the breach and serve as many customers as they could.

There is still a living reminder of the wine industry’s past in downtown, says Luftig. “Look above your head on Olvera Street, and in a couple of places you will see some small vines growing wild. They originated from the mother vine here at San Gabriel.”

Occasionally, LAVA gets phone calls from people curious about something strange growing in their backyard, and they will help to restore such vines if they can. Some even produce enough grapes for a few bottles of wine, and often it emerges that many of them grew from seeds taken from Mission grapes across the region.

Based on North Spring Street, the Angeleno Wine Company source Spanish varietals from small, family vineyards less than 50 miles away in Agua Dulce, and a little further out in the Antelope Valley. Their bottle logo is inspired by El Aliso, and their small-batch wines change regularly.

The Angelica wine, which is “fortified” with the addition of brandy, is particularly special. Just over 330 bottles were produced from the last harvest in 2021, and the release will be initially to wine club members of LAVA’s founders, and then — if there are any left — to the general public.

The small, squat bottles of Angelica feature an illustration of the mother vine etched in the glass, and now that she has been harvested and pruned for another year, it is time for the volunteers to shake errant grapes out of their shirts, pick twigs out of their hair, wash off sticky hands, and get their reward: a sweet sip of history.