Arrival of the Spanish Explorers | EST. 1769
In 1769 | Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary who spearheaded the movement to create the Mission system in California, planted the first known vineyard in California.
He brought wine grape vines from Mexico to each of the 21 missions he founded from San Diego to San Francisco. The wine made at the Mission was used for religious purposes, and the daily table needs and became known as the "Mission grape."
In 1830 | Jean Louis Vignes, a Frenchman from Bordeaux, France, arrived in Southern California with vines and founded the first commercial vineyard in Downtown Los Angeles. He was also the first commercial winemaker in the state to import and grow European Vitis vinifera vines.
Soon after, a group of German immigrants settled in Anaheim and planted a massive vineyard, which is now known as "The Happiest Place On Earth," Disneyland.
In 1853 | Following the forty-niners' search for gold in the hills of Northern California, Count Agoston Haraszthy, an immigrant from Hungary, sought "purple gold" – the ideal "terroir" for exceptional wine. He is recognized for improving California wines' quality and rapid growth and importing many grapevine cuttings from his travels to Europe.
Haraszthy started experimenting with several vines to identify which would be best suited for the mid-peninsula climate. Among the varietals, he planted and cultivated a mysterious grape named Zinfandel. Initially, he ordered vines from Europe that produce a white grape known as "German Zierfandler." The vines that arrived from Hungry were not what he had purchased.
He had planted the Zinfandel vines in a small valley canyon alongside the San Andreas faultline, which the Crystal Springs Reservoir now submerges along Interstate 280. He soon noticed that the cold moisture from the fog rolling in off the Pacific Ocean and down the mountain's eastern slope prevented his grapes from completely ripening for harvest. After three years of strenuous effort, he sold his vineyard and moved north to a warmer California region. In 1857 founded the now-famous Buena Vista Vineyards in Sonoma county.
1854 | Dr. Tripp's Woodside store was the first in San Mateo County to produce and sell wine commercially. He built the first town center in Woodside, which supplied the wood needed to make San Francisco before and after the catastrophic 1906 earthquake.
Following the ancient Redwood forest clearing, the fertile hillside and bottomlands were converted to the vineyard, beginning the Northern California wine industry.
The open space offered fertile soil for the arriving immigrants from Germany, Italy, and France – the people who knew how to make wine. The warm, dry climate made it an ideal location for growing world-class wine grapes.
The area quickly attracted wealthy San Francisco businesspeople looking to build weekend family retreats and summer homes. One was the Stanford family, who built their country home and farm on their land at Palo Alto, eventually founding Stanford University.
Woodside Vineyards has played a significant role in preserving and maintaining the remaining historic vineyards, such as La Questa in Woodside, and the winemaking heritage of the Santa Cruz mountains over the past 60 years.
Follow us as we go back in history.
The Santa Cruz Mountains Appellation
The Santa Cruz Mountains Appellation straddles the San Andrea fault line, which joins the North American tectonic plate on the east and the Pacific plate on the west. It is the first American Viticulture Area (AVA) designated by a mountain region dubbed "America's Premier Mountain Appellation."
The winegrowing region encompasses over 850 square miles, stretching from Monterey Bay south to Gilroy, then back up the coast to Santa Cruz and Halfmoon Bay, with a quick shot over the mountain range east to Woodside. Thirteen micro-climates run across the Santa Cruz Mountainous Appellation, with its mineral-rich terroir that contributes to the winegrape's flavor.
In 1981 | Bob Mullen, the founder of Woodside Vineyards, and a small group of Santa Cruz Mountains vineyard owners established the first American Viticultural Area (AVA) designated by a mountainous region. It is known as "America's Premier Mountain Appellation."
California wines defeated French wines in blind taste testing in the legendary "Judgement of Paris," made famous by the 2008 American comedy-drama film "Bottle Shock," based on the 1976 Paris wine tasting competition. Two of the 11 wines chosen to represent California's best hailed from the Santa Cruz Mountains Appellation.
The Santa Cruz Mountains have a distinctive mountain terroir that combines fertile soil made up of decomposed rock, clay, loam, and limestone. All on top of the shifting San Andreas faultline. The mountain terrain, sea impact, diverse microclimates, and unique soils combine to provide some of the most extraordinary wine-growing conditions in the world.
The painting is by Ed Greco, an artist based in Carmel, California, and is the artist-in-residence at Auto Vino whose oil paintings have decorated the Auto Vino labeled wines. Much of his work can be viewed and bought at the Gallerie Amsterdam in Carmel.
The painting is by Ed Greco, an artist based in Carmel, California, and is the artist-in-residence at Auto Vino whose oil paintings have decorated the Auto Vino labeled wines. Much of his work can be viewed and bought at the Gallerie Amsterdam in Carmel.
