The Father of California Wine

My ten year old is now in fourth grade and in California, the State Standards require that California State history be taught and this includes the extensive study of the California Missions.  Now, to compound the issue, she attends a Catholic school, so some of the historical information has been “cleansed” and it’s customary to be promoted from a religious standpoint of spreading the Catholic faith to the New World.  Now, for me, a person raised on Zin & Zinn, it’s a little hard to not make offhanded comments to my fourth grader about Father Serra’s offenses especially after I’ve had a little zin and many a late night discussion with my big sister, on the writings of the late Howard Zinn, the radical lefty historian from Boston University and author of “A People’s History of the United States”. And yes, he’s was brilliant and was out of his mind but still worth a read.

Of course, I volunteer to be a chaperone on her fourth grade field trip to San Juan Capistrano and board a school bus straight from the Civil Rights Movement, bald tires and all.  If my kid goes down, I’m going down in flames with her. We arrive at the compound, we’re divided into groups by the senior volunteers sporting black bolero hats and red shirts and you think they’re going to offer you chips and Maggie but no, off we go to learn about life on Father Serra’s Mission. It was something straight out of a fairy tale for Native Americans, right?  My mind is wandering on Zinn — I’m completely distracted looking for hints of shackles, etc… — until we reach the room where, according to our docent,  the boys danced joyously in the vats of grapes while surrounded by girls clapping the rhythmn out for them. In my Zinn infested mind, I’m picturing half naked little boys, jogging around until they collapse from exhaustion and being dragged out by their sisters so they don’t drown in grape sludge.  Right about now, I’m fully engrossed in my vivid imagination (my VI as my big sister likes to call it), and it’s morphing into  Cecil B DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” scene where Moses/Charleton Heston is dancing straw into mud and whips are cracking, and the mud and sweat are just dripping down those golden Hollywood hunk pecks… When Adriana, also a chaperone, rudely interrupts my fantasy with “did you see that factoid painted above the grape dancing stage.  It says Father Serra began winemaking in California. I’m going photograph it.”

So factoid confirmed: It is recorded that the first vineyard was planted by the Jesuit Missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino at San Bruno in 1683.  The mission at San Bruno was abandoned in 1685 due to extreme drought, and it is believed that the vineyard never matured or was harvested.

A century later, in 1779, the Franciscan missionary Father Junípero Serra planted California’s first sustainable vineyard at Mission San Juan Capistrano , and began the first winery in 1783. Father Serra founded nine missions with vineyards before he perished in 1784. This is why Father Serra is referred to as the “Father of California Wine” and the Mexican varietel he planted, came to be called the Mission grape and dominated California wine production until about 1880.

So obviously, there is reason for the controversy surrounding the attempt of the Catholic Church to canonize and launch into sainthood Father Junipero Serra.  It is being hotly contested by numerous Native American Nations and their proponents. But on a different and uncontroversial note, if he doesn’t make it to sainthood, he still gets “three cheers” and can be recognized as the “Father of California Wine” and that’s a claim to fame that no one’s going to protest! Cheers Junipero!

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