Thirty years ago, the descriptor ‘Cal-Ital’ could often trigger a shudder of revulsion for an informed buyer of American wine. Many were scarred by inexpensive, high-volume efforts by the state’s largest wine producers eager to discover the next big thing. The Cal-Ital movement died something of a merciful death in the early 2000s, leaving behind little trace save for a moderate American affinity for Pinot Grigio that supports around 15,000 acres (6,000 ha) of Californian vines.
Much less visible than the cheap and cheerful bottlings of Sangiovese that briefly decorated supermarket shelves, a rapidly proliferating group of devotee winemakers and growers have been grafting, planting and producing a wide variety of Italian grape varieties throughout the state of California, and the results of their efforts are now far too good to ignore.
But it’s been a long road to get here.
No California Wine Without Italians
Most early California wine-industry pioneers were German, Swiss or Hungarian, with very few Italians to be seen. One of the earliest known Italians growing wine in California was Andrea Arata, who planted his Amador County vineyard in 1853, paving the way for Amador County to eventually become a major centre of Italian American winegrowing. Napa Valley got its first Italian producer in 1866 when Giacomo Migliavacca moved his family there and established what would be, for a time, one of the largest producers in the region.
Andrea Sbarboro, an immigrant from Genoa who made his fortune building savings and loan societies, endeavoured in 1881 to create what Thomas Pinney describes in A History of Wine in America as ‘a work of genuine social philanthropy’, by founding the Italian Swiss Colony.
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Image at top of winemaker Sam Bilbro by Joshua Harding for Overshine Wines.
The post Cal-Ital’s Time Has Come appeared first on Vinography.
Source : https://www.vinography.com/2025/01/cal-itals-time-has-come
