“Wine is the most healthful
And most hygienic of beverages.”
— Louis Pasteur
“Drink no longer water
But use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.”
— I Timothy, V
“Wine that maketh glad
The heart of man.”
— Psalms CIV, 15
Witter Springs and environs are about as cosmopolitan and filled with all kinds of interesting people who may claim an assorted lineage of nationalities in their family heritage, as any place in the world. Our county has plenty of mongrels like me. As some of my friends, who have time to read my scribblings may have guessed, although I am a Yankee Doodle Dandy true American through and through, I’m proud of my Italian heritage.
Papa came from Italy. He was a hard worker all his life. When he was a lad he ferried jars of olive oil and bottles of wine on the back of his donkey from his home in the tiny mountainside village in Province Abruzzi over the mountains to sell in Precara on the Adriatic Coast.
When things got too hot for Papa he came to America by steerage. My relatives claim, with a wink, Papa was running away from some young lady’s father for something or other he did … or wouldn’t do. It didn’t matter much to me. Papa raised us six kids during the depths of the depression. He kept us fed, clothed and sheltered and he stayed married to Mama for 60 years until she passed away.
That bit of personal history may be of only passing interest to most of my friends and neighbors in Witter Springs. However, many of the wine orchards and some pretty good vino is grown right here in Northern California. We owe a debt to the Italians. Many of the grape orchards were started by Italians just like Papa. My father grew Concord grapes in Michigan when I was a boy. Every fall all our relatives came to our small farm to help stomp the grapes and make wine. Mama put the ball jars filled with the fermenting juice in our cellar on shelves next to the sump pump. By the following spring we had wine. All the older boys and my father all had a small glass of wine with supper and not a single one of us ever became an alcoholic.
I have a grape orchard. All 15 of my vines grow down by the barn. I also have a second volunteer Minuka grape vine. It is a volunteer that grew up wild at the foot of my driveway. In 20 years that single vine has spread 50 feet along my fence. It produces more grapes than all 16 of my other vines.
The trouble I have with my grapes, no matter how close I watch them as harvest time comes near, the deer that live in my back pasture and the birds get most of the grapes before I have a chance to sample any.
I continue to water and feed the grapes anyway. I never learn, and maybe I can’t help it, because of my Italian heritage.
