Calif. wine industry started with Chinese workers

[Coventina]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

NAPA, Calif.—Standing on a bridge over the Napa River, 77-year-old Ging Chan watches the sun-flecked water slide lazily around a muddy curve and thinks of a forgotten past.
"This was Chinatown," he says, waving a hand toward a scrubby patch of land that once hummed to the rhythm of hundreds of laborers, empty now save for a sprinkling of bright orange poppies.

The workers who lived here left their signature in pickax marks chiseled into the rocky bones of wine country. But few people know about the Chinese laborers who helped lay the foundations of California viticulture, planting vineyards, bridging creeks and digging caves.

"No one knows that we were so much a part of the fabric that established the industry in California," says San Francisco wine merchant Raymond Fong.

For those who discover Napa's secret past, the results can be fascinating.

"I was surprised to see how many worked on tunnels and planted vineyards," says Cherise Chen Moueix, who with her husband, winemaker Christian Moueix, is hosting a dinner at their Dominus Estate winery honoring the contribution of the Chinese—one of the lead-up events to next month's Napa wine auction.



Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12428466

[Cleita]

1. I know. I've met their descendants.

They also worked in the mining boom towns and the railroads.

[No Elephants]

7. Chinese working to build railroads is better known than Chinese involvement in

California wine country, though. Or maybe that's only me.

[Javaman]

2. America was built on the sweat of the immigrant and the poor.

Chinese built the west. Eastern Europeans built the east. Latin Americans built the southwest, and Africans built the south.

The whites take the money.

[Sultana]

3. Ain''t that a bitch

[No Elephants]

6. A lot of immigrant groups built the East AND the West, some of them considered "white," some not.

[Mrs. Overall]

4. I grew up in Napa in the 70's and this was never really talked about--

Most of the credit for the advent of winemaking in the Napa Valley went to the Italians, French, Germans, and Spanish, but the Europeans didn't do the heavy labor--it was the Chinese. The tunnels built at Beringer Brothers (is it still called that?) are amazing.

And today, I wonder who provides the cheap labor picking all the grapes and doing the grunt work for the vineyards?

[cally]

5. The Chinese were critical to the RR and construction

They brought great building and mining knowledge needed for these developments. In return for their knowledge and hard work, we treated them poorly and tried to deny them jobs once the boom was over.

[No Elephants]

8. Immigrants got exploited. Racial minorities get exploited. The Chinese were both. Oy.

[mulsh]

9. well, duh. I've been around wineries since the late '50's

Maybe the people who bought up vineyards from the 70's on were ignorant but not most of the older folk.

I remember Brother Mel at Christian Brother's explaining to my brothers and me how Chinese laborers dug the caves and terraced some of the fields. Ditto people at Buena Vista and Louis Martini. Italians, Germans etc may have owned the wineries but the facts about Chinese labor were never much of a secret.In fact some of my grandfather's winery owning buddies were down right proud of the work the Chinese, Mexican and even european immigrants did.

California has a rich history of immigrant labor. You can find all sorts of info easily on line at the Bancroft Library.

[XemaSab]

10. The treatment of the Chinese and other Asians in California is a shame

:(