Beautiful Foot Hills Vineyards, Santa Clara County – c1907
Santa Clara County is one of the original counties of California, formed at the time of statehood in 1850. Located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, stretching west to the Santa Cruz Mountains and east past San Jose to Alameda County, its southern boundary is near Gilroy — almost 840,000 acres perfect for wine growing. Between 1856 and 1887, the county’s grape acreage grew from 220 acres to nearly ten thousand. The early settlers bought land and created a modern Eden of orchards, nurseries, ranches, and vineyards in all sections of the fertile valley. By the mid-1880s, the Santa Clara Valley was one of the leaders in the state’s production of high-quality table wines. Several revered wine figures were instrumental in the industry’s founding — Delmas, Lefranc, Masson, Stanford, Mirassou, and Pellier. Yet the earliest vineyard keepers in this magnificent land were the padres at Mission Santa Clara de Asis, founded in January 1777, number eight in the Franciscan chain of twenty-one Alta California Missions.
Mission Santa Clara de Asis, California, Founded 1777 – c1800 View
History reports the vineyards at Mission Santa Clara were some of the more productive of all the Missions, and the wines declared “superb.” The wines were made from the usual Mission grape variety, and a post-secularization survey noted one vineyard with 1600 vines. It is also fairly certain that grapes were supplied on occasion to the Mission at San Francisco. The Santa Clara Mission was one of the last to be secularized, in 1836, and its vines were maintained by the Franciscans until that date. But once the fathers were gone, for the next two decades the vineyard was neglected, yet never destroyed. In 1851, Italian-born and highly regarded Jesuit Giovanni (John) Nobili was asked to take over the old, dormant church and Mission buildings and establish a college for young men. He took possession of the property from the Franciscans in March 1851, and Santa Clara College was founded, the first in California. The Jesuits began cultivating the old vineyard, planted more Mission grape vines, and resumed the production of wine at least until the 1880s. Nearby, the ancient adobe wine house was standing by.
Novitiate Of The Sacred Heart With Its Orange Grove And Vineyard – c1900
“Greetings from Los Gatos, California” are sent from a turn-of-the-century postcard featuring a view of the Sacred Heart Novitiate hillside complex. Upon the death of Santa Clara College president John Nobili in 1856, Nicolas Congiato (1816-1897), priest and Superior General of the Jesuit Missions of California, assumed the presidency of the college. Under his administration, he conceived and supervised the establishment of the Los Gatos Jesuit Novitiate training center, a facility that would become known for its winery and vine-covered hillsides, acknowledged as the most important and long-lasting new winery of the 1880s. In 1886, administrator Congiato purchased the forty-acre ranch of Harvey Wilcox and that of his neighbor in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. just above and southeast of Los Gatos. Wilcox had previously planted an orange grove and a small four-acre vineyard, and built a lovely family home amongst his orange trees. The Novitiate seminary is the large, multi-storied building seen at upper right, the winery is left center, and the Wilcox home and orchard are below the winery, lower center.
Sacred Heart Novitiate Winery, Los Gatos, Santa Clara Valley – c1900
Winery Sacred Heart Novitiate, Los Gatos – c1940s
During Prohibition, the huge demand for Novitiate sacramental wines spurred a new, rapid growth. Vineyards soon covered some 135 acres, while winery production reached 500,000 gallons. Soon after the Repeal, the Novitiate was regularly marketing dessert and table wines in the retail trade, “wines of honest and true quality … from unirrigated hillside vineyards,” they advertised. At the time of this postcard, Novitiate wines were on the wine list of the prestigious Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Production through the 1970s averaged 30,000 cases annually, but ageing equipment and growing competition brought an end to production in the 1980s, and most of the hillside vineyard land was sold to the town of Los Gatos as open space. In 1997, Rob and Diana Jensen, who had been running a small vineyard on their property since 1993 and making wine in their Silicon Valley garage, purchased the Novitiate grounds and began to produce their home label, Testarossa. They continue to operate within the historic winery structures, and have upgraded the buildings extensively for safety and efficiency — a salute to the Novitiate Winery, the fourth oldest continuously operating winery in California. This rare postcard shows the original wine cellar, with its arched architectural detail, in the corner between the added extensions. ** The magnificent old Novitiateseminary (not visible) remains high on the hilltop, but since 1967 it no longer schools novices and serves as a Jesuit retirement home and headquarters for the Jesuit operations in California.
Novitiate “To Your Health, With Pleasure…” c1970
“Jesuit Wines of Tradition Since 1888. You are cordially invited to visit our Tasting Room.”
References
Sullivan, Chas. Like Modern Edens. Winegrowing in Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains 1798-1981. 1982.
