January 2023 – July 2023
The Wine History Project research into the late 19th-century landscape of rolling hills and mountainous terrain west of Paso Robles in the Adelaida and Templeton areas has been full of interesting revelations. The first is that the Italians who migrated to northern San Luis Obispo County in the early 1900s came from Northern Italy near the Swiss border. That landscape was covered with dense forests similar to our landscape. The Italians came with fellow travelers from nearby Italian villages, having learned the skills of dairymen and lumbermen. They had no skills in planting vineyards or making commercial wine. These Italians earned their living by clearing the forest for fields and vineyards and using another important skill, the art of charcoal production, to remove all traces of the trees. The wages earned from this hard labor provided the money for each family to purchase their own land and plant gardens, establish dairies, and establish vineyards. They were mentored by a Frenchman, Adolph Siot, and the York family. The majority of the Italians worked in vineyards to learn their skills and then planted Zinfandel during the early years of Prohibition on their own land. Their descendants are still farming the land. This is their story.