Sacramento: California’s Next Wine Country?

No one is clamoring for the creation of a Sacramento American Viticultural Area. Until now. Even then, consider this more tease than clamor.

For the record, American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs, are federally designated enclaves recognized for how their viticultural and enological histories and characteristics distinguish their wines.

They provided the framework for my book “The Signature Wines of Superior California: 50 Wines that Define the Sierra Foothills, the Delta, Yolo and Lodi.” Several American Viticultural Areas surround Sacramento, regions like Shenandoah Valley, Dunnigan Hills, Fiddletown, Fair Play, Clarksburg, Lodi and so forth.

But the city of Sacramento is in none of them, though a portion of the southern and eastern reaches of the county fall within the Lodi AVA.

What’s more, the book’s theme addresses the development of the modern wine trade in neighboring AVAs, and other than providing a market for the wines of nearby regions, Sacramento had little to do with that.

When I recently was asked to join a panel to reflect on Sacramento’s culinary history over the past 175 years, to early in the Gold Rush, I began to brush up on what little grape growing and winemaking history the city and county of Sacramento had to offer.

 

More than I expected, frankly. It even started before the Gold Rush, when John Sutter arrived in 1839 with visions of creating his fiefdom New Helvetia, starting with a fort in what now is midtown Sacramento. Sutter noticed wild grapes growing in the neighborhood, and consequently retained a German distiller, built a still, and hired three coopers to make barrels for his nascent distillery and winery. Those aspirations went nowhere, and by 1845 he had abandoned that dream.

(Those grapes also were available to the area’s indigenous residents before Sutter arrived, but Native Americans did not take advantage of them, preferring elderberries also growing wild in the area, with which they made a fermented beverage, according to a ranger at the State Indian Museum next to Sutter’s fort.)

Sutter had more luck about 45 miles north of Sacramento, where he established his sprawling Hock Farm along the Feather River. There, he grew everything from roses to peaches, cacti to cattle. Around 30 acres were devoted to grapes. During the harvest of 1856, according to one of Sutter’s handwritten letters still extant, he dispatched to a San Francisco merchant one box of 11 dozen figs and three boxes of grapes. He wrote of the grapes: “I prefer to make brandy and wine of them…I think you will find the grapes superior to the Los Angeles grapes,” perhaps the first volley in the Northern California/Southern California rivalry that endures to this day.

In 1858, Sutter made 400 gallons of wine. His exhibit at the California State Fair that year included almonds, apples, pears, figs and six bottles of his brandy and wine.

 

If a Sacramento Vintners Hall of Fame ever were created, the first inductees almost certainly would include Anthony Preston Smith. He arrived in Sacramento from New York in 1849, and immediately bought 50 acres from John Sutter along the south side of the American River two and half miles upstream from Sutter’s fort. (By 1858, Smith’s spread had grown to 90 acres.)

There, he created “Smith’s Pomological Gardens,” where he cultivated more than 1000 varieties of plants scattered through orchards, vineyards, and fields. With two miles of meandering walkways, “Smith’s Pomological Gardens” became both tourist attraction and functioning nursery.

Early on, Smith tended 20 varieties of imported grapes, eventually some 50, including Zinfandel. Indeed, Smith is seen today as the person to introduce Zinfandel to California. The first mention of the variety in the state is in a description of Smith’s exhibit at the California State Fair of 1858, when the variety was spelled “Zeinfindall.”

Smith also launched his own winery, bragging that his wines “contain nothing but the pure juice of the grape,” the very claim you hear today by practitioners of the “natural-wine” movement.

In addition to gardens and winery, Smith owned a seed warehouse in downtown Sacramento, his ads boasting that he had the largest selection of table and wine grapes in the state.

Of other prominent players in Sacramento’s wine history, two especially need to be acknowledged.

One was Jacob Knauth, who in 1851 established his “Sutter Floral Gardens” at what is now 29^th and J streets, close to Sutter’s fort. By 1854, his site also included a winery, ostensibly called Sutter Hall, though I have found no primary documentation to verify that.

A year earlier, in 1853, Knauth played the leading role in forming the Orleans Hill Vinicultural Association, which ultimately developed a 640-acre vineyard in Cache Creek Canyon of Yolo County and became a major if brief player in California’s early wine trade. The association also eventually built a winery at the vineyard, which Knauth probably wished the group had done sooner. (The association was not named after New Orleans, but a strain of the green grape Riesling, which Knauth was convinced would do well in Yolo County. It didn’t.)

In the winter of 1860/1861, floods swamped “Sutter Floral Gardens,” collapsing walls of Knauth’s cellar, washing away puncheons of wine, and nearly destroying his gardens and the wines he had bottled. Evidence suggests he moved his winemaking to a winery at 11^th and B streets on the northern edges of downtown Sacramento, which San Francisco real-estate developer Henry Gerke had constructed. Knauth became Gerke’s winemaking superintendent, and eventually appears to have bought him out, the winery then becoming Knauth & Co.

Knauth also owned a retail wine shop on the southwest corner of 4^th and J streets, “under the Capital Bank,” his ads read.

The Sacramento area’s most exuberant and creative early player on the wine scene was Benjamin Bugbey, also known as B.N. Bugbey. He settled initially at Folsom, where by the mid-1860s he was cultivating grapes just northeast of the town, a vineyard he named Natoma, the first of two in the area to carry the same name, though unrelated. There, he was growing such grapes as Zinfandel, Riesling, Verdelho, Muscadine, Sweetwater, and Cannon Hall Muscat, and making 8000 gallons of wine annually.

Bugbey was a resilient and adaptable entrepreneur, even serving a short stint as Sacramento County sheriff.

As a farmer, he and other growers in the Sacramento area initially saw promise in grapes as raisins, but while the region’s hot and sunny weather was conducive to drying fruit, the area’s early fall rains weren’t, and the raisin trade gradually moved south, to the Fresno area.

By 1871, Bugbey was tending a reputed 75 varieties of grapes and making wine and brandy, including a Cognac, a Sherry, and a Champagne. He had introduced his sparkling wine in or around 1867, making him one of the state’s earlier vintners to take on the style. (In December 1857, The Sacramento Bee reported that “a supply of California champagne, the first ever seen in Sacramento, was on grocers’ shelves in time for the holiday season. The beverage was pronounced fully equal to most French wines though sweeter and more heavy bodied.”)

Over the past few decades, wineries hoping to grab the attention of wine writers would include with samples such merchandise as an apron, a cookbook, a cork puller, or a baseball cap emblazoned with the name of the winery.

In that respect, Benjamin Bugbey was ahead of his time. He enclosed with the sample bottles he sent newspapers copies of sheet music he had commissioned Sacramento composer and church organist Hugo L. Yanké to write. Yanké composed two pieces that rhapsodized about Bugbey’s wines – “Bugbey’s Champagne Waltz” and “Bugbey’s Champagne Galop.” Have a listen, “Bugbey’s Champagne Galop” as performed by Ryan Whyman, assembled by Bugbey enthusiast Kevin Knauss of Folsom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YXGnzwbIDQ

The ploy worked, with early wine writers praising both wine and music. Said the Alta California, for one, “The Champagne is very musical, and the music is very champagney; and both together may be appropriately classed among the few things which make life endurable, and lighten the burden of daily cares.”

By 1863, about 500 acres in Sacramento County had been planted to grapes. Vineyards continued to expand until 1904, when they peaked at 14,000 acres before starting a slow decline due to Prohibition, pests, recessions, and the rising popularity of other crops easier to tend and more rewarding financially. By 1945 the county’s vineyards devoted to wine grapes had dwindled to 2300 acres, and Sacramento’s agricultural image depended largely on tomatoes.

A rebound for wine grapes began in the 1960s, and today they constitute Sacramento County’s primary agricultural crop, encompassing 38,330 acres with an annual value of nearly $189 million in 2022, the most recent year for which figures are available. Tomatoes today cover just 4245 acres, with a 2022 value of $10.5 million.

Since the 1850s, Sacramento has had many wineries, though at any one time only six or seven would be operating, a pattern that continues today. Some would change hands and names, others would disappear. Most were built along railroad lines cross criss-crossing the town, facilitating the shipping of grapes and wines. Some of the more notable wineries were:

The Johnston Brandy and Wine Manufacturing Company of California in what today is Old Sacramento, bounded by the Sacramento River and S, T, and Front streets. It was established in 1871, and soon was turning out 24,000 gallons of brandy annually, most of it shipped vis Cape Horn to New York and other eastern seaports, the Sacramento Daily Union reported in the fall of 1872.

Gerke Winery occupied a nearly 20,000-square-foot facility at 11^th and B streets on the north edge of downtown Sacramento, crushing 215 tons of grapes and producing 100,000 gallons of wine during the 1872 harvest, reported the Sacramento Daily Union. It later became Knauth & Co.

In 1872, Samuel Lachman and Adolph Eberhardt of the San Francisco wine house Eberhardt & Lachman built a massive brick winery along R Street between 21^st and 22^nd streets, extending to S Street. In 1888, Manuel Nevis, owner of Eagle Winery along 18^th Street between O and P streets, and Pioneer Winery at 21^st and R, bought the winery, then called S. Lachman & Company. He renamed it California Winery, but lost control when he tried to expand too hastily. The bank that took it over had better luck, and developed the 300-acre Cordova Vineyard about 10 miles east of the winery. Wine under their brand, “Cordova, Wine of Quality,” was served President Theodore Roosevelt during a dinner in his honor at Sacramento’s Sutter Club in 1903. According to news reports at the time, the President lauded the wine, and vowed that he would “drink Cordova as long as he lived.” He lived 16 more years.

In the 1870s – 1873 by one account, 1877 by another – Horatio Livermore, president of the Natoma Water and Mining Company, founded in 1851 to divert water to miners, diversified into agriculture, forming the Natoma Vineyard Company and planting 110 acres to grapes southwest of Folsom. By 1884, the company had under cultivation 2000 acres of vines. It was the largest vineyard in the state until it was surpassed by Leland Stanford’s 3800-acre vineyard at Vina in Tehama County in the 1890s. Natoma Vineyard worked closely with the University of California at Berkeley in the 1880s as the university’s agricultural department began to study European wine grapes to see which might be adaptable to California. Until it built its own winery in 1887, Natoma Vineyard sold its grapes to Kohler & Van Bergen Winery, founded in 1883 at Guthrie Station, sometimes called Guthrie’s Station, in the vicinity of what now is 34^th Street and Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento.

In 1881, brothers Adriano and Severino Mazzini established Bacchus Winery at 1110 Third St. in downtown Sacramento. Conveniently, they also owned the nearby Bacchus Saloon, 228 K St., a handy market for their Angelica, Sherry, and Port.

There have been others, some in the city, some nearby, now gone, including Roma, A.P. Scheld, Azevedo, Sunset, American River, Silva Bros., and Sacramento Valley Winery in Sacramento, Frasinetti and Davis Brothers at Florin, Lippi in Galt, Gibson in Elk Drove.

Today, though Sacramento County is awash in vineyards, it still has just a handful of wineries. All are small independently owned operations. They include Spoto Wine, Lucid Wines, Perch Wines, Revolution Wines, the Acheson Wine Co., and Wolfe Heights. In West Sacramento, there’s Baker Family Wines and Haarmeyer Wines. Farther south, in and about the Delta, are Scribner Bend, Miner’s Leap, McConnell, Heringer, Bogle and a collection of brands at Old Sugar Mill.

The local wineries, however, only exploit a small portion of Sacramento County’s grape production, most of which gets folded anonymously into everyday varietal wines and blends with a general “California” appellation. Rather, local wineries customarily bring fruit from the Sierra foothills, Napa Valley, Paso Robles, Clarksburg, Lodi, and other regions long established as AVAs.

Haarmeyer Cellars does that, too, but it also turns out a Sacramento County Chenin Blanc made with grapes off a vineyard that the late Gerald Cresci planted at Herald in the county’s southern reaches four decades ago. Unless more wineries begin to capitalize on Sacramento County grapes and promote them proudly the chances of a Sacramento AVA materializing are remote, despite its long and influential role in the development of the state’s wine culture.

(This is a condensed version of a presentation I made as I joined Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti and Sacramento culinary historian Maryellen Burns to discuss the evolution of the city’s food-and-wine traditions over the past 175 years, a benefit fundraiser for Viewpoint, the community newspaper of the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association.)