Salud or Fresh from the Past

Salud!: The Rise of Santa Barbara's Wine Industry

Author: Victor W Geraci

In 1965, soil and climatic studies indicated that the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys of Santa Barbara County, California, offered suitable conditions for growing high-quality wine grapes. Thus was launched a revival of the area's two-centuries-old wine industry that by 1995 made Santa Barbara County an internationally prominent wine region. Salud! traces the evolution of Santa Barbara viticulture in the larger context of California's history and economy, offering unique insight into one of the state's most important industries.

California has produced wine since Spanish missionaries first planted grapes to make sacramental wines, but it was not until the late twentieth century that changing consumer tastes and a flourishing national economy created the conditions that led to the state's wine boom. Historian Victor W. Geraci uses the Santa Barbara wine industry as a case study to analyze the history and evolution of American viticulture from its obscure colonial beginnings to its current international acclaim. As elsewhere in the state, Santa Barbara County vintners faced the multiple challenges of selecting grape varieties appropriate to their unique conditions, protecting their crops from disease and insects, then of developing local wineries capable of producing consistently high-quality wines and of marketing their products in a highly competitive national and international market. Geraci gives careful attention to all the details of this production: agriculture, science, and technology; capitalization and investment; land-use issues; politics; the specter posed by the behemoth Napa and multinational wine corporations; and the social and personal consequences of creating and supporting an industry vulnerable to so many natural and economic crises. His extensive research includes interviews with many industry professionals.

California is today one of the world's major wine producers, and Santa Barbara County contributes significantly to the volume and renowned quality of this wine production. Salud! offers a detailed and highly engaging overview of an industry in which the ancient romance of wine too often obscures a complex and highly diverse modern vintibusiness that for better, and sometimes for worse, has shaped the regions it dominates.

Table of Contents:

	List of Illustrations
	Preface
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
1	Northern European Roots and the First American Wine Culture	7
2	Boom and Bust: Birth and Death of the First California Wine Industry	25
3	The California Wine Revolution	47
4	Santa Barbara Pioneers Plant Winegrapes	62
5	Santa Barbara Develops Wineries: 1970s-1980s	80
6	Santa Barbara Gains Recognition	100
7	The Business of Wine: 1990s	116
8	Santa Barbara Vintibusiness	131
9	Wine Is Here to Stay: Santa Barbara, California, and the United States	144
	Epilogue: A Backward Look Forward	153
	Notes	179
	Selected Bibliography	213
	Index	231

Look this: Feeding Your Appetites or Half a Brain Is Enough

Fresh from the Past

Author: Sandra Sherman

Sherman takes readers along on a wild ride back in time, describing how historic families learned to cook with the seasons. From cookbook of the day she gives us 120 original recipes, together with contemporary translations that give step-by-step instructions for cooks of any level.

Library Journal

Sherman, a food and cultural historian and professor of British literature (Univ. of Arkansas), became interested in British recipes of the 18th century when she wrote an earlier book on the food crisis that arose then. For this ambitious new title, she researched the food of the era's rich and the poor and, with the Chotokowskis' assistance, "translated" 120 recipes from cookbooks of the time. Unlike the recipes in Francine Segan's recent The Philosopher's Kitchen (LJ 8/04), which featured the food of ancient Greece and Rome, most of these probably have more appeal as curiosities than as dishes for a contemporary cook; many seem overly rich or complicated, with lengthy ingredients lists and subcomponents like General Cullis and Essence of Ham. The breadth of Sherman's research is impressive, but her book will be more valuable as a culinary history. Recommended for special collections. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.