UNFILTERED, Shaping California Wine: Hispanic Winemakers and the Making of California Wine

The song of California wine starts on the wrong note.

Winemaking came to California with the Spanish missionaries in the late 1700s. The vines were planted and tended by Indigenous Californians, and after independence the vineyards and wine of Mexican California carried on long before the Gold Rush. The first winemakers here were not the names history calls its founders. When the California State Fair first judged wine in the 1850s, the winner was Manuel Requena, a Mexican American winemaker in Los Angeles.

This UNFILTERED panel unpacks this irony in the present. Mexican and Mexican American families have been part of California wine from its beginning. For more than a century since, their knowledge and labor have cultivated its vineyards while their names are invisible on our labels.

David Salazar grew up inside that story. His father managed a 3,000-acre vineyard in San Lucas, in southern Monterey County, and his mother worked the fields from before school until sundown. David studied winemaking at Fresno State and started Reclamación Wines to reclaim not only his personal history but the history of all Mexican viticulturalists. In his brand’s own words: “The hands that built this industry never got to put their name on it.”

David and three of his peers will join Matt Wood of the Indie Wine Podcast to talk about that long history, the role Mexican labor has played in creating and maintaining our industry, and the story behind who gets credit for shaping California wine.

Doors at 5. The panel runs from 6:30 to 7:45 and is recorded for the Indie Wine Podcast, followed by a reception and tastings. $15 at the door, including a half glass and an extensive tasting.