This is not just a history of Southern California wine. It’s the story of how the region’s wine industry, lost and nearly buried by time and development, is resurging — why it matters, who was at the center of it, and what its erasure and return reveal about Southern California itself.

I was fiddling with my phone, not looking for anything in particular, just following the thread that comes from always thinking about wine. Not just the drinking of it, but its history, the ritual, the land, and the people who worked it.

I was born in California. I’ve spent years in wine regions like Sonoma, Napa, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Paso Robles watching them thrive and earn their reputations. All the while, wondering about Southern California. Was it too hot, the land too expensive, the freeways too many? Our heritage hasn’t vanished; we’ve just built until the land itself disappeared. After all, it’s hard to plant vines on a freeway.

Yes, there are those — viticulturalists, winemakers, enthusiasts — tinkering away in Temecula, fighting for recognition, working to get their wine onto a 5-star restaurant menu. It’s happening, but slowly. I watched the region transform: dirt roads, almond champagne, open space. Now, each visit brings more vines along Rancho California Road and a new sign: “Temecula Valley, Wine Country.” It’s exciting and a little poignant. Sometimes you have to lose something to gain what you’re after.

With wine on my mind, I decided to search for another set of ancestors who worked in the industry. I already knew about my Bavarian ancestors who were vine-dressers. So, I went looking for more.

And I found them.

Thomas James Tatton. Carpenter. Ontario, California. Employer: Padre Vineyard Company, Cucamonga, 1942.

I sat with that for a while.

Then I looked at his emergency contact. The person the government asked him to name in the event of a war. Mrs. J.P. Blair. 936 Horley Avenue, Downey, California. His daughter. Which means John Philip Blair, my other great-grandfather, was working in the same industry, in the same region, at the same time. Two great-grandfathers. Family connected by blood and by the vine.

I remember seeing oranges stretch for miles; that’s what Southern California once represented, renowned worldwide. Now, those oranges are mostly gone, and the groves have moved to Central Valley farmland and agricultural areas. Like the vines before them, they were displaced by the same forces: growth, development, and relentless land economics that always place more value on the ground than on what grows from it.

The vines came first. Oranges replaced them. Houses and freeways replaced the oranges. Each generation buries something the previous one built.

This is a story about what survives anyway.

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The Vine is The Dinner Bell's wine education series — and this is where it begins.

It started with Concord grape juice in a tasting glass.

I was maybe seven years old, sitting on a barrel in a small wine shop in Anaheim, California — down the street from Disneyland, along one of those wide roads that felt quieter then than they do now. My sister was with me, probably five. The barrels were big enough to sit on, which tells you something about how small we were.

The shop was dark inside. Cool and still, the way good cellars are. The ceiling was a crosshatch of old wooden beams, bottles stacked everywhere, some boxes ripped open mid-discovery, and photos and pictures of another era covering the walls behind the tasting counter. It smelled like wine and wood and something older — the particular cold aroma of a room that has been keeping something worth keeping.

The owner had white hair and a kind face, and he shuffled, that’s the word, he shuffled, over to where my sister and I were perched on our barrel and handed us each a small glass of Concord grape juice. Like we were tasting too. Like we belonged there.

I’ve never forgotten it.

My father had no taste buds to speak of. He couldn’t tell you a Burgundy from a Bordeaux, a Syrah from a Zinfandel. That wasn’t the point. The point was the stopping. The pulling over when you passed a sign for a tasting room in Temecula or Paso Robles, the walking in without a reservation or a plan, the talking to whoever was behind the counter about nothing and everything. Beautiful day, isn’t it? What are you pouring today? Smells wonderful in here!

My dad could walk into any room — a restaurant, a tasting room, a stranger’s kitchen — and within five minutes know the person behind the counter, their story, their favorite pour, probably their dog’s name. He just talked to people. Not to network. Not to get something. Just to brighten up their day and his.

I am shy, genuinely shy, in the way that doesn’t always show. But put me in a tasting room — a celebratory space, a place where people have already decided to be present and generous — and something opens up. I talk to strangers. I ask questions. I linger.

I learned that from him. I just didn’t know it until recently.

In the early 1990s, when tasting was still free, and the world felt wide open, my friend and I would drive up to Sonoma and Napa on a whim. My sister came sometimes. We’d just go — no itinerary, no education, no agenda beyond the adventure of it. We didn’t know what we were tasting. We just knew it was good, and it was fun, and the drive home felt like something worth repeating.

That was before wine became serious for me. Before the WSET levels, before the study guides, the blind tastings, and the technical ledger. Before I understood what I was actually tasting when I tasted it.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand: my father was already doing The Vine, in his way, long before I had a name for it. He just couldn’t tell you why the wine was good. He only knew that stopping for it was always worth it.

I can tell you why now.

That’s what The Vine is for.

This Week’s Pulse: Stop

Find a place to taste this week. A wine shop, a tasting room, a friend’s kitchen. Stop when you pass the sign. Walk in without a plan. Talk to whoever is behind the counter.

You might be surprised by what you remember fifty years from now.

The Ledger Entry

What’s your first wine memory? The glass someone handed you before you were ready, the tasting room that smelled like somewhere you wanted to stay, the bottle that made you pay attention for the first time. Leave it in the comments — The Vine is better with your story in it, too.