The Land of Plenty
Kim and I are spending the weekend in the wine country north of San Francisco Bay. What an unusual place this is, and I mean this whole area in general. To begin with, California enjoys a history that seems so much richer than much of the rest of the country. This was the place of the largest mass migration in history. It has been called “the land of milk and honey” in its near messianic attraction for a number of reasons. There were the Conquistadores that traveled up from Mexico, at first thinking they had discovered a massive island called California and hearing repeated tales a cities paved with gold and silver. So they built missions along the length of this bountiful land, admiring its golden hillsides and tall forests, but confident that Indian tales of gold were exaggerated. Instead, they and especially the Russians from across the Bering Sea found the fur trapping worthwhile as an alternative source of plenty.
Naturally, that’s exactly when gold was, indeed, discovered in the hills to the east of San Francisco Bay in the rivers and streams of the Sierra Nevada. The ensuing California Gold Rush began the legendary mass migration that drove hordes of ambitious people across the great divide of the North American continent. It also spawned the commercial legends of the men like Levi Strauss that made their fortunes less in the actual toil and pursuit of gold and more in the provisioning and servicing of those desperados in search of treasure and romantic easy money.
That’s when San Francisco became the mysterious center of activity for all the goings on during the craziness of California that led rapidly to statehood in 1850, only two years after cessation of the territory from Mexico as a spoil of war and one year after the discovery of that first gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill. Is there any wonder that this mist-shrouded Peninsula and Bay took on legendary symbolism as the linkage between east and west? Or should I say between west and the East? San Francisco was the place where Asian immigration to the United States began and it did so to populate the needs of the gold mining industry to start and then to build the transcontinental railroad that was barreling through those same Sierra Nevada Mountains. What a portend for the Asian migration that would come a hundred and fifty years later as the new-age gold of silicon began to be mined in the Bay Area.
Meanwhile, as the hordes of migrants coming from all sides surrounded this great natural Bay, the land to the north was recognized by some foresighted viticulturists as having a perfect climate for the grape that feeds the soul. The counties that are now called Napa (Wappo Native American for “Land of Plenty”) and Sonoma (Wappo Native American for “Valley of the Moon”) were the perfect place to start the first internationally recognized wine region of the United States. It would be fully recorded as victorious over the rival traditional vineyards of Bordeaux in the “Judgement of Paris” blind wine tasting of 1976. If you want the full story, watch the movie Bottle Shock with Bill Pullman, Alan Rickman (RIP) and Chris Pine.
Today we wandered over to the bottom of Napa Valley and drove north to St. Helena, passing countless wineries and acres of vines as we went up Rt. 29 through the heart of Napa. The absence of any clouds and the golden and redfish vineyards made for a lovely ride. St. Helena was like any other pleasant and low-key tourist town with a preponderance of houseware stores and art galleries, which did not exclusively focus on wine, but certainly lacked for no wine-related accoutrement or artifact. The computer-guided embroidery machine sewing a multi-colored Christmas tree on linen placemats held our fascination for s few minutes. We stopped at a favorite local spot called V. Sattui Winery. The stone chateaux and fountains seemed appropriate, but the laid-back store was more like a visit to Eataly than to a wine tasting. We sat under a century-old live oak at a sturdy picnic table and enjoyed the mild, sun-dappled afternoon. We went back to Sonoma via Calistoga and then over the Porter Creek Hills into Santa Rosa. Only scant evidence of the fires in years gone by remained even though this year’s Kincaid Fire was only recently subdued just north of us. The current fear has passed but the ever-present awareness of climate change and the fragility of the Golden State remains.
We had visited Jack London’s estate north of Sonoma yesterday and could see it on the hillside to the west of us as we drove home. It had been over a century since his popular outdoors novels like Call of the Wild and White Fang had earned London enough money to build out his idealistic, pseudo-sustainable Beauty Ranch and Wolf House, set amongst the towering redwoods. He had also earned enough to buy a 45-foot sailboat, The Snark, that he sailed quite bravely with his wife Charmian to Hawaii and throughout the South Seas. He had set out to circumnavigate the globe in seven years, but limped home in two years without The Snark. He had become ill and spent his final years on his ranch, living in a cottage after fire took his Wolf House before he could occupy it. He lived his life with the gusto and stalwartness of a California Redwood and flamed out early, like a wildfire racing through those same Redwoods.
This weekend has given us a great overview and appreciation of the Sonoma and Napa wine country. We had been here before for a winery weekend (a destination birthday celebration for a friend), but that was all about wines where this weekend was all about the region and what it’s like to live here. The impression is of a lovely and casual lifestyle that has an interesting rural/urban blend. San Francisco, the most urbane city of the West and the gateway to Asia sits an hour away. It is not visible on the horizon, but it’s magnetic force can be felt in every Porsche Cayenne that drives by.
This land was the land of plenty to the Wappo Indians, who lived a very easy life in these golden hills. Since then it has taken the white man and now the multi-racial man a century and a half to work his way through fur trapping, gold mining, digital technology and now wine making to figure out for himself that finding the land of plenty is only half the trick. The other half is learning how to enjoy the land of plenty. This is, ultimately, a land meant to be plentiful and enjoyable.