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Frances Dinkelspiel

Author | Journalist | Speaker

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Recent Posts

  • Mark C. Anderson, the arsonist at the center of Tangled Vines, leaves prison
  • After 13 years, I am stepping down from the Berkeley news site I co-founded, Berkeleyside
  • The Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm incinerated my house 30 years ago
  • Wildfires ravage Northern California wine country
  • In which I talk (more) about wine fraud, this time on television

Archives

5 little-known facts about the history of California wine

September 11, 2015 by Frances Dinkelspiel 7 Comments

TangledXVinesMy forthcoming book, Tangled Vines, focuses on the largest crime involving wine in history: an arson fire that destroyed 4.5 million bottles of wine worth $250 million.

The book also traces the life one of the bottles lost in the fire. It was made in 1875 in a vineyard in Rancho Cucamonga in southern California by my great-great grandfather, Isaias Hellman.

I did a lot of research on the history of California wine for my book and found some fun things.

Here are five little-known facts about California wine:

1) The Franciscan fathers were the first to plant grapes in California. Father Junipero Serra wrote to his bosses in Baja California in the late 18th century and asked that they ship grapevines north. The grapes were planted at Mission San Juan Capistrano near Los Angeles. They were named Mission grapes and became the primary grape used for making wine throughout the 1880s, even though the wine they produced was flat and bland. Historians think the first harvest in California was in 1782.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: California wine, California Wine Association, California wine history, Father Junipero Serra, grapes, Los Angeles wine, Tangled Vines, Tangled Vines: Greed, wine, Winehaven

My new book, Tangled Vines, will be published in October

September 6, 2015 by Frances Dinkelspiel Leave a Comment

TangledXVinesI am very excited to announce that my new book, Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California will be published on Oct. 6, 2015 by St. Martin’s Press.

I have been working on this book since late 2009, ever since I wrote a story for the New York Times about an arsonist who destroyed 4.5 million bottles of fine California wine worth more than $250 million. The culprit set fire to a wine warehouse in Vallejo in October 2005. Four years later, he was about to go to trial for the crime.

It was only later that I realized that 175 bottles of wine made by my great great grandfather Isaias Hellman in 1875 in Rancho Cucamonga were burned up in that fire. I had long wanted to write about Hellman’s involvement in wine. For my first book, Towers of Gold, I had examined Hellman’s role in the banking industry, as well as other endeavors, but I had glossed over his role as a wine maker and businessman. I realized in 2010 that I might have my next book topic – an examination of the arson, the largest involving wine in history, with a special focus on that 130-year old bottle and how it came to be.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: arson, fire, Mark Anderson, Mark C. Anderson, Murder, Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California, Tangled Vines, Tangled Vines: Greed, wine

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