00:00:10.380 - 00:00:32.930

This is a story about wine, the wine of our country. It's a story that began nearly 200 years ago with a spanish padre, Junipero serra and continued 100 years later with a Hungarian count, august unhorsed. E a finished sea captain Gustave, niebaum, a Frenchman from bordeaux,

00:00:33.050 - 00:00:55.770

et into another from burgundy paul masson and the brothers Korbel from bohemia who first planted european wines in California soil. It is a story that happened to in the Finger Lakes district of new york state, where came a german from Russia dr Constantine frank, a Frenchman

00:00:55.770 - 00:01:25.610

from Champagne Charles Fournier and a swiss john Jacob, Widmer bringing the vines of europe to grow alongside the native grapes of America. This is a story about wine, the wine of our country. The voice of America presents wine of the country and a man who knows

00:01:25.610 - 00:01:44.880

that wine well, mr Vincent price is not only a connoisseur of wine, but also a gourmet who has written with his wife, mary, a bestselling cookbook. He's not only a widely recognized and highly respected authority on art, but also one of America's best known and best

00:01:44.880 - 00:02:08.060

loved actors Here then, to talk about wine is Vincent price. Talk about wine. How can one talk about wine. Wine is for tasting for drinking, for experiencing for savoring with all the senses slant, a Sunbeam through the deep purple of pinot noir. See here the nascent

00:02:08.060 - 00:02:29.650

ruby of cabernet sauvignon and here, the golden glow of Johannesburg Riesling dripping sweetness against the glasses side as the stem is twirled. Talk about wine. Impossible. How can one talk about the California dawn caught in the bouquet of a napa valley chardonnay or the wet tang

00:02:29.650 - 00:02:50.970

of the Appalachian forest lingering in the fox iness of a new york state. Delaware the chill of pacific fog haunting a greenish rose from the dizziness or the deep frozen winter lurking in the space lasers sweetness high above lake cayugas waters. Talk about wine. Better go

00:02:50.970 - 00:03:18.420

sculpt the mona lisa or paint the Parthenon in water colors. Talk about wine. Impossible. Yet one must try for there is good wine in this country, as good as any in the world. Some say wine. Worth talking about the wine of this country. Impossible. I beg

00:03:18.420 - 00:03:40.660

your pardon. Everybody knows the best wines in the world. Come from europe. Who are you? Everybody and you're an authority on wine, isn't everybody. Everybody knows our apus are like a day without sun. How do you know guest? My honest conviction about wine is that there

00:03:40.670 - 00:04:00.680

can never be enough good wine and never be sufficiently little bad wine. That's the voice of frank Schoonmaker. Who's he? I thought everybody knew frank Schoonmaker. He's a writer who imports wines or if you like an importer who writes books about wines. Either way, he is

00:04:00.680 - 00:04:17.140

respected as an authority on wines on both sides of the Atlantic. An American wine authority? Well, I have been working for about six years on a book which is called the encyclopedia of one. There are some 70,000 copies of it in print in America. Now its

00:04:17.140 - 00:04:34.060

translation into Swedish has already appeared in Stockholm. It is due to be translated into german and it is to appear also in italian and in french it seems to be a subject that all of these wine drinking and wine loving countries want to know more about

00:04:34.060 - 00:04:49.670

and they feel that this encyclopedia form is a useful one for them. Oh, I agree with you there, everybody who is anybody must be okay with his wines. And I think that California wine as the wine of our country and new york state wine as a

00:04:49.670 - 00:05:06.020

less important wine of our country will contribute to an interest in wine and enthusiasm for wine among the general public. And I think this will lead to greater interest in the finer french german, italian and spanish wines and a greater consumption of those two agreed again,

00:05:06.030 - 00:05:23.550

begin at the bottom and work your way up to the very top, a european wine, but there are some California wines that are at the top or close to it. How can there be America's two young. Everybody knows that the vineyards of europe go back to

00:05:23.550 - 00:05:43.845

misty antiquity, but everybody does not seem to know that cuttings from the age. Ancient vines of europe were brought to California more than 100 years ago by the Frenchman jean louis vignes, the italian pietro rossi. The Czech Brothers Korbel and the Hungarian Count Augustine Harazi. But

00:05:43.855 - 00:06:04.560

California is not bordeaux or burgundy nor the of course it isn't. Everybody should know that California is California. I don't think there are any european types of wines which have any great resemblance to any of the best wines of California. I'm not saying that disparage lee

00:06:04.560 - 00:06:23.800

in either way, I'm simply saying that California wines are different. This is Maynard, Amerine speaking, he is Professor of Enology. That's the study of wines at the University of California. So we say that we produce the best California wines in the world in California. And we

00:06:23.800 - 00:06:44.360

say that because they are California wines, they are not french wines, but they're not italian wines. They're not Portuguese wines, they reflect our wine producers and our climatic conditions. Time out for a botany lesson for some facts about grapes, grapes are for eating grapes are for

00:06:44.360 - 00:07:07.870

making grape juice. Oh, everybody knows that does everybody know what species of grapes are best for winemaking. Not everybody is vinifera is its name and all the varieties of vines that the european immigrants brought to California were vinifera grapes. What about american grapes? Everybody knows what

00:07:07.870 - 00:07:28.140

Leif, eriksson called this country when he discovered it long before columbus, he called it Vinland on account of the grapevines that grew all over the place. They were pretty silly brusca. The native american species makes wonderful grape juice and not so wonderful wine. So the Europeans

00:07:28.140 - 00:07:45.960

brought their own vines with them to the eastern coast of America just as they did later to California, But in the east they withered and died. Why? Nobody knew then. But there it was, Vinifera prospered and made wine in California and literally died on the vine

00:07:45.960 - 00:08:06.220

and the rest of the country amid the flourishing grapes of Nebraska. Nobody knew then about phylloxera vast matrix, which is latin for devastating dry leaf and the name of a plant Laos, which is lethal to Vitis vinifera. Professor armory. Sometime in the 18 fifties, a plant

00:08:06.220 - 00:08:26.520

explorer in the Mississippi Valley took to England. Uh some of the native american species of grapes. Sometime in the 18 sixties, the european species of grape began to die mysteriously and through the work of many botanist and entomologist, they identified a route Laos which was causing

00:08:26.520 - 00:08:43.890

the killing of the vine. This route Laos grows naturally in the Mississippi valley of the United States, and the species of grapes which grow there are immune to it. Whereas the european grape, having never been exposed to the root louse, which we call phylloxera, Was not

00:08:43.900 - 00:09:04.460

immune to it and died very quickly. The French government in the 1870s and 1880s sent a number of botanical expeditions to the United States to look for native American species which were really resistant to the flocks and they imported literally shiploads of American root stocks upon

00:09:04.460 - 00:09:31.780

which they grafted the European graves without the american roots stocks, the european vineyards would not have survived to any extent. So the noble grapes of France grew from the roots of rugged Laos proof american vines and in California to eventually american roots bore the vines of

00:09:31.780 - 00:09:52.250

europe, the pinot noir and pinot chardonnay grapes of burgundy and the trauma in Sylvana grapes of Alsace, yielding fine wines in the santa cruz Mountains, the cabernet sauvignon of bordeaux, flourishing on the slopes of the mayacamas, the pinot blanc and dry, semi on in the gravelly

00:09:52.250 - 00:10:12.550

soil of livermore, and the sweet heavy dessert wines dripping from the sun drenched vines of the great Central Valley. Now that is. But the vineyards of America have not always been so lush and gravity. There now trunks marching rank on rank across the brown earth of

00:10:12.550 - 00:10:31.160

California. They're thin canes, filing up and down the steep hills of new york state, green with the leaves of promise in the spring, turgid with great bunches of purple grapes at harvest time. Not always have they been so, no, scarcely had they recovered from the ravages

00:10:31.160 - 00:10:53.160

of the plant louse phylloxera when another Laos attacked them, A legal Laos called prohibition More deadly than any insect more powerful than a mere law. Prohibition was an amendment to the constitution of the United States, and it said, no one could make sell or drink anything

00:10:53.160 - 00:11:14.890

containing alcohol. Unbelievable! Of course, it's unbelievable, but it happened, and for 13 years the vines of America were plowed under the vineyards planted to corn and potatoes. The winery is abandoned. They're great fermenting tanks of redwood, rotting their presses, rusting there, oaken casks and barrels drying

00:11:14.890 - 00:11:44.970

and splitting the seller's musty with disuse. The unhinged door complaining in the cold and lonely wind, carl went e whose white wines are among the best in the world, remembers how it was. My grandfather raised cattle during the prohibition years and Went back into the vineyard

00:11:44.970 - 00:12:05.030

business in 1933, back to planting vines again, most of which had been pulled out during prohibition. Don McCauley, President of the Wine Institute. Then after prohibition, and we had to start from scratch. Not only were new vines needed and new machinery skill was needed. Technical help

00:12:05.220 - 00:12:27.550

from men like Charles Fournier, who 35 years ago was winemaker and general manager of the great french Champagne house of the click oh garden. In the year 1934 After a repeal of prohibition in the United States, I was contacted by a New York state widely to

00:12:27.550 - 00:12:52.760

come over here and reconstruct the vineyard and the wine making of the firm who had been in business since 1865. I got tempted by the challenge that such work would afford to me and arrived in the United States in the early fall of 1934. Today, Mr

00:12:52.760 - 00:13:18.810

Fournier is president of the gold sealed vineyards in Hammond sport new york and his name graces. Therefore, the only still champagne made in the United States as well as their top quality sparkling wine shall funnier brute, a great California vineyard also sought help in europe. At

00:13:18.810 - 00:13:49.930

the end of prohibition. Here is andre Russian born check educated who 30 years ago was viticultural ist at the french Institute of National Agronomy in paris In Paris during the summer of 1938. Mr. Judge that to the founder and president then at Bolivia, make me a

00:13:49.940 - 00:14:13.580

offer to proceed from paris to Frankfurt in Napa county. I left paris early in the fall and start my first caution campaign. The first vintage of 1938 here in Napa Valley vineyard. Oh come on now. Everybody knows there's no such thing as a vintage year in

00:14:13.580 - 00:14:37.800

California. That is true. This is H Peter jerkins, Executive vice president of the Al Madan vineyards. We are blessed with climatic conditions which practically ensure us that year after year, the sugar content of our grapes is of the sufficient percentage to guarantee us under the proper

00:14:37.800 - 00:14:56.260

treatments. Very, very fine wines. What do you say to that Professor Amerine? The chemical processes involved are now sufficiently known so that the production of the sound wine is no longer an accident. Although the production of a great wine may still be the contributions of individual

00:14:56.260 - 00:15:18.780

ingredients to the quality of the wine, however, are imperfectly understood, presumably no one will ever be able to write a formula for a perfect wine because personal taste is an indispensable part of the equation. Time out for a physiology lesson. A lesson on taste. That taste

00:15:18.780 - 00:15:43.540

is in the mouth. The taste buds lurking there along the base of the tongue. Their simple little express ince's the taste buds responding only to four stimuli. Sweet, sour bitter salt, that's all sweet, sour, bitter salt, that's all there is to taste sweet, sour, bitter salt

00:15:43.690 - 00:16:08.740

and a physiology lesson. Sweet sour bitter salt. Then how come wine nuts talk like this? It has a big nose and great breed, rounded and silky yet sturdy and fruity to the very last aftertaste. Or this a tremendous heady scent of peaches and apricots and an

00:16:08.740 - 00:16:34.470

intense sweetness of character, though fully dry in the mouth. Or as the late great humorist James, thurber said it's a naive domestic burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption. Not everybody understands that kind of high tone talk, and not everybody

00:16:34.470 - 00:16:53.070

can afford to buy the kind of wine that makes people use that kind of language. There ought to be a wine for everybody. But there is in California, the gallo brothers and the italian swiss colony. And many another vintner produce inexpensive, ordinary wines, the equal of

00:16:53.070 - 00:17:15.240

any ordinaire anywhere in the world. They also seek new taste sensations to attract those whose palates are yet ignorant of the more subtle nuances of wine. One such product bravely advertises that it comes in two delicious flavors, red and white, but there are other flavors available.

00:17:15.290 - 00:17:33.780

Mr louis pellegrini of the italian swiss colony makes some of them. The fruit flavored type of wines have become very popular in recent years. Those that have a lemon extract, a lime extract or a very extract. Most recent, they have introduced a very new type of

00:17:33.780 - 00:17:53.330

wine which has a coffee and chocolate extract added to it. This is known as been cafe You see there is a wine for everybody and everybody seems to like it. Many new products are developed then they are tested and tasted by tourists. To the winery. The

00:17:53.330 - 00:18:15.350

winery at Asti California has approximately 1200 to 1500 visitors a day during the peak periods Of the tourist season. Everything's big at Italian Swiss, the number of tourists, the number of carloads of grapes and the steamship Angelo Petrie, an oceangoing tanker, a wine tanker. The steamship

00:18:15.350 - 00:18:38.830

Angelo Petrie carries approximately 2500 gallons of wine in stainless steel tanks from California to the Newark, New Jersey bottling plant. This steamship makes about seven round trips a year so that it actually moves approximately 17 to 18 million gallons of wine from California to port Newark,

00:18:38.960 - 00:19:09.840

New Jersey. Yes, it's a big operation, the California wine industry big and ingenuous if you can put millions of gallons of wine safely to see. There's no reason why you can't control the climate. Mr juergens. How do you accomplish this at Armageddon. Plastic pipes are being

00:19:09.840 - 00:19:26.340

installed between all the rows of wines that we have at our prisoners vineyards consisting of five or 6000 acres. These pipes are buried three ft deep in the ground and every 35 ft we have a pipe going up vertically with a sprinkler head attached to it

00:19:26.350 - 00:19:47.200

over 1450 miles of pipe at a cost of around $1 million. This not only will supply any lack of normal rainfall, but like any other part of California. We are subject to frost at any time in the past we've used helicopters to drive away the frost,

00:19:47.560 - 00:20:05.050

but this system is the most infallible system. There is in combating frost because the water warms the temperature and the frost dissipates. Thus the wine growers of California can control the climate and they can fence out the deer which come to munch on the tender vine

00:20:05.050 - 00:20:28.510

leaves in the spring and they can frighten away the grape loving birds at harvest time. But there is one enemy against which they have little defense people. First phylloxera, then prohibition. Now people carl 20 tells how people are threatening his vineyards in livermore California 20 years

00:20:28.510 - 00:20:48.820

ago was a town of about 2500 to 3000 people, sleepy little town made up principally of the wine industry, in the cattle industry. The city now has around 30,000 people and growing rapidly, all of these, many people demand many more services out of government and all

00:20:48.820 - 00:21:11.760

of these services cost a lot of money, and the way to raise money on a local basis is through taxation of the property when urbanization takes over and the assessors take the attitude that this may be uh Subdivide doble land and should be taxed as such.

00:21:11.770 - 00:21:35.030

The the burden becomes very heavy in that case. So many of the great North coast vineyards have been ripped out by the bulldozers. Making way for the trim mediocrity of suburbia. The oleander blooms by the doorway where once grew semi on sauvignon blanc. The poppies and

00:21:35.030 - 00:21:54.400

the vineyards and the rose bushes follow the faint furrow where once proudly stood the gnarled and rugged trunk of pinot noir and zinfandel. Progress, progress and people have pushed the vineyard south into the mountains of San Benito and Salinas and Monterey counties. Carl went to the

00:21:54.400 - 00:22:18.060

mountain Fastness above Carmel Valley, Paul Masson to the pinnacles near Salinas, all made into the world's largest vineyard, more than 2000 hectares of premium grapes in San Benito County at Piscine. The population explosion of San Francisco is still 100 miles to the north, the Megalopolis of

00:22:18.060 - 00:22:38.590

Los Angeles, still 300 miles to the south here perhaps for a little while longer. The great wines of California will be safe from progress. Great wines, some of it, yes, all of it, good. The wine of the country, be it from California, from new york state

00:22:38.590 - 00:22:53.310

from Ohio, from Maryland has good wine as you'll find anywhere. The wine of our country. Well, that's what you say, but it's only one man's opinion and an american at that. On the contrary, lots of people share that opinion. Name one. All right, Hugh johnson, and

00:22:53.310 - 00:23:07.670

he's an englishman. Never heard of him. Mr Schoonmaker, will you do the honors, Hugh johnson is a very knowledgeable young man. He's almost exactly the same age that I was when I wrote my first book on wine and he happens to be the the editor of

00:23:07.670 - 00:23:22.580

the London Times in charge of food and wine. And now travel as well. Wine with him too, has been a hobby. And I think that his new book is a very, very good one. What I particularly like about it is that for once a european has

00:23:22.920 - 00:23:43.000

come over and acquired a pretty thorough knowledge of american wines, particularly California wines. And given an unbiased judgment of them of the fine wines, I would say that some are beginning to challenge their french counterparts among red wines. I would say that the grape, which in

00:23:43.010 - 00:23:59.870

France, makes bordeaux's great red wine. The cabernet sauvignon is probably the best red wine in California and the best white, I think comes from the burgundy region. I mean, the grape comes from the burgundy region of France and that is the pinot chardonnay and now these

00:23:59.870 - 00:24:18.950

wines, both on a level which is very fine by any international standards. This is a high praise, oddly enough, when, whenever I'm in the States, I find myself persuading americans to drink California wine. There is a certain sort of snob thing about drinking imported wine, which

00:24:18.950 - 00:24:35.000

is great pity because you have to pay more for it in most cases And I wouldn't stand up and say that it's always better by any means. There are absolutely superlative wines imported from France and from Germany, but they cost a lot of money. It's not

00:24:35.000 - 00:24:57.140

difficult to spend $12 $15 on a bottle of imported wine, the finest, going as far as the medium priced wines are concerned, I think that that at a given price level, perhaps $2 a bottle. I think American wines are often better than their European equivalents. I'm

00:24:57.150 - 00:25:17.510

mary Coleman and I am the food coordinator of the White House. In the White House. We use american wines exclusively because the the President has has expressed a very great interest in in the use of american products and especially in introducing these products to guests in

00:25:17.510 - 00:25:35.740

the White House, whether they be guests from the United States. Our guests from foreign countries to which authority may be added. The following official order from the United States Department of State to all diplomatic and consular posts around the world in order to stimulate interest in

00:25:35.740 - 00:25:56.340

american wines abroad. The department has encouraged the use of american wines by its personnel stationed overseas. American personnel can make a distinct contribution in the use of quality american wines at official and informal functions. Mr Schoonmaker. What do you think of this policy? Well, I think

00:25:56.340 - 00:26:12.430

on the whole lots of sound principle. I think guests at an american embassy or guests at the White House, particularly foreign guests, are very much interested to see what America can offer in the way of one. And uh I think they're much more interested to to

00:26:12.430 - 00:26:27.180

see something american when they come to the american embassy than to see something from their own country. And I wish perhaps that we would have a foreign wine occasionally with which ours could be compared at such functions. But I think in general that the use of

00:26:27.190 - 00:27:01.680

american uh products, american furniture, american decoration and american wine in our uh embassies abroad and in our official establishments here is not only justified but correct. Well, what does everybody think now, everybody is impressed and eager for an opportunity to taste this wine of the country?

00:27:02.420 - 00:27:25.410

A very persuasive presentation. Mr price, you know, they ought to send you around the world to shout the praises of american wine? Shout about wine, impossible even to talk about wine. Wine is for tasting for feeling for experiencing and at last for drinking, but for talking

00:27:25.410 - 00:27:44.090

about impossible. How can one talk about the California. Dawn caught in the bouquet of a napa valley chardonnay or the wet tang of the Appalachian forest lingering in the fox iness of a new york state. Delaware the chill of pacific fog haunting a gran ash rose

00:27:44.410 - 00:28:27.590

from the dizziness or the deep frozen winter lurking in a space lasers sweetness in the hills above the finger lakes. Talk about wine. Impossible Wine of the country, narrated by mr. Vincent Price. Written and directed by

00:28:27.600 - 00:28:46.820

William N. Robson. The actors were Abby Lewis, bob Dryden, john wigan Gordon achilles and joke. Orhan music selected by jean drier wine of the country originated in the voice of America Studios in new york and Washington.