Superintendent's reports on vineyard operations and production; includes information on number of vines planted, inventory of vats, requirements for Chinese laborers, bottles of wine produced, expenses, and sales calculations. Book contains approximately 30 p. of entries, with the remainder of the pages left blank.

Screw post binder with tabbed sections and pre-printed sheets to record wine type, vintner, year, date purchased, quantity, vendor, and purchase price of various wines. Sections for the various types of wine are preceded by a short essay.

The Grapes of Conquest examines the origins of the wine industry at the California missions, as well as its subsequent commercialization in nineteenth-century California under Mexican and American governance.

During the past several decades considerable interest has developed in the United States for the wines that are produced in small wineries across our nation. This in terest continues to intensify, especially for the truly good wines that are reason ably priced. Consumers are unforgiving. Second-class wines will not be accept able just because a vintner may be newly established. The functions that must take place in the small estate-type wine cellar and the controls that can be realistically exercised by winemasters are essential in the creation of superior products. Although wine can be a comparatively simple food to produce, it is a very vast topic. Perhaps much the same as with other art forms, it is the infinite variability offactors at the root ofthe subject that renders it so complex. There are hundreds of different vine varieties cultivated around the world, and doubtlessly an even greater number of fruit and berry cultivars. Combined with such factors as soils, climates and mesoclimates (which may change with each vintage season), culti vation techniques, harvesting criteria, and overall operational philosophy, one can easily understand the enormous breadth and depth of variation which exits. This diversity, along with more than 5 years of enological development, generates a number of different wine possibilities that can only be conceived as something vastly exponential.

"Lured by the discovery of gold to cross the plains to California in 1849, Haraszthy became the first sheriff of San Diego, a member of the California legislature, and the first assayer of the United States Mint in San Francisco. Long fascinated with the possibility of growing fine European grapes in America, he moved in 1856 to northern California's Sonoma Valley, where he built the first stone wineries in California, introduced more than 300 varieties of European grapes, and planted (or helped his neighbors plant) more than a thousand acres of choice wine vineyards. He made a well-publicized wine tour of Europe in 1861, wrote the first notable book on California wine growing, and built his Sonoma estate into what was widely advertised as "the largest vineyard in the world.""--BOOK JACKET.