Grapevines - Fruit of the Spirit
Author: Clinton Archer When Spanish missionaries arrived in California in the 18th century they planted seeds of truth and some other seeds too. In order to have wine for communion, the missionaries established vineyards, which flourished. After the Gold Rush of the 1850’s Northern California became a major wine producer. But when the 18th Amendment prohibited the production of alcohol, except for religious purposes, only 141 vineyards survived. No one on the international scene paid much attention to these wines. Connoisseurs the world over presumed that a region producing cheap grapes could never compete with serious wine countries like Italy, Spain, or South Africa, and certainly not France. But that all changed in 1976 when the British merchant, Steven Spurrier, invited several California wineries to participate in a blind taste test in France, known as the Judgment of Paris. The cheap wines were pitted against Bordeaux and Burgundy wines, considered the best in the world. There w