Some of California's most famous wines came from a science experiment.

[Blake_Brown]

Clendenen and Tolmach started ABC with very little. As late as 1985 producing vineyards in this area could be had for $5000 an acre … sometimes less.

I d have to work on this more carefully but I think you could start a wine project for less than $200K

The secret is in selling wine quickly

Quite true Mel. It helped that they sold GOOD wine quickly.

[Gabe_Berk]

I don’t know for sure but I heard from someone I trust that Daddy Warbucks is not a good business partner.

Seriously, though, can you purchase any quality dirt in California these days for less than about $150,000 per acre?

Some “quality” wineries are purchasing land in Lake County (boarders Napa County) for $30,000 an acre.

[John_Morris]

From my Power Point on North America
The Okanagan Valley is the continuation of the Sonoran dessert into Canada.
5 sub regions North to South Kelowna, Naramata, Okanagan Falls, Golden Mile and Black Sage/Osoyoos
49 – 50 degrees latitude
July and August are warmer than Napa, temps can exceed 40 degree C
Reds and Bordeaux varieties in the south with whites and lighter reds as you travel north,1200 degree days at Kelowna and 1500 in Black Sage/Osoyoos, 4 degree C difference from north to south
Lake Okanagan in the north at 144 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers average width. It is over 750 meters at its deepest point and is the source of much-needed water for irrigation. With Skaha Lake, Vasseux lake around OK falls and Lake Ossoyos in the south.

The climates are actually rather different, and they really diverge in September, presumably because of the difference in latitude. The BC Okanagan is roughly the latitude of Champagne.

In August, the average high in the mid-Napa Valley (St. Helena) is 89F vs 81F in Kelowna, on Lake Okanagan, and the average lows are 55F and 49F, respectively.

Come September, the average high in St. Helena is still 89F but it drops to 71F in Kelowna, and in October the average high plummets to 57F in Kelowna, vs. 78F in St. Helena.

The Osoyoos area is more like Napa temps in August, but the average high drops to the mid-70s there in September – roughly 15 degrees cooler than St. Helena .

I’m still wondering what kind of “marine effect” they thought they were getting in the Okanagan. Maybe just those cool overnight temps in the summer. The depth of Lake Okanagan presumably keeps the water temperature quite low and moderates the daytime heat. (Your PowerPoint is wrong on the depth of Okanagan Lake. It’s up to 760 feet deep, not meters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okanagan_Lake.)

Kelowna temps
Osoyoos temps
St. Helena temps

[Nathan_Smyth]

This is fascinating [especially, for me, the coincidence of it], and it’s a remarkably honest concession on his part:

Trump Ag secretary: No guarantee small farms will survive
Posted: 11:24 AM, Oct 02, 2019
Updated: 2:46 PM, Oct 02, 2019
By: TODD RICHMOND, AP
https://www.nbc26.com/news/state/trump-farm-secretary-no-guarantee-small-farms-will-survive

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary said Tuesday during a stop in Wisconsin that he doesn’t know if the family dairy farm can survive as the industry moves toward a factory farm model…

“In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” Perdue said. “I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability…”

[Adam_Frisch]

The Zinfandel for this project on Catalina did come from cuttings obtained from old vines on Santa Cruz Island. Good article about the Rusack project here:California's Island Winery, Reborn - The Santa Barbara Independent

…but the self-perpetuating hatred of Mission continues unabated. From article:

“So Geoff and his sons Austin and Parker (their third son, Hunter, was away at college), climbed the island’s willow tree, took clippings, had them analyzed (one plant was the notoriously nasty mission grape variety), and propagated the zinfandel.”

This is from another winemaking book:

It’s obvious that most of these writers are just repeating what they’ve read in some old books as fact without ever having tried Mission, as it’s demonstrably false.

[Nathan_Smyth]

The secret is in selling wine quickly

The problem is in letting people know that you have wine to sell [and in convincing anyone to try tasting it - God forbid that they actually purchase it from you].

That’s where the Financialization comes in - these days, you might be able to get an idea up & running for a few million dollars, but you’ll need many orders of magnitude more money to get the general public to learn of the existence of your idea [and to get them to experiment with participating in your idea].

That’s how we got the Tech monopolies we have today - gazillions of people all had similar ideas [back circa the mid-1990s], but only the people with access to Fake Money & Financialization were able to seize monopoly control.

Everyone else crashed & burned [because they weren’t financialized].

PS: For the record, I’m not saying that a Roy Piper or a Brain Loring can’t make it from scratch, but, for instance, [apparently] Andrew Vingiello just checked out of The Game.

[Ken_Zinns]

The Zinfandel for this project on Catalina did come from cuttings obtained from old vines on Santa Cruz Island. Good article about the Rusack project here:California's Island Winery, Reborn - The Santa Barbara Independent

…but the self-perpetuating hatred of Mission continues unabated. From article:

“So Geoff and his sons Austin and Parker (their third son, Hunter, was away at college), climbed the island’s willow tree, took clippings, had them analyzed (one plant was the notoriously nasty mission grape variety), and propagated the zinfandel.”

This is from another winemaking book:
Mission-hate.jpg

It’s obvious that most of these writers are just repeating what they’ve read in some old books as fact without ever having tried Mission, as it’s demonstrably false.

I noticed that in the article too, Adam. I’ve collected some other interesting written passages about Mission wine - I’m sure there was plenty of bad wine that was made from the variety but, as we both know, you can make some pretty good wine from it too.

[Adam_Frisch]

I noticed that in the article too, Adam. I’ve collected some other interesting written passages about Mission wine - I’m sure there was plenty of bad wine that was made from the variety but, as we both know, you can make some pretty good wine from it too.

Those wines must have been awful! Please send me some of those clippings Ken - love to read/see!

[Mel_Knox]

One big difference between now and when ABC started: there are about a jillion more wineries.

And not all of the wineries from back then made it either.

Making wine is fun; selling it… not so much.