Makers of American Wine by Pinney Thomas

Author:Pinney, Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520952225
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

ALMADÉN AND AFTER

In the immediate postwar years, Almadén resumed the work that Schoonmaker and Benoist had planned before Pearl Harbor. The company planted superior varieties in vineyards of large acreage, bottled varietal wines, and labeled them with the names of the grape and the region. The Grenache rosé wine that Schoonmaker had suggested in the early 1940s actually came on the market in 1945. Almadén sherry had a deserved success, for it at least approached the idea of genuine sherry as no other wine by that name did in California. It was made under flor yeast and put through a solera system.52 The company also sold standard wines under the modest labels of “red” and “white,” to which Schoonmaker added the word “mountain”: Almadén’s “mountain red” and “mountain white” had an appeal that no flatland generic could match—though the mountains in question were wholly poetic.53

The importance of the Almadén enterprise under Schoonmaker’s direction can hardly be exaggerated. For many, many Americans, Almadén’s wines provided a first encounter with a wine that aspired beyond the level of generic burgundies and that had a clear identity. It was a distinctly interesting experience to have a Santa Clara Valley Sauvignon blanc instead of a plain chablis. Moreover, Almadén wines were not expensive, and—most important—they were available. One did not merely read about them; one could buy them. The wines did not always live up to the exciting promise of Schoonmaker’s backlabel descriptions, but they were good enough; one could enjoy them, and they helped greatly in learning about wine.54

Schoonmaker’s original series of articles on wine for the New Yorker had appeared under the general title of “News from the Wine Country”; he now began a lively and informative newsletter for his new firm of the F. S. Importing Company under that old title; it was, like everything that Schoonmaker wrote, clear, interesting, informative.55 It had also the added virtue of cartoon illustrations by a Chilean artist named Oscar Fabrès, who thus began an association with Schoonmaker, and later with Almadén, that lasted for many years. When Schoonmaker began writing the back labels for Almadén wines, they, as well as the company’s ads, were adorned with drawings by Fabrès, drawings whose charm made them a worthy accompaniment to Schoonmaker’s prose.

From the 1950s on, Schoonmaker was easily the most familiar American presence to people who took an interest in wine. He published a small but important book, The Wines of Germany, in 1956. Just as his American Wines had been a useful promotion in 1941, so now The Wines of Germany was a useful promotion for the German wines that were an important part of Schoonmaker’s importing business. But more to the point, Schoonmaker loved German wines, had a thorough knowledge of them, and of course wrote well about them. It was also, as James Gabler has pointed out, “the first book published by an American author in the U. S. A. dealing exclusively with German wines.”56

But it was not by his books that Schoonmaker’s presence was most widely felt; one encountered his name constantly in a vast output of ephemera.

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