The Politics of Heritage

There's a series of grinding holes in the creek between the house and the old vineyard. I stopped by today, figuring they'd be well visible - it hasn't rained in almost two weeks and the water is low. The holes are probably a few hundred years old. Not ancient on say, pyramid standards, but an interesting link to the past nonetheless. The Miwok women would grind acorns into flour in them, letting the running water wash away the husks and the tannins. A Miwok coworker of my Uncle once remarked that she remembered her grandmother making acorn bread when she was a young girl.

"Nastiest stuff I ever put my lips on" or some such was the verdict, if I remember correctly.

Bear Creek (neither dog nor body of water are named after each other) runs from below the snow line in the Sierras, but makes it independently all the way to the Sacramento Delta. Headwaters so low means that it runs dry every summer, but by early Spring there are only a handful of spots where you can get across in waders. And if she's really rolling, best just postpone your adventure. Piedmonters: Eno River > Bear Creek > New Hope Creek.

Reason suggests (OK - MY reason, flawless as it is) that this valley, being dry all summer, made it more suitable for transitory use than permanent settlement, people preferring the year-round water security of the Mokelumne valley just over the hills for that. But whether the long dead souls who crushed the same acorns I see moved through here during the wet season because they vacated the valley floodwaters to the west or the Sierra blizzards of the east is unknown to me. But they left their mark, whether they chased the rising or setting sun.

Those folks have a lineage disjointed from mine. Modern latinos would be their distant kin, the vast majority of whom trace their lineage - despite the imaginations of minutemen - to the native peoples of the southwest, not Spain. Californians. Who never saw a grapevine.

You can't throw a rock around here without hitting a vineyard, mostly 'cause you'll run out of rocks before you run out of grapevines. Up in my neck of the woods it's Zin, that most Californian of California varieties. Granted, everything just below us, near Lodi, is irrigated with San Joaquin River water, making the wine taste like, well, San Joaquin River water, (insert basic botany lesson here) but from there to the highest elevation you can grow grapes, in this part of the State, aka Sierra foothills, Zin dominates.

But in the high rent districts over in Sonoma and Napa (insert car parts joke here), as well as up and down the Central Valley where the tonnage is phenomenal, stocking shelves around the world, plenty of other varieties - while maybe not as 'Californian' - dwarf Zin in economic impact. So I have to pause when someone introduces a bill declaring Zinfandel, my lovely Zinfandel, as The State Wine of California:

It's not enough for California to have a state bird (valley quail), tree (redwood), flower (golden poppy), reptile (desert tortoise) and even dance (West Coast swing). What the Golden State really needs is an official wine, says state Sen. Carole Migden, and the only wine that fills the bill is zinfandel. "Zinfandel is the quintessential California wine," the San Francisco Democrat said last week when she introduced legislation that would bestow that status on the wine zippily known as "zin."

Yes, yes, I know...

For more than a century, zinfandel's origins were shrouded in mystery. Unlike every other fine wine grape in California, zin had no known European homeland. Cabernet came from Bordeaux, while chardonnay and pinot noir arrived from Burgundy. "But for all anyone knew, zinfandel came from outer space," wine writer Rod Smith wrote in The Times in 2002.

Outer space. I like that. But California is a big place. California makes a great many wines. Many people, including Froz Gobo, drink these many varieties of wines. Apostropher does, too, if I'm not mistaken. Which I do not think I am. Zinfandel, especially when not made of San Joaquin River water, looms magnificently among these many great wines. But. Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

California does not need Zinfandel to be it's "official" wine. If for no other reason than that I don't think Zinfandel wishes to be the "official" anything. Taste a bottle and ask it. You will see.