alicante

Where Semillon and zinfandel and other respectable varietals had once reigned, the new king was a ragamuffin called alicante bouschet.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

Where Semillon and zinfandel and other respectable varietals had once reigned, the new king was a ragamuffin called alicante bouschet.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

For the home winemaker wishing to supplement his income by selling some of his two hundred allotted gallons or an additional several hundred unallotted gallons to his neighbors, alicante was more than worth its outlandishly inflated price.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

The Wente brothers, in the Livermore Valley, never ripped out their vines; they never had to negotiate with brokers or shippers; and alicante grafts never threatened their fine Semillon grapes or the famous “Wente clone” that became parent to 80 percent of all California chardonnays.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

In the Napa Valley, endless rows of now-worthless alicante grapes, planted during the homemade wine boom of the early 1920s, choked the valley for years.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

In the town of Escalon, ten miles north of Modesto, Joseph Gallo jump-started his grape-growing business by planting ten of his twenty acres in alicante; his teenaged sons Ernest and Julio stenciled the family symbol, a rooster, onto the shipping crates.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

In the Livermore Valley, where everyone but the Wente brothers seemed to have uprooted their grapes in favor of prunes and apricots and apples, old vineyards burst into new life, their vines thick with alicante.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

Relative to parsnips or dandelions, elderberries, chokecherries, or other unprepossessing candidates, alicante was a premier cru.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

Add some sugar to it during the fermentation process, and a ton of alicante could produce five or six hundred gallons of something that may not have tasted much like wine but at least looked like it, and definitely acted like it.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010

As rewarding as alicante was for the growers, it was worse than an insult to the vintners.

LAST CALL DANIEL OKRENT 2010