the city of santa rosa, california, where luther burbank's lived for more than 50 years. he developed hundreds of strains and varieties of plants, including the rest of potato. posted by our cable partners, staff's city tours recently visited. learn more about santa rosa all we can cure on american history tv. sonoma county agricultural history began with wine. the first vines planted here were by general vallejo. they were mission grapes, and nobody would make wine out of them now, that they did then because that is what they had.

the wine industry significantly 1850's, when a man but some property in the sonoma valley and started a winery that he called when a vista winery. that is the birthplace of what we now know as california wine culture. he didn't plant the first grapes. somebody was already going -- growing grapes when he came. he got interested in european in 1863, the state established a wine commission because people were getting interested in that. they sent him to europe, and he brought back varietal cuttings .f european grapes the old mission grape went out the window and we begin to grow real grapes, real wine grapes, and he was the father of that

movement. 1920, sonoma county was the ninth ranking county in agricultural production in the entire united states, not in california, but in the nation, and that was significant because it was the product of a lot of different things. we were first in hops, significant in wine, chicken and egg basket of the world. in addition, we had apples in the north county french prunes. you had vineyards all through this, little wineries, little independent,ers the next generation, 200 acres of land, and they would have 10 acres of hops, 10 acres of vineyards, and a dozen apple

trees and a dozen prune trees and maybe some pages. they could make a living on a small farm in those years. that was very significant here. one of the factors that has made sonoma county into wine country is the diversity of our population, and that population came and trucks. the immigrants came to be farm labor because it was such a strong agricultural community, and we needed farm labor, particularly the italian and german immigrants. the german immigrants tended not to be farm laborers, but they did bring one making skills. the italian immigration was a huge factor. the wine industry died in prohibition. not just here, but everywhere. of theseand daughters immigrants stopped drinking wine and started drinking gin. the wine industry languished. came the greaton

depression, and after the great depression, world war ii, and it wasn't -- i like to date the wine renaissance in sonoma the 1970's, when it was kind of a health kick of that america went on and is still on, the whole idea of the , andtic approach to food wine seemed and is more helpful than hard liquor. with that one country label that started in the 1970's, by the 1980's and 1990's, we were beginning to be better and better known, and we became a tourist destination. that whole wine country thing has boomed into tourism and now brings over a billion dollars a year to sonoma county. we are in the west river

valley, part of one of the wine appellations in sonoma county here in northwest san francisco. first purchased the ranch in the late 1950's, they did not know at the time saw quite a change in the agricultural industry happening in our little valley here. it was the late 1950's, the end of hop production, and we still have a neighboring winery that uses the name. -- they sold the end of hops, the height of the prune orchards and business, prune dehydrators all up and down northern sonoma county at the time, and the beginnings of grapes being planted.

my dad least a property across the road for a couple of years andl the land was purchased planted one of the first vineyards in our neighborhood. within the first 10 years with my folks owning this ranch, they saw a dramatic change in the crops that were grown in the area. winesn't always been country. we have a wonderful story of agriculture and here in the west river valley in sonoma county. my parents immigrated from lucerne, switzerland in the mid-1950's. my dad's dream was to start his own farm in california, and he was able to do that by purchasing this property. i started milking 50 cows twice 19 68.t the end of

-- 1968. the was a big change in the industry in the 1990's, a lot of large dairy firms in the central valley going in, and i talked to weparents at the time and look at our options because it was pretty evident that our profit margins were going to be squeezed in the dairy business, so obviously living in this area we saw the changes in the growth of the wine industry and grape growing, so i felt it was really important for us to diversify, and so we started slowly in that late 1990's doing that. we grew our vineyard to about 40 acres over the last 15 years. the diversity has helped us. just diversifying doesn't necessarily equate to profitability.

as long as we are diversifying into higher fight crops, we have a chance of keeping the farm successful. hopefully -- we do sell to other wineries. we just started bawling our own wine under our own label a couple of years ago. i grow the grapes for the sections that we take them from. we have partnered with a consulting winemaker to help us make the wine. -- we don't have our own production facility here. we rent space at another facility and work with a consulting winemaker. again, trying to capture a bit more of the margin, vertically integrating our business to where we can produce the product and gravitate towards taking a percentage of our rock product, putting it into a finished

product, and being able to sell directly to consumers down the road. are a small brand, relatively unknown. you have to get a license for each state that you want to sell into. that is a challenge. it is also challenging when , you've have to go through a distributor or broker to get into those states. to sellns that you have you are not able to sell directly to the consumer, which is a higher margin. when you are small like we are, 1000 cases of wine, we are giving up, to go through a distributor means we have to give up a lot of potential profit margin, and so it is very difficult to do that, so it is very difficult to get traction when you are a small brand

working through that three-tier system as they call it or distribution system in place and a lot of the states. involved innt is agricultural business, very similar to other businesses. a lot of times the process of these rules and regulations is what gets the average business owner bought down. it is a cumbersome process. there are some programs that are really beneficial to agriculture. the usda has great conservation programs. participated in programs where they actually helped fun asrovements to your ranch long as it is done -- to help with conservation practices to to keep soilclean, erosion down, and those are great programs, because those