Description

As the Bargetto family established a commercial winery in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains in 1933, they installed the kind of equipment in common use at the time: large wooden tanks and casks for fermenting, storing, and aging wine. While most of the Bargettos’ tanks were built of California’s famous redwood, others were made of oak. This oak door and clamp mechanism covered the access opening in one of the Bargettos’ oak casks and was used in the family’s winery for about 70 years. Beginning in the 1960s, vintners started replacing their old wooden equipment with modern, stainless steel tanks, but few could manage replacing everything at once. For many years both technologies existed side by side in California’s historic wineries.The Bargetto family’s story reflects in many ways the history of Italians in California, with several themes threaded throughout: multiple migrations between Italy and America, opportunity and work in the wine industry, and the importance of family and community. The first Bargettos to arrive in California were Giuseppe (Joseph) and his eldest son Filippo (Philip), who left their ancestral home in Italy’s Piedmont region, in 1890. They settled among other Italians in the winegrowing area around Mountain View, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where they found work at the Casa Delmas Winery. Although Joseph moved back to Italy two years later, Philip remained until 1902, when he returned to Italy to be married. Three years later Philip and his new family arrived back in California, settling first in San Francisco, then,...

Record Contributed By

National Museum of American History

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution