The Chinese Roots of Northern California’s Wine Industry Run Deep

A Chinese character engraved on the stone wall of a press house. A knocker on a wine cellar door in the shape of a koi fish. A long abandoned Chinese bunkhouse now used to store winery signage.

These are all traces of a nearly forgotten history. Though it’s rarely spoken of today, a majority Chinese labor force planted Northern California’s iconic wine country.

The immigrants worked in all aspects of the vineyards: clearing the land, planting the vines, digging the cellars and making the wine. A full decade before the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, Chinese laborers were toiling in the fields of Sonoma Valley.

“By the 1880s, Chinese were 80% of the labor force in agriculture of that region,” said David Lei, a board member of the Chinese Historical Society of America