The Times - UK (2020-10-17)

46 2GM Saturday October 17 2020 | the times

Wo r l d

I

t is fair to say that the region

that was once the centre of the

American wine business is now

better known for other things.

“People have a hard time

wrapping their head around it when

you say ‘Los Angeles wine’,” said

Mark Blatty, co-owner of Byron

Blatty Wines, a trade group that

aims to revive the city’s “rich

tradition” of winemaking.

In the late 19th century

winemakers in Los Angeles were

shipping their products across the

United States and even to Europe.

Urban winemakers of LA to offer a taste of 18th-century vines

The diverse microclimates of the

greater Los Angeles area make it

ideally suited, still, to a vibrant and

experimental wine culture, Mr

Blatty believes, but hardly anyone

living in the area today is even

aware that wine is being made here;

still less a cabernet sauvignon that

sells for $150 a bottle.

“You don’t drive through LA and

see vineyards,” he observed.

That is why he and the small band

of fellow winemakers who set up

the Los Angeles Vintners

Association with him were so

excited when they received a call

from Terri Huerta, director of

development and communications

at the historic San Gabriel Mission

in east Los Angeles.

The Mission is regarded by

historians as having been the most

important base of operations for the

18th-century Spanish conquest of

California. It was also where

Californian wine production first

took off, almost immediately after

the Mission was founded in 1771 by

Franciscan friars who needed

communion wine.

The thirsty friars were able to stay

on top of their rapidly expanding

production thanks to the forced

labour of indigenous people, and by

the 1830s the institution’s vineyards

covered 160 acres.

Of course, the Mission has not

made wine on that scale for a long

time, but Ms Huerta wanted to

know if the group would be

interested in harvesting grapes from

their remaining vines, the oldest of

which is said to date from the 1770s.

Amy Luftig Viste, who runs

Angeleno Wine Company with her

business partner Jasper Dickson,

said she was giddy at the prospect.

“It was truly awesome to be in this

old Mission and to see this vine

that’s larger than many trees in

southern California,” she said. “This

beast of a vine, that’s persevered

through Prohibition and fires and

earthquakes, is still producing. It

was an honour to be able to pick

that fruit.”

DNA analysis of the Mission’s

vines in 2014 found that they were a

cross between Vitis girdiana, a wild

grape native to southern California,

and Vitis vinifera, widely known as

the Mission grape because it was

brought from Spain and planted

widely across the Americas by

Catholic missionaries.

Ms Viste, Mr Dickson, Mr Blatty

and Patrick Kelley of Cavaletti

Vineyards, the fourth member of the

group, harvested enough grapes to

make 300 bottles of wine.

The Mission is both a familiar

local landmark and arguably the

first winery that California ever had,

long before the rise of renowned

producers farther north in the Napa

and Sonoma valleys or the rolling

hills around Santa Barbara and Paso

Robles.

Mr Blatty therefore hopes that the

project will connect Los Angeles’s

winemaking past with its present in

the minds of the city’s drinkers.

“You are literally going to be able to

taste history,” he said.

The plan is to make a

limited-edition release of Angelica, a

sweet, fortified wine which is named

after Los Angeles and which the

Franciscans at San Gabriel Mission

were once well known for.

There are encouraging signs that

the new wine might not only be

interesting but also delicious. “Right

off the bat the flavours we’re getting

are really awesome,” Mr Dickson

said. “We’re in the early phases

here, so I can’t say as of yet, and it’s

something you would age for a few

years, but initially, it’s really, really

beautiful.”

Ben

Hoyle

los angeles

Josander Oropeza never expected to be

a fisherman. He trained as a hairstylist

and can barely swim.

But now he spends his days, and

sometimes nights, five miles out to sea.

With only an inner tube to protect him

from the depths, he fends off sharks and

risks his life to catch a few red snappers

to provide for his wife and child.

Venezuela’s economic collapse, the

deepest recorded anywhere in the

world in the last century, combined

with months of lockdown, has forced

him and dozens of others in the town of

Los Caracas to turn to the sea to

survive.

They set off at dawn, marching

across the rocky shoreline, carrying

inflated lorry tyres on their backs. Their

Venezuelans brave sharks to seek food

paddles are children’s swimming flip-

pers, their fishing tackle is a homemade

steel hook tied to old nylon lines. Last

week the group included a builder, an

engineer and a farmer. Before they

jump into the Caribbean Sea, they cross

themselves and say a prayer.

“I still call myself a barber,” Mr Orop-

eza, 26, said. “But what I really do is go

out and get beaten up, hungry and

cold.” His greatest fear is what wealthy

recreational fishermen regard as the ul-

timate prize: the big game fish that

prowl off this coast and at any moment

could puncture the fragile float he de-

pends upon to avoid drowning. He

spotted one “monster”, probably a mar-

lin, underneath him the other day.

David Veroes, 38, another member of

the unlikely fishing party, said: “I do this

because it’s the most secure form of

work I can find.” Until March he was an

agricultural engineer, working on a

farm. A lack of fuel in the country that

still boasts the world’s largest proven oil

reserves but is reeling from decades of

corruption, recent US sanctions and

now the pandemic meant that he was

out of work and going hungry.

“I can bring the fish home and then I

barter it for other food. I have a three-

year-old child and with this we keep

going,” he said. He recently lost a flipper

when a shark toppled him from his

inner tube into the sea. Now he uses a

plank of wood as a paddle instead.

Both men live in a social housing

building, a project instigated by the late

president Hugo Chávez. In one dingy

corridor, a now faded image of the

populist benefactor looms above. The

self-proclaimed revolutionary’s endur-

ing mismanagement is evident every-

where. The lift has not worked for years,

there is no running water and the

power cuts last for hours.

Mr Oropeza’s wife, Jessica, is strug-

gling to adapt to the stress of being a

fisherman’s spouse. “I stay here in the

house waiting for him to come home

and never quite know if he will,” she

said. Often she won’t cook the fish her

husband catches, instead using it as a

form of money, trading one sea bass for

a bag of pasta.

Venezuela’s currency has lost almost

all its value after years of hyperinfla-

tion. A lack of ink and security paper

means the government has almost

given up printing any more notes.

Many basics are now priced in dollars.

Venezuela has had its borders closed

since March and has instigated a rotat-

ing weekly quarantine, where people

are allowed to shop and some business-

es open for seven days, followed by a

week of curfew. The rule is widely flout-

ed, but the government of President

Maduro insists it is working, with just

over 700 deaths from Covid-19 official-

ly recorded. Venezuela’s health system

is acutely vulnerable to the pandemic,

with at least a third of hospitals without

regular running water, according to the

national doctor’s association.

The country’s deepening economic

paralysis has led to a new wave of

emigration in recent weeks. Colombian

immigration authorities report a sharp

rise in the number of Venezuelans

illegally crossing the land border.

About 15 per cent of the entire popula-

tion has left the country since the

economy began to plummet shortly

after Mr Maduro took office in 2014.

Mr Oropeza said that if his new life as

a fisherman became unbearable, he too

would leave.

Venezuela

Stephen Gibbs

Roll up, roll up Recirquel, a Hungarian circus dance company, combines elements of classical and modern dance with circus techniques for its show Solus Amor

Florida city

sells off surfeit

of royal swans

United States

Will Pavia New York

Thirty-six swans descended from a pair

donated by the Queen are being sold by

a city in Florida to allow more gliding

space on one of its ponds.

Lakeland, a lagoon-speckled city

between Orlando and Tampa, had a

thriving community of swans early last

century. Alligators are blamed for eat-

ing many of the birds, wiping them out

entirely by the 1950s.

A desperate resident whose husband

was stationed at an air force base in

England wrote to the Queen asking if

she would donate a couple of her birds.

A breeding pair from the royal flock

arrived in Lakeland in February, 1957.

The speed limit on the road around

the lake was reduced to 20mph to pro-

tect the swans. As the flock grew the

city, whose logo is swan-shaped, began

spending $10,000 a year on their up-

keep. The success of the flock has led to

overcrowding on Lake Morton, in the

centre of the city, and a series of “swan

sales” to reduce their number.

In the latest sell-off, the city is offer-

ing 18 cobs and 18 pens. Demand is high,

so a lottery was staged yesterday to

select bidders, limited to a maximum of

two birds each, at $400 per swan.

ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES