When the Rivers Ran Red: An Amazing Story of Courage and Triumph in America's Wine Country
3/5
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About this ebook
Today, millions of people around the world enjoy California's legendary wines, unaware that 90 years ago the families who made these wines--and in many cases still do – turned to struggle and subterfuge to save the industry we now cherish. When Prohibition took effect in 1919, three months after one of the greatest California grape harvests of all time, violence and chaos descended on Northern California. Federal agents spilled thousands of gallons of wine in the rivers and creeks, gun battles erupted on dark country roads, and local law enforcement officers, sympathetic to their winemaking neighbors, found ways to run circles around the intruding authorities. For the state's winemaking families--many of them immigrants from Italy--surviving Prohibition meant facing impossible decisions, whether to give up the idyllic way of life their families had known for generations, or break the law to enable their wine businesses and their livelihood to survive. Including moments of both desperation and joy, Sosnowski tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people fought to protect to a beautiful and timeless culture in the lovely hills and valleys of now-celebrated wine country.
Vivienne Sosnowski
Vivienne Sosnowski has been an editorial director of newspapers, including the Washington, D.C., Examiner and the San Francisco Examiner. A gifted photographer whose portraits of wine country pioneers were the genesis of When the Rivers Ran Red, she divides her time between a home in the vineyard county of Sonoma and another in Vancouver, Canada.
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Reviews for When the Rivers Ran Red
5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book explores Prohibition and its effect on the American society, focusing on the impact it had on the rising California Wine Industry. It's quite an interesting topic not much known in Italy due to its geographical distance, but in a way relevant to italian history since the majority of California wineries of the time was run by italian immigrants.I found it very entertaining at the beginning, the author has a quite dry style, but she tries to dramatize the account and give the reader a true feeling of Napa Valley and Sonoma areas of those years. However in the second half the book become more and more difficult to read: probably it's my lack of knowledge of American history, but for me it was really difficult to follow all the names, dates, laws cited by the author. Figures and datas mixed in my head and I had to struggle a lot to finish the book, which toward the end becomes quite boring.Anyway a decent read if you have interest in wine.