Title: The History of San Diego County as Seen Through a Wine Bottle
Presenter: Richard Carrico
THIS MEETING WILL BE HELD IN PERSON, INDOORS AT THE RANCH HOUSE. PLEASE WEAR A MASK IF YOU ARE NOT VACCINATED.
Anthropologist, historian, and most importantly, wine maker, Richard Carrico will take the audience back through more than 240 years of wine making in San Diego County. We might get answers to such grape questions as who made the first wines, what and where was the first commercial winery, and is it true that at one time San Diego County rivalled Sonoma in wine production? What was the role of our indigenous people in the wine industry? From its start in 1769 wine has been an integral, although often ignored part of San Diego County history and Carrico wants to us to know more about the local elixirs of the gods. From the San Diego Mission to the Mexican Ranchos and then throughput the American period with its waves of wine drinking immigrants, vineyards and wineries rose and fell. In a well-illustrated PowerPoint presentation Carrico will stress how wine history is a clear reflection of our county’s history as a whole. Today we are experiencing a renaissance of wine making and once again San Diego County is poised to take its place among the wine growing regions of the United States. Salud!
Richard L. Carrico, award winning writer, educator, archaeologist, and wine maker, is a lecturer in the Department of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University and lives in Warner Springs, California. He is a well-respected scholar and researcher who had made significant contributions to our understanding of the local Native American and Hispanic cultures.
Richard is also a principal in his firm Recuerdos Research where he serves as a consultant to local Indian tribes, government agencies, and private firms. He has a master’s degree from the University of San Diego in History, B. A. degrees from San Diego State University in both History and Anthropology and has completed classes on wine making at UC Davis.
His primary area of research is the Indian people of southern California and northern Mexico, but he is also well-versed in the food and drink of Spanish colonial southern California and Mexican San Diego. Richard has conducted or directed more than fifty major archaeological excavations throughout California, Arizona, and Nevada and taken part in extensive field work in Baja California
In addition to more than 30 publications in professional journals, Richard is the author of History of Wines and Wineries of San Diego County (2016), Images of America Series: Ramona and other books including the revised Strangers in a Stolen Land: The Indians of San Diego County from Prehistory to the New Deal (2018); and San Diego's Ghosts and Hauntings. He also has authored stand-alone chapters in four academic books and written for wide range of newspapers including the San Diego Union and the Ramona Sentinel.