07/21/2026
We do start them young at Arroyo
Vincent Arroyo Family W**ery tells a great tale of legacy calling it, "Third generation is learning the tricks of the trade from Dad!" While the w**e business is shifting, like always, w**e has been with for roughly 8,000 years. So, I believe in the hope and trust of a third generation at Vincent Arroyo Family W**ery. You're seeing history continuing, not falling away to our current beverage creations. Nothing, like Vincent Arroyo w**es, can be replicated, except how it's crafted by the family, and it's delicious!
Nosh on THIS for lunch:
W**e's origins go back much further than most people expect. Chemical residue on pottery shards from the Shulaveri-Shomu culture in the South Caucasus (modern Georgia) has been dated to around 6000 BCE, so roughly 8,000 years old. That's the current record for grape w**e specifically. The Areni-1 cave in Armenia, dated to about 4100 BCE, has the oldest known actual w**ery setup, complete with a w**e press and fermentation vats.
There's an even older fermented beverage from Jiahu in China, around 7000 BCE, but that was a mixed drink of rice, honey, and fruit rather than pure grape w**e, so it doesn't quite count for your "first grapes fermented" definition.
As for Prohibition, it's a more interesting story than "mostly w**e" or "mostly wh***ey." Bootlegging itself skewed heavily toward spirits and b**r. The economics of smuggling favored high proof alcohol since you got more punch per gallon transported, which is why rum running and bathtub gin dominated the illegal trade.
W**e had a stranger path. Commercial w**e production largely collapsed since there was no sacramental or medicinal loophole for casual drinkers. But the Volstead Act allowed households to make up to 200 gallons a year of "non-intoxicating" fruit juice at home, and that loophole was gleefully exploited. Companies sold grape concentrate bricks and products like Vine-Glo, sometimes with labels warning customers not to add sugar or let it sit too long, since that would turn it into w**e.
Grape acreage in California actually increased during Prohibition because of this home w**emaking demand, even though the formal w**e industry as we'd recognize it was gutted. It took decades after Repeal in 1933 for California w**e quality to recover, since so much vineyard land had shifted to high yield, thick skinned shipping grapes rather than quality w**e varieties.
**eMatters
