The second half of the 19th Century saw the first commercial wine production in the Napa Valley, and several legendary wineries were founded by Italian Swiss immigrants. Mr. Tony Quinn describes how Italian Swiss peasants were forced by poverty to leave their ancient villages and cross the vast ocean to California in search of a new life. Two small Swiss villages, Intragna and Monte Carasso, produced these early pioneers of California wine making who navigated this strange new country with little knowledge of the language or its customs, yet helped lay the foundations of today’s Napa Valley wine industry.
