The Cucamonga Valley, forty-five miles east of Los Angeles, has grown the bulk of Southern California wine during the present century. The vineyard area extends from Ontario east to Fontana and from the base of the San Gabriel Mountains southward to the Jurupa Hills in Riverside County. The climate, though tempered by winds from the ocean, is as warm as the northern San Joaquin Valley and is classed as Region IV.
Tiburcio Tapia planted the first vines in San Bernardino County on his Cucamonga Rancho in 1838. When the railroad arrived forty years later, others began growing grapes along the streams in the rich foothills north of Cucamonga and between Redlands and Banning in southern San Bernardino and northwestern Riverside County.
But nobody thought of planting vines or anything else in the vast flat, sandy waste in between, the Cucamonga desert, until Secondo Guasti came. Guasti arrived in Los Angeles in 1878 from the Italian Piedmont via Mexico, an unschooled, penniless youth. He shoveled coal in the freight yards, cooked in a restaurant, married the owner's daughter, and saved enough to start a small Los Angeles winery and to buy a vineyard in West Glendale. On occasional visits to the Cucamonga Valley, he noticed that the winter floods from the mountains flowed only as far as the desert and there disappeared. It occurred to Guasti that there might be water beneath the desert sand. One day he found a scraggly vine growing in the parched waste. Borrowing a shovel, he dug to find its root. Legend says that he discovered moisture after digging down twenty-four feet. Back in Los Angeles in 1900, Guasti organized the Italian Vineyard Company, selling shares to his countrymen. He bought eight square miles of the Cucamonga desert, built fences against rabbits, and planted a hundred varieties of grapes. He brought whole families from Italy to till the land and built an Italian town-which he named Guasti-with its own school, inn, general store, fire house, post office, and a church as lovely as those in the Italian countryside. Others planted in the desert, and more wineries were built. In 1911, Captain Paul Garrett acquired his 2000 acres at Cucamonga to grow grapes for Virginia Dare wine. By 1917, Guasti was advertising the IVC vineyard as "four thousand acres, the largest in the world." San Bernardino County had 20,000 acres of vineyards, more than in Sonoma and twice as many as in Napa County-when Prohibition came in 1920.
 | Sacramental - Altar Wines |
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| BURGUNDY | | True dry red burgundy wine. 12% alcohol by volume. |
| CHABLIS | | Pale straw color, crisp, fresh, dry and slightly tart. 12% alcohol by volume. |
| ROSÉ HAUTE SAUTERNE | | Popular Rose` Wine. Dark pink to amber in color, fresh, light body, slightly sweet and zesty similar to Rosé. 12% alcohol by volume. |
| HAUTE SAUTERNE | | Pale straw color, sweeter in taste like a true Sauterne wine 12% alcohol by volume. |
| LIGHT SWEET MUSCAT | | Pale straw color, mellow, sweeter in taste like a true Sauterne wine. 12% alcohol by volume. |
| COMMUNION WINE | | Red in color, sweeter than a Rosé, lighter in color than red Burgundy wine. 12% alcohol by volume. |
| MUSCATEL | | Dark amber in color, sweet, produced from select Muscat grapes. Aged in the tradition of our award-winning Reserve Port, Sherries and Angelica wines. 18% alcohol by volume. |
| PORT | | Deep, dark red in color, sweet and aged for smoothness in 50 year-old redwood casks. A well-made Port wine from old Cucamonga-Guasti vines. 18% alcohol by volume. |
| ANGELICA | | Popular Sweet Guasti Altar Wine. Light golden to amber color, the most popular Guasti Altar selection. Sweet, light-bodied. A consistent award winner from old Cucamonga-Guasti vines! 18% alcohol by volume. |
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Serving the religious community for more than 70 years the Joseph Filippi Winery has been a proud supplier of fine altar wine for use by parishes. Today we continue that tradition into our fifth generation.
Please contact us so that we may fill your requirements at winegroer@yahoo.com
Distributed "winery-direct" in San Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles and Orange Counties (California).
Distributor Information: The following religious suppliers who proudly offer Guasti® Sacramental Wines:
California -
Colorado -
Illinois -
Massachusetts -
Michigan -
Pennsylvania -
Philadelphia - James Moroney Inc.
Toll free: (800) 562-9463
Office (215) 471-5300
Sales (724) 516-7792
Website: (sorry, no website at this time)
Email: mmmoroney@aol.com
Email: elabian@aol.com
Texas -
El Paso - The Madonna Shop
Toll free: (888) 825-0145 or (915) 775-0113
Website: (under construction)
Email: madonnashop@netzero.net
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Member of the Upland Chamber of Commerce
Last update: 5 December, 2007
Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 by J. Filippi Vintage Co. and CitiVU. Permission granted to create World Wide Web pointers to these pages. All other rights reserved. |  |
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