Wine Industry Took Root on Olvera Street

Long before the first vineyards were planted in Napa and Sonoma, Southern California was the state’s wine center.

As early as 1779, in fact, vineyards with as many as 160,000 vines surrounded the Mission San Gabriel. In the 1830s, when the government of Mexico stripped the Franciscan padres of their California holdings, the region underwent a wine boom and ambitious vintners laid out grape fields in the land between the old pueblo and the Los Angeles River.

By the middle of the 19th century, Los Angeles produced at least 60,000 gallons of table wine annually and, by 1869, the area’s 43 wineries were producing 4 million gallons each year.

By then, the roots of California’s internationally acclaimed commercial wine industry were firmly planted in what is now downtown Los Angeles’ Olvera Street, where Italian immigrants were making wine on a street initially called Wine or Vine.

In the early 1900s, the San Antonio Winery got its start when Santo Cambianica and his three brothers left their village in Lombardy, Italy. In 1912, they settled in what was then called the “Pueblo’s Bedroom” and the “Italian District,” Lincoln Heights.

The Cambianica brothers hired on as railroad boilermakers for Southern Pacific. Although one homesick brother quickly returned to Italy, Santo, Guiseppe and Giovanni stayed.

About that time, Santo purchased a tiny lot on Lamar Street, where in 1917 he placed an abandoned railroad boxcar. On its side, he painted the name “San Antonio Winery”--after his patron saint.

Two years later, when Prohibition jolted the region and killed off most local wineries, it was the real beginning for San Antonio.

On June 30, 1919, the night before the national law went into effect, while the city’s other breweries, wineries and bars were busy doling out drinks in what was the ultimate “last call,” Cambianica had his eye on a new kind of contract.

In the wake of mass immigration that almost doubled the Italian population in Los Angeles from 10,000 to 17,000, Cambianica, a savvy businessman with an army of connections, contracted to produce altar wines for the Catholic Church, whose congregations had swelled with new immigrants.

It didn’t hurt that Cambianica himself was a devout Catholic, and that fact--plus shrewd salesmanship--allowed him to increase production from 2,000 to 25,000 cases annually by the time Prohibition was repealed.

Unable to keep pace with rising sales, let alone make time to find a wife, confirmed bachelor Cambianica invited his nephew Stefano Riboli--who was born in Los Angeles but had returned to his family’s Italian village at the age of 4--back to L.A. to help him out.

In 1936, Cambianica and Riboli began contracting with other Italian grape growers, who carved out new vineyards in the fertile foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. They grew hot-climate varieties of grapes that made hearty, inexpensive, rough-hewn red wines.

Over the next decade, Riboli’s future wife, Maddalena Satragni, whose family had emigrated from Mombaruzzo in the Piedmont region of Italy, was working as a sharecropper at the Guasti vineyards in Rancho Cucamonga (“the globe’s largest vineyard”) and later at the Amestoy ranch in Encino. After saving enough money, the Satragnis bought farmland in Chino.

Determined that his nephew would not remain a bachelor like he had, Cambianica drove Riboli out to Chino to meet the Satragni family in 1944.

Although Riboli was not oblivious to Maddalena’s beauty, he was really smitten by how well she handled a tractor.

“I knew she was a hard worker and I liked that,” said Riboli, recalling how he first glimpsed Maddalena plowing her parents’ field.

Although he proposed marriage on their second date--because the drive was already getting to be too much--she thought he was too much of a “city slicker” and needed to be held off until the following year.

Maddalena invested her generous $7,000 dowry in a Lincoln Heights home and soon began taking an active hand in her new family’s business affairs.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, carloads of Italians traditionally arrived after Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Catholic Italian Church to buy a case or two of wine before driving to Chinatown for bread at the Italian bakery and sausage at Pocino’s on North Broadway. The winery was also a favorite destination for city-weary Angelenos who crossed the wooden bridges over the Los Angeles River to see the nearby tourist attractions: an alligator farm and zoo.

Making deliveries at night--after working all day and putting their two children, Santo and Cathy, to bed under the eye of doting grandparents--constituted the heart of Stefano and Maddalena’s social life. Loading their truck with cases of wine, they made stops in the Chavez Ravine and at restaurants as far west as Perino’s in Hancock Park.

In 1955--shortly before Cambianica returned to Italy, where he would die in 1958--the Ribolis set out to improve and expand relations with the changing ethnic community. Maddalena opened what was possibly the first wine-tasting room in the state. Her first customers were interns and residents at County-USC Medical Center.

As more customers evaluated the wine, two tables and four chairs were added, laying the foundation for the later opening of the winery’s Maddalena Restaurant.

Striking up an alliance with an energetic Italian Salesian priest not only saved the winery, which found itself in the path of the Southern Pacific Railway’s expansion, but also helped promote the wine.

Wheeler-dealer “Father Louie” Masoero, or “King Louie” as he was affectionately called while working as principal of Don Bosco Technical Institute in Rosemead, spearheaded the drive that put the winery on the historical landmark map in 1964.

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Schmoozing from one end of the state to the other on behalf of his winemaking friends, he wooed fast-food and gas station cashiers, farmers and law enforcement officers with bottles of San Antonio wine.

Often taking advantage of the Ribolis’ generosity, he filled his ancient battleship-gray Chevy--with its bald tires and missing lug nuts--with cases of San Antonio wine. With his payload teetering and clanking, he cruised north, often accompanied by the Ribolis’ youngest son, Steve, to St. Francis School in Watsonville, swapping wine for fruit, vegetables, 500 pounds of salami, and even roses for the Salesian sisters.

As Angelenos cultivated a taste for premium wines, the Ribolis--who continue to produce altar wine--embraced the trend toward premium varietals, designating their names on the labels of their best wines from the family vineyards in Northern California.

Remaining the oldest winery in Los Angeles is their hallmark, but rebuilding old Los Angeles is their passion. After turning an old cigar factory on the L.A. River into lofts, the Ribolis are helping to breathe new life into Chinatown’s historic core, hoping to attract artists and urban pioneers to populate the trendy loft-style units on the 170-year-old Capitol Milling Co. property.

Going from grapes to gentrification may seem a bit of a stretch, but it’s no greater than the one from Lombardy to Lamar Street.