The Man Who Named San Marino Attempted Winemaking on an Industrial Scale

James De Barth Shorb, a native of Maryland, left an enormous imprint on the city's early history. A native of Maryland, Shorb was born in 1842 and emigrated to California, where he served as superintendent of the Philadelphia and California Oil Co.

In 1867, Shorb married Maria Wilson, daughter of Rancho San Pascual owner Benjamin "Don Benito" Wilson, and soon became a partner in his father-in-law's wine business.

Wilson, who had been growing grapes on his property since the 1850s, had turned a modest profit selling his wines through a San Francisco distributor. His original tract comprised parts of present-day Alhambra, San Marino, Pasadena and South Pasadena, and on his land grew grape varieties like Grenache, Zinfandel, Carignane and the "Mission Grape" brought from Europe by the Spanish padres.

Wilson took a liking to his new son-in-law, who was possessed of an entrepreneurial spirit, and the two shortly became business partners as "B.D. Wilson & Co." The partnership proved lucrative. By 1873, they had more than 230,000 grapevines and hundreds of orange, lime, lemon, olive and walnut trees.

Wilson formally signed over 500 acres of his land to Shorb, and Shorb named it "San Marino" after the Maryland plantation where he had spent much of his childhood.

Shorb was a master at corralling the region's water resources. Using 300,000 feet of iron pipe—a novel idea at the time—and old tiles left over from Spanish dwellings, Shorb installed an elaborate irrigation system, complete with hydrants that could regulate the flow of water to crops. Selling these irrigation systems to neighboring farmers became a source of profit in itself.

Gradually, Shorb assumed his father-in-law's responsibilities, and after Wilson's death in 1878, Shorb inherited the company. He wanted to expand further, so in 1882, he decided to build a new, larger winery. Backed by English investors, and utilizing inexpensive Chinese laborers (whom Shorb considered "smarter" than Mexicans or Native Americans), Shorb dynamited a hillside on his property and constructed the San Gabriel Wine Co. It cost $500,000 to build—more than $11 million in today's dollars.

By any standards, the winery was massive. It had a capacity of 1,500,000 gallons, was capable of crushing nearly 250 tons of grapes a day and had a telephone and its own one-and-a-half mile extension of the Southern Pacific Railroad leading to the winery's warehouse. To save time and labor, the winery was built on a slope, so grapes harvested on the vineyards uphill could simply be dumped into slides, which carried them straight to the crushing facilities. Many visiting journalists (and Shorb himself) proudly proclaimed it the largest winery in the world.

Shorb also became president of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad Co., a 13-mile line that ran from Los Angeles to the Lamanda Park neighborhood of Pasadena (where another winery stood).

Active in the Democratic Party, Shorb was elected Los Angeles County treasurer in 1892, but served for only one year due to health problems.

Problems befell the San Gabriel Wine Co. as well. In the late 1880s, the local wine industry fell victim to "Anaheim disease" (later called "Pierce's Disease" or Xylella fastidiosa), an insect-transmitted bacteria, which affected grape vines and other plants. At the same time, vintners began to grow wine in Northern California, using more modern methods and employing European immigrants, who were more familiar with viticulture than the Chinese and Mexican laborers of the San Gabriel Valley.

Shorb struggled to keep the San Gabriel Wine Co. afloat, but the blight destroyed many of his vineyards, and in 1892, he was forced to close after just 10 years in operation. Shorb died four years later, and the buildings comprising the winery were sold and converted into a felt factory in 1903. The last of the original structures was demolished in 1987.

"The death of J. de Barth Shorb removes one who has been a prominent figure in the life of Southern California" reported the L.A. Times in 1896. Indeed, the list of attendees at Shorb's funeral, held at the San Gabriel Mission, read like a who's who of prominent Southern California businessmen. Shorb was buried at the San Gabriel Mission cemetery.

Though no trace of the San Gabriel Wine Co. remains, Shorb Street in Alhambra is a testament to Shorb's influence in the region, while nearby Vine Street is the only lasting trace of the once-mighty winery he built.

Author's note: Parts of this article originally appeared in Hometown Pasadena in November 2009.