Zinfandel as Health Food
From the Monthly Homeopathic Review, Vol. 31, published in London in 1887, an endorsement of Zinfandel:
The wine produced, of which we have just tasted samples, is a first-class wine. It is pure—a very important point—of full body, and excellent colour and flavour. There is no harshness about it, and while it is a wine that one can drink as one would a French wine, as a dinner beverage, it will be a most valuable wine for dietetic purposes. An invalid who requires a sound, full-bodied, and wholesome red wine, could not have a better than ” Zinfandel.”
The iron soil on which it grows renders it specially valuable in cases of anaemic tendency. We can strongly recommend it, and we have no doubt it will have a large sale as soon as it is known.
Fountain Grove Vineyards in Santa Rosa, California, produced the Zinfandel the Homeopathic Review endorsed as medicine. The vineyards were planted by Thomas Lake Harris, the leader of a mystical Christian cult who settled in Santa Rosa to build his Utopia. He was eventually driven out of the area when a local newspaper reporter discovered he was diddling his female followers.