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Lanterman House explores the Crescenta — not Napa — Valley’s ongoing love affair with wine

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When La Cañada resident Jim Kambe moved into his current home on Green Lane nearly 20 years ago, he took one look at its spacious backyard and thought something was missing — grapevines.

With fond childhood memories of having avocados and tangerines within picking distance, and with a brother who lived in Napa, Kambe started with few rows of Shiraz and Cabernet grapes. In a stroke of what he now calls “dumb luck,” that first harvest years ago was good enough to keep him in the game.

“I think my first year, when I knew absolutely nothing, was my best,” he laughs.

Today, Kambe has moved on to Sangiovese, which he’s learned has a rootstock more compatible with La Cañada’s temperate climate, and produces his own modest harvest from about 150 vines. What he bottles, he keeps or gives to friends.

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Kambe is not alone in his endeavor. The Cañada and Crescenta valleys, lands once replete with wine and table grapes, are still home to a few stalwart garagistes, those who produce small-batch vintages from often domestic locales.

On Oct. 30, a lecture and book-signing event at the Lanterman House Visitor Center aims to shed light on such hyper-local winemakers and illuminate Los Angeles’ role as a once premier California wine-making locale.

Stuart Byles, a La Crescenta winemaker and author of the “Los Angeles Wine: A History from the Mission Era to the Present,” will speak on the history of wine-making throughout Greater Los Angeles before and after the area’s post-WWII land boom during the Lanterman House event.

“When California became a state there were over 100 vineyards and wineries in Los Angeles, 85 of them in the Pueblo (de Los Ángeles) alone,” Byles said in a recent interview. “Everything started here in Los Angeles. People don’t really know this about California wine.”

The speaker will also shine a light on small-batch vintners still practicing their craft in the Foothills, such as Kambe’s Lone Oak label, Old Oak Cellars in Pasadena and Stonebarn Vineyard, located in La Crescenta’s Deukmejian Park and maintained by a conservancy operated through the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley, of which Byles is a member.

Melissa Patton, the Lanterman House executive director who helped organize the Oct. 30 lecture, said when Byles came to her with an idea about offering wines from La Crescenta and La Cañada to accompany the talk, she was a bit leery.

“I told him there weren’t any local wineries, and he said, ‘Oh yes there are.’ I had no idea there were all these people doing this in their backyards,” Patton said. “I’m stunned by how many people are into garagiste wine-making in the Crescenta Valley.”

Tickets to the lecture cost $5 and include an opportunity for participants to taste pourings and talk to local vinters from Old Oak Cellars, Stonebarn Vineyard, Lone Oak and La Cañada’s Cherry Canyon. Copies of Byles’ book, “Los Angeles Wine,” will be available for purchase.

Lanterman House is located at 4420 Encinas Drive, in La Cañada. For more information, visit lantermanfoundation.org.

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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine

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