Mr. Lieder, a bankrupt grape farmer, stared for a few silent moments at the empty house with the redwood siding.

These are tough times for grape farmers across California, where the grape has taken an ignoble tumble from its vaunted position as the state's signature agricultural product.

Enterprising grape farmers produced liquid and semi-solid grape concentrates, often called "wine bricks" or "wine blocks".

"My competition isn't the local cooperative down the road," said Joe Falcone, a National Grape board member and fourth-generation grape farmer.

With grape farmers for owners, "it's a conservative environment," said Rex Green, a managing director at Advest, a Boston investment bank that has advised Welch's.

The law, enacted in 1976, relaxed Prohibition-era restrictions, making it less costly and easier for grape farmers to open wineries.

One man, a grape farmer, had lost a leg to a festering wound in the retaking of the castle.

Both his parents and grandparents had been grape farmers, and he grew up in Lodi, New York, only one-half mile from where he established his vineyards.

Tony, an Italian grape farmer who is a large and hearty older man, happily shows the crowd his "girlfriend"'s picture ("The Most Happy Fella").

This law, offering grape farmers inducements to become wine producers, laid the foundation for today's state wine industry.