09/02/2026
Greetings, fellow history enthusiasts! Welcome to this week’s edition of Deserve to Preserve, where we celebrate El Dorado County’s remarkable historic places and the stories that continue to shape our community. Today, we feature the circa 1860 Skinner W**ery and Distillery near Rescue, California. More than 160 years later, modern maps still identify the area as “Skinners.”
El Dorado County has a rich viticultural legacy. Among the county’s earliest vintners was Scottish immigrant and Gold Rush miner James Skinner, whose name remains closely tied to the history of w**emaking in the Green Valley and Rescue area.
Skinner arrived in the United States in 1842 and came to California a decade later, seeking his fortune in the Gold Rush. After mining near Coloma, he used his earnings to acquire land in what became known as Green Valley, near present-day Rescue. Around 1860–61, he planted a vineyard and began producing w**e, brandy, and vinegar.
The location was no accident. Skinner’s property stood along the busy Folsom-Coloma Road, a major transportation route through the foothills that later became part of the Pony Express route. His w**ery and distillery were positioned to take advantage of the steady stream of miners, freighters, travelers, and local residents moving through the area.
Skinner constructed an extensive w**emaking operation from local stone and brick. The w**ery stood on the north side of the road, while the distillery was located across the road, with pipes connecting the two buildings. Beneath the w**ery was a substantial stone w**e cellar capable of holding approximately 15,000 gallons.
James Skinner died in 1885, but the family business continued under his son George. By the late 1880s, George had expanded the operation and was purchasing grapes from other local growers. A 1891 viticultural directory reported that he owned 50 acres of bearing w**e grapes that produced 100 tons of grapes in 1889.
The w**ery and distillery eventually disappeared, but the stone cellar remained and survives to this day. After the historic property fell into disuse, portions of the site were incorporated into a nursery. Today, the surviving cellar stands as one of the few physical reminders of the scale and sophistication of El Dorado County’s early commercial w**e industry.
More than a century later, the Skinner family returned to the county in an extraordinary rediscovery of their own history. In 2006, James Skinner’s descendants learned of the family connection while traveling through the Sierra foothills. They traced their family history to the Skinner pioneer cemetery and the site of the original w**ery, eventually reestablishing Skinner Vineyards & W**ery in El Dorado County.
The result is a rare continuity between past and present: a family whose roots in El Dorado County’s w**e industry reach back to the Gold Rush era is once again producing w**e in the foothills. Can you imagine discovering your family’s viticultural legacy, only to reestablish operations in the same place more than 100 years after the original w**ery had closed?
In June 2025, the El Dorado County Historical Society had the privilege of bringing that history to life during our sold-out "Pioneer Vintners of the Sierra Foothills: The Origins of El Dorado County W**e" fundraiser. Descendants of both the Skinner and Zentgraf families joined us, sharing family stories while guests explored the circa 1861 Skinner w**e cellar and learned about the people who helped establish viticulture in El Dorado County.
The Skinner cellar is a surviving piece of the county’s agricultural, industrial, and immigrant history, and a tangible reminder that El Dorado County’s w**e story began generations ago.
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