{"product_id":"vintage-1960s-1970s-elkhorn-fruit-co-lodi-juice-grapes-crate-label","title":"Vintage 1960s-1970s Fruit Crate Label Elkhorn Fruit Co Lodi California Zinfandel Juice Grapes Advertising Ephemera 🍇","description":"\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/q3dSgfNPN2c\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize: 13 x 4 inches ~\u003c\/strong\u003e New Old Stock, never applied to a crate. They vary a little one to the next.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🍇 The Label\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a \u003cstrong\u003eBlack Joe Brand Juice Grapes\u003c\/strong\u003e crate label, produced for the \u003cstrong\u003eElkhorn Fruit Co.\u003c\/strong\u003e of Lodi, California — an outfit that described itself right on the label as \"Growers, Packers \u0026amp; Shippers.\" The label measures approximately \u003cstrong\u003e13 x 4 inches (about 33 x 10 cm)\u003c\/strong\u003e, the classic long, narrow shape built to run the length of a wooden lug box.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe artwork itself is a small riot of color lithography: a bright orange-and-yellow shield shape, outlined in green and black, frames a large portrait of a smiling, white-haired man wrapped in a patterned red bandana, set against a deep navy-blue field. \"BLACK JOE\" runs across the top in bold cream-and-blue block lettering, with \"JUICE GRAPES\" beneath it in solid yellow-orange block letters.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDown in the corner sits the company's own orange triangular \"EFC\" trademark — Elkhorn Fruit Co., Lodi — and the text runs bilingual throughout, English paired with French: \"Produce of U.S.A.\" beside \"Produit des États-Unis,\" \"Net Weight 36 lbs.\" beside \"Poids Net 16.3 KG,\" and \"Juice Grapes\" beside \"Raisins Pour Jus.\" A small light-blue box calls out the grape variety inside: \u003cstrong\u003eZinfandel\u003c\/strong\u003e. Below the artwork, in smaller lettering, the label also carries the name \"Leonardini \u0026amp; Son\" alongside Elkhorn Fruit Co.'s main office address in Lodi.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe label dates itself: it carries the ZIP code 95240 in its printed address, and ZIP codes didn't exist anywhere in the country before 1963 — so this printing dates to 1963 or later. That also settles an interesting wrinkle: the \"Black Joe\" brand and portrait actually predate Elkhorn Fruit Co. itself. Ed Kurtz, a longtime Lodi grower and shipper, ran the same brand and the same portrait under his own name in the 1930s — a version held today by the Center for Sacramento History and by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Balch Institute collection of ethnic imagery in advertising. Kurtz sold off the last of his Lodi vineyards in 1962. This label is Elkhorn Fruit Co.'s own later printing of that same brand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🍷 Lodi, California — Zinfandel Country\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLodi sits in California's Central Valley, in San Joaquin County, on flat, sandy-loam ground fed by the Mokelumne River — soil and climate that turned out, almost by accident, to be some of the finest Zinfandel-growing land on the continent. Old-timers around Lodi will tell you the town's vineyards were planted by generations of immigrant families — Italian, German, Portuguese — who came to farm and stayed to grow grapes, many of them still tending vines that trace back to plantings from the early 1900s. Lodi has long carried the informal title of the \"Zinfandel Capital of the World,\" and some of its old head-trained vines are among the oldest continuously producing Zinfandel vineyards in America. It's exactly the kind of place where a shipper naming a brand \"Zinfandel\" on a grape label wasn't marketing flourish — it was simply telling you plainly what variety was inside the box.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏷️ What This Label Is, and Why It Still Matters\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLet's name it plainly, because the naming is the point. The brand name and the figure on this label place it squarely in what collectors and historians call \u003cstrong\u003eBlack Americana\u003c\/strong\u003e — commercial art that used caricatures of Black Americans to sell everyday goods. It ran through American advertising decade after decade, on pancake boxes and rice bags and fruit crates like this one, and it was ordinary. That is the uncomfortable part, and it is also the historically important part: this was not fringe material. It came out of the same lithography houses that printed every other label in the shed, ordered by companies that thought nothing of it, and it moved through produce markets in every city in the country. It was the mainstream commercial vocabulary of its time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMost of it is gone now. Not preserved, not catalogued — thrown out. The paper crate label trade faded out as packing houses gradually switched over to pre-printed cardboard cartons, and an obsolete supply goes the way every obsolete supply goes: pulped, burned, or hauled out of the shed with everything else. Those household-name characters were retired one by one as the country's patience for them ran out — Quaker announced the end of Aunt Jemima in June 2020 and the brand became Pearl Milling Company; Mars announced that September that Uncle Ben's would become Ben's Original — and a company retiring a trademark is not in the business of preserving it. What survives, survives by accident. The crate labels in collectors' hands today are overwhelmingly labels that were \u003cstrong\u003eprinted but never used\u003c\/strong\u003e, bundles that sat in a packing house label room for decades until somebody finally opened the door.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is a primary document of how American business once talked about race, and that is a category of object serious institutions collect on purpose. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University has built the nation's largest publicly accessible collection of artifacts of intolerance — on the principle that objects of intolerance can be used to teach tolerance. University special collections, Johns Hopkins's among them, keep advertising ephemera like this on the same stated grounds: not to celebrate it, but to keep the evidence within reach of people examining the legacy of racist depiction in American commerce. This same brand has already found a home in two such collections — the Center for Sacramento History and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Balch Institute. This label belongs with people who study that history, teach it, or simply want the record kept rather than erased.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🚂 Juice Grapes, Home Winemakers, and a Trade That Crossed Borders\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe words \"Juice Grapes\" on this label point to a specific and fascinating chapter of American food history. For much of the twentieth century, California's Central Valley didn't just ship Zinfandel and other wine varietals to commercial wineries — it shipped boxcar after boxcar of fresh grapes directly to ordinary households, especially in the immigrant neighborhoods of the East Coast and Midwest, where families with roots in Italy, Portugal, and elsewhere kept up the old-world tradition of making their own wine at home each fall. Even after Prohibition ended in 1933, this trade never really stopped — \"juice grapes\" were sold for generations to home winemakers who bought crates by the dozen when the fall harvest trains rolled east. To this day, Lodi's fresh grape packers still ship lugs like this one to home winemakers across the Midwest and East Coast, and into Canada as well.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe bilingual English-French wording on this particular label — \"Raisins Pour Jus,\" \"Produit des États-Unis\" — is a strong clue that Elkhorn Fruit Co.'s juice grapes traveled beyond U.S. borders too, most likely north into Canada, where home winemakers made up a real market for Lodi's fall grape harvest. It's a small detail, but it turns this label into a little piece of cross-border commercial history: a Lodi grower dressing its Zinfandel crates in two languages so they'd be just as welcome on a loading dock north of the border as one closer to home.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏢 Elkhorn Fruit Co. and the Leonardini Name\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eElkhorn Fruit Co. identified itself on its labels plainly as growers, packers, and shippers, headquartered in Lodi, and marked its crates with its own orange triangular \"EFC\" trademark — a clean, confident logo built for quick recognition on a busy dock. Alongside the company name, this label also carries \"Leonardini \u0026amp; Son\" — and that's not a stranger sharing a name. San Joaquin County's own historical society files Elkhorn Fruit Company itself under the Leonardini family in its label collection. Leonardini \u0026amp; Son is Elkhorn's own family, printed right there on their own brand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1950s-sunset-crate-label-fresno-ca-bright-and-beautiful-americana\"\u003eVintage 1950s Sunset Brand California Grapes Zinfandel Crate Label 🍇 — Packed by Joseph Gazzara, 1270 Linden Ave., Fresno CA\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1980s-sierra-hills-crate-label-stockton-ca-rustic-mountain-decor\"\u003eVintage 1980s Sierra Hills Zinfandel Grape Crate Label from Stockton, California\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1970s-progress-asparagus-crate-label-lodi-ca-stunning-memorabilia\"\u003eVintage 1970s Progress Brand California Asparagus Crate Label 🌿 Bilingual, R\u0026amp;J Packing Sales, Lodi CA\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46920918663400,"sku":"VAG-9033596535016","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.6517600692_40yu.jpg?v=1785441975","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1960s-1970s-elkhorn-fruit-co-lodi-juice-grapes-crate-label","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}