Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1831, Jean Louis Vignes had bought and cultivated 104 acres of land located between the original Pueblo and the banks of the Los Angeles River. He named his property El Aliso after the centuries-old white alder tree found near the entrance. He planted a vineyard and started preparing to make wine. Vignes early experiments, while waiting for his own vines to mature, were with his neighbor Ysidro Reyes' newly producing vineyards. During the three years that it took for Vignes' vines to begin producing grapes, the two men worked well together and became friends with Vignes serving as a mentor to Reyes in improving the quality of the wine. The Mission grape grew well and yielded large quantities of wine, but Vignes was not satisfied with the results even after attempting to discern if aging it would improve the taste. The common practice at the time was to drink the wine as soon as it was fermented unless it were to be made into Angelica, a fortified wine distilled similarly to Port. Vignes decided it was necessary to import better vines from Bordeaux, Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon blanc. The vines transited around Cape Horn. To preserve their roots during the long trip, they were inserted in moss and potato slices. Vignes became the first Californio who grew quality vines, and the first who aged his wines. By the time Ysidro Reyes left Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1839 to plant the vineyard of his newly awarded Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, he had become a skilled vintner, with an excellent source for aging barrels and a wagon load of grafts from Vignes' European Bordeaux grapes that would flourish in the fertile Santa Monica Canyon. The exact date of Vignes first vintage from the European vines is unknown. However, it was may have been 1837, because in 1857 he ran an advertisement claiming that some of his wines were 20 years old. The wood for the barrels came from land Vignes owned in the San Bernardino Mountains.