Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Vina, CA

Vina is a census-designated place in Tehama County, California, whose name comes from the Spanish word viña, meaning vineyard - the settlement at Lower Deer Creek took the name in the 1860s when a winery was founded there.

A post office has operated at Vina since 1871, and the community sits at an elevation of just 210 feet in the Sacramento Valley along Highway 99.

Beginning in 1881, railroad magnate and former California governor Leland Stanford bought up land around Vina and built a 55,000-acre ranch whose 4,000 acres of vines - some 3 million of them - made it the largest vineyard in the world at the time.

At its height, Stanford's ranch village of Vina had a population of about 1,300 and boasted two hotels and five saloons, though Stanford's wines were unsuccessful and he switched the operation to producing medicinal brandy.

Vina is home to the Abbey of New Clairvaux, a Roman Catholic Trappist monastery founded in 1959 after the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky bought the old Flynn Ranch property in 1955.

The abbey's chapter house was reassembled from stones of the 12th-century Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria de Ovila in Spain, which had sat in storage in San Francisco for decades before the monks rebuilt it at Vina.

The monks of New Clairvaux still farm vineyards on the old Stanford ranch land and produce wine in partnership with fifth-generation winemaker Aimée Sunseri, releasing their first bottles in 2003.

According to the 2020 census, Vina had a population of 198 people, down from 237 in 2010, with 69 households and an average household size of 2.62.

Vina's median age in 2020 was 51.0 years, and about 8.6% of its residents lived in group quarters - a reflection of the resident monastic community at the abbey.

About 34% of Vina's residents were Hispanic or Latino in the 2020 census, and the CDP covers just 1.4 square miles, all of it land.