Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: The Evolution and Art of Winemaking
By Dan Berger
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — In the long sweep of history, iconic images are created by distant episodes, and those images with the most permanence usually relate to moments that are memorialized in an idealized manner. San Francisco’s professional football team, named to honor the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill 175 years ago, is just one example of an iconic image that has left all of California with some of its most gold-plated, stirring signatures — the Golden Gate Bridge for one.
This golden state has created numerous images that have lasted for decades and which represent historical durability. In the annals of law enforcement, Alcatraz remains an image of rock-hard legal punishment. Tinseltown is never used for anything other than a Hollywood image created to glorify the greatness and glitz of the film community. And certainly, one of the most perfect images in American culture- and image-making lore has to be Napa Valley.
Which includes Robert Louis Stevenson’s long-quoted line about wine being bottled poetry.
Across thousands of miles, from one end of the country to the other, Napa represents “America’s Wine Country” to millions. Aerial cinematography of expansive green growth, even those taken of vineyards planted tens of thousands of miles away, frequently are identified as Napa. (One TV report in the 1980s showed two cyclists on a Pacific Ocean adjacent road. The voice-over said visiting Napa was a delight. It is. But that wasn’t Napa.)
This region was first immortalized to millions of Americans in 1956 when the Frank Loesser musical “Most Happy Fella” debuted on the Great White Way. In one show-stopping musical number, the lead character, Tony, sings that he was “the most happy fella, in the whole Napa Valley.” People leaving the theater hummed the melody.
"Wine is not just a beverage; it's a story told through the hands of the winemaker and the land from which it comes."
The show was such a huge success that the famed Ed Sullivan put a segment of the musical on his hugely popular Sunday night television show. That alone would have been phenomenal exposure for the Napa Valley, but by coincidence it occurred on the same night that a young, southern gyrational singer first appeared on that same telecast. His name was Elvis Presley.
The show received enormous ratings and thus did Napa instantly gain its iconic image – an image that probably will last forever. But as with many images, the aura may still resound, but the reality may fade and wind up to be something hard to reconcile with the present reality. And the future appears to be questionable.
Gold-flecked San Francisco? Sutter’s Mill is really a lot closer to Sacramento than to the bay. Locals know that it has been decades since Alcatraz was a true symbol of penal rigidity. Today it’s little more than a vacant, soggy rock. And Hollywood long ago was supplanted by loads of other film “capitals,” which includes Japan, Sweden and so many other places it’s impossible to name them. So, yes, Napa still makes some nice wines, but at least a dozen other places now rival it for preeminence, even with cabernet.
Particularly in the area of diversity has Napa declined. The divergent styles of cabernet that Napa once made and the longevity that had always been an essential component of Napa’s finest red wines slowly have eroded. So, although Napa’s national reputation remains “America’s Wine Country,” for the last decade or two this persona has transmogrified and now it faces some of the problems that come with success.
There is a true irony happening before us. Some of the newcomers who moved here and invested significantly — and said they wanted to continue promoting the greatness of this valley — may be part of why this area’s image is being disfigured. Part of why this region has lost some of its luster may be a result of the actions of some of the very people who, bizarrely, say they want to continue promoting its glorious past by ignoring it.
There is no question that some of the people who came before were heroes in the creation of the valid original image. Names as illustrious as André Tchelistcheff, Robert and Peter Mondavi, Lee Stewart, Louis Martini, Nathan Fay, Francis Mahoney, Bernard Portet, Dr. Richard Peterson, Phil Freese, Joe Heitz, Zelma Long, Cathy Corison, Ric Forman, Bob Travers, Mike Grgich, Warren Winiarski, Jack and Jamie Davies are just a few of those who created a legacy on which to burnish the legend.
The commitment these people invested was never about ego or image-building or profit. It was about quality and potential. These were farmers, philosophers, scientists. They were less owners of the land than stewards of it. They were friendly to each another in the way so many European viticulturists fostered a “we’re in this together” comradeship. And there was a common purpose.
Just five decades ago, Napa was known by wine lovers as home to exceptional and age-worthy cabernets and chardonnays — and at least another dozen grape varieties made into wines the likes of which the world had never before seen. There were fascinating, age-worthy petite sirahs, structured, balanced zinfandels, elegant gamays, rustic charbonos, oddly interesting pinot St. Georges, a curiously appealing thing called sauvignon blanc, a fresh and delightfully sweet/dry chenin blanc, dramatic gewürztraminers and rieslings, a fine red wine called merlot and almost no pinot noir.
Touring here in the 1970s was far simpler than now and was largely done for the purpose of identifying the differences between various wine producers and the styles they made. Tasting room fees did not exist. The people pouring wine samples likely were family members, perhaps even the winemaker. Most visitors brought their own food with them because of the dearth of dining establishments. Today, if you want to taste a particular wine, you must make a reservation, often weeks out. And then when you get there, you have to be lucky that what you’re trying to taste is actually open. And it’ll cost.
This was and still is an agricultural zone, not a place for people to play. In the 1970s, only recently had grapes replaced plums, walnuts and pears. You visited during harvest at your own peril. It was and still is a working zone. Traffic snarls were and are partly a result of grape-laden trucks. Tasting room visitors often took notes on the wines. The spit crock was mandatory because tasting wasn’t about swigging. Swallowing wasn’t prohibited, but it was frowned-on. As one obnoxious Sonoma tasting room pourer once told a friend in the 1970s, “I’m here to educate, not intoxicate.”
Tasting wine was for education. The pourers frequently knew every detail of the wines they were pouring. Today it’s all about crystal stemware and aura-making. A bit like Starbucks, it has its own lingo.
In 1989, playing average tourist, I toured two famous Napa Valley wineries. At one, a young, very pretty but obviously inexperienced tour guide seemed giddy about what she said was “our NFO program.” After the third mention of “NFO” I risked sounding like a novice, and asked what that stood for. She smiled and said, “New French oak,” as if I were an idiot.
About 1980, the late, highly-respected grape grower Rene di Rosa (Carneros’ Winery Lake Vineyard) gave a speech in which he described a recent scenario he had heard about. It involved a newcomer to the valley who had purchased a home on a hillside adjacent to a large vineyard. Di Rosa said that weeks after the couple moved in, the husband accosted the tractor of the vineyard manager at the adjacent property to complain about the noise. It had started before 5:30 a.m. and was accompanied by what he said were horrible smells from some sort of powder that had been used in the vineyard.
Di Rosa said he assumed the urban fugitive didn’t know the first thing about Wine Country areas’ normal routines. “If you can’t stand the smell of sulfur dust, you better sell your house,” he said. “This not a residential area. It’s farming.” The tractor driver told the newcomer that vineyards and wineries can be noisy and can smell funny. Di Rosa said earth-movers do not wait until the neighbors arise and have their orange juice. By 10 a.m., most tractor work has been going on for five hours. He said something like, “if you want peace and quiet, move to a forest. Wine Country isn’t for you.”
The image of wine quality that the above pioneers fashioned had little to do with lofty pricing of six-pound bottles, crystal chandeliers, Monets in the men’s room, architectural ostentation or any of the platinum-esque flourishes that recently have invaded what once were merely work spaces. If Frank Lloyd Wright or I.M. Pei were alive today, their names would adorn local edifices.
Forty years ago, a winery’s greatest button-busting claim was not its naturally burgundy-colored travertine tile walkways, but how deep its moldy caves went into the mountain.
Making wine is dirty work. People get wet. People get muddy. People work ungodly long hours. Beer is plentiful. A good night’s sleep is a rumor. A tiny hole in a rubber boot usually means a purple foot for 10 days. One of the most important tools a winery has is its first aid kit. The most valuable persons in the winery are those who can fix the dump truck or the bottling line, or can operate a forklift or a tractor – or both. Not the caterer or the pastry chef or the airline booking secretary.
I see absolutely nothing wrong in fine or classic architecture. But local regulations that have, for nearly 40 years, attempted to reign in the externalities that wineries would like to pursue have been only partially successful. Some regulations have failed. Napa County political figures, working for an electorate that sometimes doesn’t pay much respect to their efforts, have attempted in three and a half decades to define what a winery is and what is not. It has often ruled that some activities are illegal. But many of their rulings are ignored.
Politicians’ efforts often are roundly criticized. In many cases, officials attempt merely to maintain a sense of up-valley equilibrium. They mostly just want to ensure that wineries remain wineries and not just edifices dedicated more to mammon and crass commercialism. It was one reason that Robert Mondavi had to abandon plans to put a major event center in the middle of the valley. He ended up putting in Napa – thus helping to revitalize an area that needed gentrification.
One example of a regulation: Today it is not entirely legal to serve food at a winery. But some (many?) still do. One winery owner is rumored to have defended himself by saying that what he was serving to his high-paying clientele wasn’t food. It was only there to help cleanse the palate. I didn’t realize that defining “food” was so complicated. Where is George Carlin when we need him? Can a large plate of food be referred to as a palate-cleanser and still obey the rules?
So, is Napa’s image still lustrous? Of course. Images don’t change all that quickly. It’s kind of like turning a cruise ship around in the ocean. Takes time. (Many Napa visitors know about cruise ships.) But the reality is that a lot has changed in Napa in the century since a play called “They Knew What They Wanted” by author Sidney Howard (1924) gave Frank Loesser the vehicle he needed to write a “Most Happy” musical. Which led to the establishment of the image. Which has changed over time.
What has changed recently may not necessarily be obvious. Younger wine lovers may not be aware of what’s gone. Pretty much everything today revolves around cabernet. Today there is almost no charbono, no pinot St. George, almost no chenin blanc, no gamay, no folle blanche, no moscato amabile and only scant availability of petite sirah, barbera and zinfandel. (I pray that the valley’s small plantings of riesling and sangiovese, both of which make sensational wines, remain in the ground.)
More than half of Napa today is planted to cabernet, some of it planted in the wrong locations. But that doesn’t matter — it all sells. (Or it did until recently.) Iconic images, however, won’t change for most Americans. Napa will continue to be America’s Wine Country. Even though it probably ought to be renamed Cabernet Country.
And what of the future? With global climate change inevitable, cabernet as we know it (and as we once knew it!) is threatened with extinction. Thirty years ago, I wrote an April Fool’s Day article about a fictional Swedish farmer who was planting cabernet grapes. I quoted my fictional farmer that climate change would make this an intelligent move. About five years ago, an actual Swedish farmer did exactly that!
Last week I spoke with a vineyard manager who said that if the next three weeks of temperatures forecast for Sonoma are accurate, “We may be picking some fruit in June this year!” Swedish cabernet anyone?
In a recent column here, I spoke of three U.S. wine regions in which climate increases had positively impacted grape-growing, creating a huge potential for fine wine to be produced there. Unsaid in that article was that just a decade ago, those same regions were too cool to produce a single great wine. Some of the finest wines I have tasted now come from places that recently didn’t produce anything most people would like.
As for Napa, has it suddenly become economically viable not because it is selling all of its cabernet, but only because it can sell its hospitality? That its primary product has priced itself out of the market except for buyers who are ostentatiously profligate? I realize the financial necessity of charging high fees for tasting. Gotta keep them damn tire-kickers at bay.
But when tasting fees become as pricey as the least expensive bottles of wine and when the least-expensive bottles are beyond the reach of average consumers, tasting becomes an activity for the already wine-educated and well-heeled. High fees create an enormous gulf between the winery and those who may be fascinated with wine, but don’t have the financial wherewithal to experience it at its best.
Pushing potential clients away makes no sense for now and may have dire consequences in years to come.
As tasting room parking lots continue to fill up with Bugattis, Saleeens and Maybachs, wineries appear to be marketing themselves exclusively to people who have no difficulty paying hundreds of dollars for bland, boring sauvignon blancs. But by ignoring average, budget-minded consumers who are truly passionate about wine, Napa may be ignoring the short- as well as long-term consequences — to its current bottom line as well as to its future profitability, which could spell doom in a decade.
Turn them off in 2024 and how likely will they look favorably on Napa in 2032? Then who’ll be the most happy fella in Napa?
And finally, what if that cruise ship surreptitiously began turning around 10 years ago and no one noticed?
If today’s story captured your interest, explore these related articles:
Dan Berger’s Wine Chronicles: How Wine Is Packaged Can Affect Its Quality
Dan Berger's Wine Chronicles: Aged Red Wines Are Still 'Fine'
Wine in Crisis: Navigating Prohibitionist Waves and Market Shifts
Dan Berger's wine chronicles: The evolution of wine in a warming world
Dan Berger has been writing about wine since 1975.
I promise you, Dan, we have no intention of ripping out our Napa Valley Sangiovese. We've even topgrafted a little Oakville Cabernent to our clone of Sangiovese (not good economics) to grow Villa Ragazzi enough to support next gen involvement.
There is a typo in the first question about title. It has "Neural" instead of Neutral. Of course, one has to give the question a lot of thought.