Jeff Smith remembers David Stevens at Hourglass memorial service
By Dave Stoneberg
CALISTOGA, Calif. — For the past 23 years David Stevens has been in Jeff Smith’s corner. He was the first person to recognize the greatness of Hourglass’ first vintage, 1997, and endlessly promoted it as a cult wine when he was wine director at the famed restaurant Tra Vigne in St. Helena. Beyond that, the two men shared a love of music and co-founded Wristrocket, a rock ’n’ roll band. No longer, though, as David Stevens passed away on Nov. 12 from complications from Alzheimer’s. He was 72.
On Saturday, Dec. 30, Smith and Monica Stevens, David’s widow, hosted a celebration of life for David at the rebuilt Hourglass Winery – which was destroyed in the September 2020 Glass Fire – and spoke of their powerful relationship that began in 2000.
“David was at the epicenter of all of that,” Smith said. “He was an amazing connector. It was one of his superpowers to connect people.”
Smith added, “I thought I’d tell you a story of how we met … a story that changed the arc of my life in a very profound and powerful way. It’s a story that is common to many of us in this room, which I think is really cool and fascinating.”
He was speaking in the wine caves at Hourglass Winery, which is located off Dutch Henry Canyon Road, just south of Calistoga.
It’s highly likely that Smith has told the story before of the founding of Hourglass, but on that Saturday afternoon the story had a sharpness to it, a crispness tinged with regret and sadness. It was a perfect tribute to David, what he meant to the Napa Valley, and how he defined what the valley’s cult wines were and how they were enjoyed.
Hourglass is made up of two vineyards, a 4-acre vineyard on Lodi Lane bought by Smith’s father, Ned, in 1976 and planted a year later to zinfandel vines. After Ned died of cancer and the vineyard fell victim to phylloxera, Smith planted it to cabernet sauvignon vines in 1992. The vines matured, and five years later the harvested grapes made the first vintage of Hourglass wines.
The second vineyard is the 20-acre Blueline Vineyard, acquired in 2006, on Dutch Henry Canyon Road between Calistoga and St. Helena on Silverado Trail. The winery, mostly underground caves and above-ground tanks, is on the Blueline Vineyard property. It was first planted in 1991 with merlot and cabernet franc; after the Hourglass partners acquired it, several blocks were replanted to the five red Bordeaux varietals in 2007.
Besides Jeff and Carolyn Smith, the other Hourglass partners are Richard and Maureen Chilton and Michael and Pam Clark. Bob Foley was the first winemaker (1997 to 2011); after that, Tony Biagi was hired as a full-time winemaker.
From Smith: “It started with a phone call I got in 1999 from Bob Foley, who is here today. Bob was our original winemaker and one of the great winemakers of our generation. And we were very fortunate and lucky to be working with Bob. He called me with some very bad news. And the news was that the five barrels of 1997 Hourglass, our very first vintage, had been lost somewhere at Pride (where they were made and stored).
“Bob feared they were accidently blended into one of the Pride wines. That’s not exactly the call you want to get from your winemaker, right? It was weird because we didn’t go into this with great aspirations. Our mission statement was to make wine that didn’t sell. So, OK, our first vintage is going to be delayed, we’re going to have to start with our second vintage. We’ll just roll forward. We moved on.
“A year later I got a call from Bob, and he was super-elated, super-excited. ‘I found the five barrels of 1997 Hourglass. They got pushed in the back of the cellar and turned around and I didn’t see the tags on them. I found them.’”
Smith asked how the wine tasted, and Foley’s response was, “You should get up here. Check it out.” Smith and a friend jumped into a car and drove up there. Again, from Smith, “We taste the wines and holy s——, these are pretty good.”
Smith’s friend suggested they take a barrel sample to Tra Vigne to compare it to other Napa Valley wines. He knew there was a cult-wine flight-tasting there and he wanted to see how the Hourglass stacked up against the others. Smith wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know if I want to do that.” Despite his misgivings, the pair went to Tra Vigne and put in their order for three wines. After that, a tall gentleman (Stevens) “comes out with our order, looks down, sees our little barrel sample and looks at us and goes, ‘That’s kinda ballsy.’ I go like, yeah, this was not my idea.”
Nevertheless, Stevens said, “If you’re going to do this tasting, you’ve got to do it right. That is, you’ve got to do it blind.” He takes the barrel sample and all of the wines away. A few minutes later, he returns with four glasses and a piece of paper, which Smith puts in his pocket. “And he says, have at it, gents, and he walks away,” Smith recounted.
The two friends tasted the wines and decided two things: Wine 3 is best and wine 1 is their least favorite. It turns out wine 3 is Hourglass. Smith picks up the story: “Within minutes, this tall gentleman (Stevens) is back buzzing around us. ‘Who the hell are you guys?’ he asks and then in rapid fire exclaims: ‘What’s going on? This is great, I need to know everything about you. I think this fruit came from Spring Mountain. This is amazing, this is so cool. How much wine did you make?”
Smith: 149 cases.
Stevens: I’ll buy it all.
Smith: We haven’t even talked price.
Stevens: I don’t care.
Smith, though, added that they didn’t have a package, a label or a license. In short, they didn’t have anything except a barrel sample. In fact, they thought the wine was lost for a year. Stevens’ response: “Well, you guys do what you have to do and come back and talk with me.” After a number of months, Smith again contacted Stevens, who said, “Listen, I want to champion Hourglass. I want to champion you. I want a big allocation. And I want you to deliver me the first case as soon as you possibly can.”
A couple of days later, Smith took the first case of Hourglass to Stevens at Tra Vigne. It was Wednesday of Wine Auction Week, and Smith admitted he didn’t know what Stevens was going to do with his wine.
Tra Vigne was abuzz with people as workers were putting up a tent and preparing for the Wine Spectator’s Bring Your Own Magnum party that night. And Stevens was promoting the restaurant’s cult-wine flight.
“On the night when the entire industry was going to walk through Tra Vigne, he put on the chalkboard a notice of a cult-wine tasting, 10 a.m. on Thursday,” Smith said. “The wines were a 1997 Harlan, ’97 Screaming Eagle and ’97 Bryant Family — three 100-point wines from (Robert) Parker. The first 20 people get in. So the next day there was a line around the block of people trying to get in, and Stevens does the tasting.”
What Smith didn’t know then and only found out later was that Stevens had slipped in the Hourglass Cabernet Sauvignon as a ringer.
“Nobody’s going to know who these people (Hourglass) are, and David thought he was going to turn them onto something cool and interesting.”
The Hourglass showed well in the tasting, and there was a collector who got Smith’s email address from Stevens. He posted the email, which went viral over the weekend.
On Monday, Smith went to his office and had 500 emails from people saying they wanted to be on his (non-existent) mailing list.
“I had no frigging idea of what was going on. I called David, and he’s the only person who knows what Hourglass is,” Smith said. Stevens told Smith what he had done and Smith responded, “You did what? Are you out of your mind?” Stevens replied, “Yeah, but it showed really well and I gave your email to somebody.”
From the 500 emails, Smith sold as much of the 1997 as he could and gave Stevens a generous allocation. That summer Stevens pushed the Hourglass and kept talking about this cool new wine that he discovered.
“He promoted and he created so much incredible energy in the marketplace,” Smith said. “Now I’ve got people calling from all over the place wanting to know how they can get the wine.”
Stevens launched Hourglass, and today Smith said it was very organic and beautiful. Stevens created the model, which came out of an “incredible experiment that he dreamed up. We just happened to be the beneficiary of that.”
That was Stevens’ whole idea, which ended up revolutionizing and changing the wine industry. Stevens developed all these relationships, was an amazing storyteller and “all of you are here because of his great power as a connector. He would pick up all of the details of all of these cool things that were floating around out there and put them together into this whole idea of how to market and present wine. So many of us in this room are beneficiaries of his advocacy.”
Smith was just one of the speakers. Others included David’s wife, Monica Stevens, Kevin Cronin, Scott Turnidge, Andy Beckstoffer and Russell Bevan.
As Smith ended his story, he pulled out a surprise — a magnum of his 1997 Hourglass Cabernet Sauvignon with a hand-scrawled No. 1 on it. It was a bottle that Smith gave to Stevens. How appropriate it was that it was served and appreciated at Stevens’ celebration of life held in the Hourglass Winery caves.
Dave Stoneberg is an editor and journalist who has worked for newspapers in both Lake and Napa counties.
David, I can feel your whole heart and soul in this article. What a magnificent and iconic story for our Valley.
Great article. Well done.