Judgment of Paris Read online

  For the next year, the Cabernet and Merlot aged in the winery. The Cabernet barrels were stacked several high, while the larger Merlot puncheons stood alone. From time to time, Winiarski topped off the barrels, putting in new wine to replace what had evaporated, and once a month he tasted. Before the wine went into barrels, he had put some in five-gallon glass containers, so that he could compare the original wine with that aged in oak. Gradually he noted how the oak was performing its magic. The French have aged wine in oak since Roman times, and for a good reason. Oak imparts subtle tastes, texture, and aroma that lift a good wine to a whole new level of enjoyment. Try as they have over the centuries, winemakers have never been able to find any other wood that can match oak in winemaking.

  During that year the wine in each barrel was developing slightly differently in the cellar. A sample from a barrel at the top of the stack did not taste the same as one from a barrel at the bottom, partly because the slightly warmer cellar temperature of the higher barrel caused it to evolve and absorb the oak a little faster.

  The next milestone in the wine’s progress was separating it from the oak. The question for the winemaker at this point is how much slow oxidation through the cells of the wood is required to bring the wine to its peak before he moves it to bottles, where evolution in the presence of oxygen is terminated. How much oak can be added to the wine’s identity before that identity is lost? Only the winemaker’s vision and sense of taste could answer that question.

  In the spring of 1975, Winiarski began taking four-ounce samples of wine from different barrels. Evenings after his wife and children were asleep and there were no distractions, he retired to the family living room with the specimens. At first he tasted wine from all the barrels and then later from only certain barrels. Winiarski poured it into separate glasses, carefully noting its origin. Then he tried the samples one by one. He examined the color and swirled it around in the glass to open up the aroma. He smelled it deeply and then carefully wrote down his observations about the aroma. Winiarski recorded his impressions in an attempt to both clarify them and also make them more precise. He then sipped a small amount of wine. He moved the wine around in his mouth, making sure that it touched all the points of sensual sensation on his tongue—the tip, the back, and the sides. Finally he spit out the wine and tasted another sample.

  At first Winiarski worked alone, but he eventually asked Tchelistcheff to join him in order to get a second opinion. For several afternoons the two men tasted wine from the barrels, as the late-day sunlight shone in through the living-room door. Tchelistcheff offered his opinions candidly but not dogmatically, leaving the final decision to his pupil by making nonjudgmental statements like, “Maybe you should consider…”

  After tasting all the barrels of Cabernet, Winiarski and Tchelistcheff agreed that the wine needed some Merlot to mellow it and give it more finesse. Cabernet Sauvignon in French means savage or wild Cabernet, and it can sometimes be quite astringent and rough. Merlot can smooth out Cabernet’s harsh edges. Winiarski and Tchelistcheff decided to add 10 percent Merlot to the Cabernet, which added softness without weakening the wine’s structure.

  The barrels of both Cabernet and Merlot were then pumped into the stainless-steel tanks for blending. Winiarski also did a third and final fining, this time using egg whites, a common agent for this procedure that combined with any suspended material. Both fell to the bottom of the barrel, leaving behind the perfectly clear wine. The egg whites also imparted a very subtle taste that Winiarski liked.

  Finally, the wine was pumped from the holding tanks to the bottling machine. Warren and Barbara Winiarski plus their three children, who were now 13, 10, and 7 years old, all helped out on the bottling line, where everything was done by hand. First new bottles were taken from cardboard boxes and inverted, two at a time, over spouts that sent a shot of nitrogen gas into them to remove not only any dust that had gathered during transport but also air, which could potentially spoil the wine. Then the bottles were placed under spouts that filled them with wine, but at different speeds so it took some juggling to make sure they did not overflow. Next the bottles were handed off to the person doing the corking, who pulled down the handle on a device that forced a cork into the bottle. The next person on the line placed the metal foil cap on the bottle and rolled the cap tight. The bottle then went to the Winiarski’s older daughter, who had mastered the rhythm of putting glue on the label, placing it on the bottle and then rolling it on a curved surface to spread the glue as it dried. After the bottle was labeled, it went into an empty carton.

  It took several days to bottle the 1,800 cases of wine, and when the procedure was finished the cases were moved to a storage area under the family living room. They remained there for five months of bottle aging. At last in July 1975, Winiarski released his second vintage to the market.

  Determining the price for a wine is more art than science. Winiarski could have set it simply by looking at the shelf prices of other Napa Valley wines and figured out where he would be competitive. Instead he blindtasted several other wines to find what those that were comparable to his in quality and style were charging. Based on those tests, he thought the final retail price should be about $6 a bottle. That was less expensive than the wines he blindtasted, but since he was still a newcomer to the market he thought he should underprice his product. Of course the final price was in the hand of wine shops that could mark it up or down as they wished. Then he worked backwards to determine the price for distributors, retailers, or restaurants. Distributors got the so-called six-bottle price, meaning they paid the retail price for six bottles in a full, twelve-bottle case: $36. Restaurants and retailers paid the eight-bottle price for a case: $48.

  The 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon stood out among its California counterparts, in many ways, by what it was not. In one of his diaries, the English wine critic Harry Waugh quoted Winiarski as saying that he wanted to produce a “sufficiently powerful wine which, while not too massive, would combine both style and elegance.” This, wrote Waugh, represented a swing away from the California’s “huge Cabernet Sauvignons” to a wine of “more finesse and elegance, in effect more along the lines of the Médocs from Bordeaux.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Making the 1973

  Chateau Montelena Chardonnay

  God made only water, but man made wine.

  —VICTOR HUGO

  Mike Grgich using a wine thief to extract Cabernet Sauvignon from the barrel.

  On September 6, 1973, John Hanna, a grape grower whose ranch was located two miles north of Napa city near the southern end of the Napa Valley, drove a flatbed truck pulling a gondola filled with four tons of Chardonnay grapes into the driveway of Chateau Montelena. Hanna had grown the grapes under contract for the winery, selling them at $725 a ton. He was greeted by a small crowd: Jim Barrett, Lee Paschich, Mike Grgich, and the three cellar workers—Roam Steineke; Bo Barrett, Jim’s son; and Ron Sculatti. Also present was Father Vincent Barrett, Jim’s brother, who was a priest in the Los Angeles diocese. In a nod to an old European tradition, Father Vincent blessed the grapes as well as the people, and prayed for a successful and safe harvest. After prayers were said and holy water was sprinkled on the grapes, a hoist lifted the gondola off the truck bed and tipped the contents into a hopper. The 1973 harvest and wine crush, only the second since the new owners had taken over the winery, had begun.

  Chateau Montelena was a much larger operation than Stag’s Leap, which was located some twenty miles to the south. Chateau Montelena had some one hundred acres planted in a variety of grapes ranging from Aligoté to Zinfandel. Most of the grapes, though, were sold to other wineries. Barrett and Grgich wanted to build a premium wine label and didn’t want to damage their brand by selling inferior products. Gradually they were shifting the vineyard over to higher-quality grapes. In 1972 they pulled out Chasselas, Alicante Bouschet, and Carignane vines and replanted the fields with phylloxera-resistant St. George rootstock, buddi
ng it with Cabernet Sauvignon. The budding material came from a premium Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard owned by Wallace Johnson in the nearby Alexander Valley. John Rolleri, an experienced vineyard manager, supervised the planting and cultivation.

  While waiting for the Cabernet vines to produce, Chateau Montelena bought grapes for its Chardonnay from local growers. Just over forty tons of Chardonnay grapes in 1973 were purchased from the same three producers who supplied them in 1972: Lee Paschich, whose vineyard was located about a mile from the winery; Henry Dick, in the Alexander Valley section of Sonoma County; and John Hanna. Paschich provided about one ton of Chardonnay grapes, Hanna four tons, and Dick nearly thirty-five tons. The Chateau Montelena Chardonnay was thus made with predominantly Sonoma Valley grapes, although it was produced in the Napa Valley. While the Chardonnay was Chateau Montelena’s prestige white wine, the Johannisberg Riesling brought in the sales. In both 1972 and 1973 Chateau Montelena produced more than twice as much Riesling as Chardonnay.

  Starting in the spring of 1973, Grgich regularly visited the three vineyards where the Chardonnay was being grown. Although it was not his property, he believed the old saying, “The best fertilizer for a vineyard is the owner’s footsteps.” Relations between growers and winemakers are often tense because their goals are fundamentally different: a grower wants to produce big clusters of grapes that have a lot of weight, since he is paid by the ton; the winemaker wants smaller clusters that have more intense flavor. Grgich, though, sought good relations with all his growers, realizing that both had to work together to get the best possible final product. All through the spring and summer he and the growers walked the vineyards inspecting the crop. Grgich checked the vines in April to see the buds opening and was back in May and June to see the flowering and the setting of the berries.

  Monitoring the vineyards intensified starting in the second half of July. Now every week Grgich visited each growing site, examining the grapes and talking with the farmers. Accompanied by them, he walked through the rows picking a berry here and there, tasting it and then spitting out the skins and seeds. The growers and the winemaker talked about whether they should put sulfur on the vines to protect them against mold. The UC Davis professors urged growers to spray sulfur as a protective measure whether it appeared to be needed or not. Grgich tried to interfere as little as possible with nature and did not agree with that preventive approach, especially in 1973 since the grapes showed no signs of mold or mildew. He also disagreed with the recommendation of the professors to irrigate the vineyard once a week. Early in the season, Grgich told his growers to water the vines only once—in the middle of the summer. Limiting irrigation, he thought, would make the vines work harder and intensify the flavor.

  Grgich always had with him a refractometer to test the amount of sugar in the grapes. And while visiting a grower, Grgich usually collected between two hundred and five hundred berries from different spots around the vineyard and put them in a plastic bag. He then took the berries back to the laboratory at Chateau Montelena and did more extensive studies on the amount of sugar and acid in the grapes and most importantly their taste. The readings in the lab were more accurate than he could ever get in the field.

  By the middle of August, Grgich was visiting each vineyard every two or three days, still going through the ritual of walking the rows of vines, collecting berries, and tasting. Temperatures now reached the high 80s and 90s almost every day, and the sugar level of the grapes was rising rapidly. As his Brix readings climbed closer to 20 degrees, the Chardonnay grapes changed from green to golden brown. They also became translucent, and if Grgich held a cluster up to the sun he could see the seeds through the skin and pulp. Sagging on the vine under the weight of the cluster, the grapes seemed tired. Another way to tell that crush was near was the arrival of starlings that fed on the ripening grapes to prepare for their journey south for the winter. Chattering birds swarmed into a vineyard and ate the ripest fruit. As soon as the first starlings arrived, Grgich knew that the harvest was not far behind.

  In addition to using his sense of smell and taste, Grgich listened to the grapes. He had noticed over the years that when Chardonnay grapes have 23 degrees or more sugar he could squeeze them together between his fingers and hear a squeaking sound, almost as if tiny pieces of sugar were rubbing against each other. When the refractometer readings started hitting 21 degrees Brix on a consistent basis, Grgich alerted his crew at the winery to get everything ready for the arrival of the grapes. Machines were washed and sterilized. In late August, Grgich started to see on some vines an occasional shriveled grape that looked like a raisin. That and the refractometer readings showing an average of 23.5 degrees Brix indicated the harvest was at hand, so Grgich set up a schedule for the grapes to be delivered. Once they reached their peak of flavor, he knew that he had about four days in which to pick and crush the crop. After that, they would start to lose their delicate chemical balance and begin to decline.

  Grapes were picked mainly by migrant Mexican laborers who started working at dawn when the grapes were still cool and finished at about two o’clock because afternoon heat could damage the recently picked grapes before they were crushed. Chardonnay berries are more sensitive than Cabernet Sauvignon ones, so growers watched their workers closely during picking and transport. In much the same way as Cabernet picking, workers put the grapes into forty-five-pound boxes, throwing the contents into a gondola that held four tons or into bins that held two tons. Tractors pulled the gondolas and bins through the twelve-foot-wide rows of vines. Once they were filled, the gondolas were slowly pulled to the Chateau Montelena winery. During August and September, traffic along Route 29 and the Silverado Trail, the Napa Valley’s two north-south highways, was heavy with gondolas carrying grapes to wineries.

  The staff at the winery was not of Grgich’s choosing, and he and they did not always get along. Grgich tried hard to keep the cellar hands in line, but there was a significant age and cultural gap between them. The winemaker was fifty and had a serious demeanor. Grgich internalized many of his emotions, undoubtedly part of the reason he had developed ulcers. Grgich’s doctor ultimately told him that to get rid of his stomach pains he had to give up either wine or coffee. Not surprisingly, the winemaker gave up coffee and began drinking weak tea laced with half and half for breakfast.

  The three cellar workers, on the other hand, were in their early twenties and were caught up in the student rebellion and Vietnam War protests of the day. Two of the three were related to owners, who hoped that some hard manual labor at the winery would show the kids what the real world was like. Bo Barrett was between his freshman and sophomore years at the University of Utah, where he spent more time skiing than studying. His father, Jim, was not amused by his son’s approach to learning and refused to pay for more than his tuition and books. Bo had a blond Afro haircut, and his father called him Brillo because the bushy hair reminded him of a steel-wool pad. Roam Steineke, who also wore his hair long, was married to Ernie Hahn’s daughter. The young couple had spent time among the hippies in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco.

  The young men worked hard, often putting in eighteen-hour days with few complaints. Bo usually worked the winepress, often going to sleep for a few hours on bags next to the machinery and then getting up and pressing again. After Grgich left at the end of the day, the cellar hands often broke out a bottle of tequila. Working at the winery was great fun—and best of all they were getting paid for it.

  One day in the fall of 1973, Robert Mondavi and two friends from Hawaii came to visit his former employee’s new operation. It was an honor for Chateau Montelena to have Mondavi visit, and the young cellar hands were nervous. At one point the Mondavi group walked over to where Steineke was holding a hose that was filling a two-thousand-gallon tank with Zinfandel. Instead of keeping an eye on the top of the tank, Steineke watched Mondavi and his group standing nearby and forgot what he was doing. When the tank was full, the wine started spurting out from the top. Mondavi
and his friends were suddenly showered with beautifully red Zinfandel.

  When the Chardonnay grapes arrived in gondolas from the growers there was serious work to be done. A hoist lifted the gondolas off the trucks and dumped the grapes into a hopper. A screw conveyer at the bottom of the hopper carried the grapes to a crusher, which removed the berries from the stems and let the berries drop to the bottom of the crusher. The stems exited the crusher onto the cement floor. There a workman with a pitchfork picked up the stems and put them onto a truck that took them to the vineyard, where they were spread between the rows of vines as mulch.

  The berries were then pumped from the crusher into a 2.5-ton stainless-steel press. The crusher had been bought used from the Inglenook winery, but the press was new and had been built to specification by the Valley Foundry in Fresno. The press used the new bladder-squeezing technology, which was replacing the old screw press that used a grinding pressure to extract the liquid. The bladder press consisted of a rubber tube that was slowly inflated by compressed air, which squeezed the grapes gently against a screen. Grapes were pressed in 2.5-ton batches. Grgich told his cellar hands that everything had to be done gently. “It is like hugging a friend,” he said. “You don’t want to squeeze so hard that you break your friend’s ribs.”

  In the case of the grapes, you didn’t want to squeeze so hard that you crushed the seeds inside the grapes because that would release tannins, which in sufficient quantities would make the Chardonnay bitter. When the pressure in the bladder press reached fifteen pounds per square inch, it was released, the bladder was rotated, and the pressure was again raised. The whole process of pressing a bladder full of grapes took about ninety minutes. After that initial pressing of up to fifteen pounds of pressure, a secondary one was done under greater pressure. The juice from the secondary pressing, which had more tannin extracted from the grape skins, was isolated from the primary juice in separate tanks throughout the winemaking process.