Judgment of Paris Read online

  Veedercrest Vineyards, 1972

  A. W. (Al) Baxter, the winemaker at Veedercrest, was a home winemaker with serious ambitions, who started the winery with a group of investors. Its first bonded location was the basement of Baxter’s home in the upper-middle-class Berkeley Hills area northeast of San Francisco, where he had three fermentation tanks.

  Baxter was a man of many tastes and a colorful background. A Stanford philosophy student, he went on to get a master’s degree in the subject at the University of California, Berkeley, and then became a professor of philosophy there. Later he was an assistant to Clark Kerr, the chancellor of the University of California. Baxter wrote poetry and mystery novels in his spare time. A book of his poems was published under the titleCarneros Cantos, and his mystery,Slay Me with Flagons, is set in a winery and opens with a dead body in a fermentation tank.

  After a failed attempt to get into wine imports, Baxter found several partners and bought three hundred acres of land for a vineyard on Mount Veeder on the western side of the Napa Valley. The property had been a vineyard during the nineteenth century heyday of California wine, and Baxter replanted fifty acres in 1974. The 1972 vintage that competed in the Paris Tasting came from grapes bought from the Winery Lake Vineyard in Carneros, in the southern part of the Napa Valley.

  Baxter did his winemaking in the industrial section of Emeryville, a town located an hour’s drive from his vineyard. “We’re a neat little urban vineyard,” he told visitors. He added that “the grapes don’t care that they are crushed in Emeryville.” The building had been constructed originally for Shell Development, a research arm of the oil company, and had housed an atom smasher. The basement laboratories had heavily insulated walls four feet thick, which turned out to be a very good place to store wine. Baxter had heard about the building from partners who had worked for Shell Development but left the company when their operation was moved to Houston.

  Although a self-taught winemaker who got his first experience at home, Baxter easily adapted to leading-edge technology: stainless-steel tanks and oak barrels. But he always considered himself a craftsman, saying, “There’s no question that the best wines are artistic in nature.” He thought a winemaker needed a scientific foundation for his work but added, “That doesn’t give you the lofty mating of oaks and wine, aging and wine, vineyard production and winemaking style.”

  Like most California wineries at the time, Veedercrest made a host of wines, ranging from Cabernet Sauvignon to Gewürztraminer. Its first commercial crush was in 1972, when Baxter made five wines: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The Veedercrest Chardonnay that competed in Paris was part of Baxter’s very first vintage.

  Cabernet Sauvignon

  Clos Du Val Winery, 1972

  John Goelet and Bernard Portet, the two men behind Napa Valley’s Clos Du Val, were both born into the French wine business. Goelet’s mother, Anne Marie Guestier, was a descendant of François Guestier, who in the eighteenth century worked for decades for the Marquis De Ségur, the owner of two of Bordeaux’s First Growths, Château Lafite and Château Latour, plus the then Second Growth Château Mouton. The son of François, Pierre François Guestier, was the owner of Château Beychevelle, a Bordeaux Fourth Growth. The family was also a partner in Barton & Guestier, one of France’s leading wine exporters.

  Portet was born in Cognac into a family that has been making wine for more than six generations. His father was the technical director at Château Lafite, and Bernard grew up playing in the vineyard there. He went on to study at two of France’s leading wine institutes, Toulouse and Montpellier. At the age of twenty-six, Portet went to work for Goelet, who was looking to expand his wine holdings. At the time, he was negotiating to buy a French winery and planned to have Portet manage it. While waiting for the talks to conclude, Goelet asked the new hire to look for other areas in the world where he might buy land and begin producing Bordeaux-style wine. The château deal eventually fell through, but Portet spent 1970 and 1971 traveling the world studying wine regions in South Africa, Australia, Argentina, Chile, and the United States. Two sites particularly impressed him—Napa Valley, California, and Victoria, Australia, twenty miles northwest of Melbourne.

  Portet was especially taken by the Stag’s Leap section of the Napa Valley. The coarse, rich soil reminded him of Bordeaux’s St.-Émilion. Although he liked the wines of leading valley wineries, Portet thought he could do better. He considered Napa wines a “bit hot on the palate,” since the alcohol level was often higher than what he was used to in French wines.

  The heat of the Napa Valley also worried him, particularly the temperatures during the summer growing months. As he drove south on the Silverado Trail toward the city of Napa in the late afternoons with the windows of his car open, however, Portet noticed how the temperature dropped significantly at Parker Hill, about five miles north of Napa. That was only a few hundred yards south of where Nathan Fay was growing Cabernet Sauvignon grapes and where Warren Winiarski had recently planted a vineyard. This Stag’s Leap area had cool nights, despite the hot days, so Portet thought this could be the special spot he wanted.

  In November 1971, Goelet leased 120 acres of land on the Silverado Trail. Portet returned to France in December, but by April he was back in the valley, now with the charge of building and running a winery that would produce wines to rival those of his native Bordeaux. Goelet named the winery Clos Du Val, which translates as “the valley’s enclosed winery.” Planting of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc vines began in the spring of 1972 on land where plums, alfalfa, and walnuts had grown. But Portet realized that the first Clos Du Val Cabernet would not be on the market for years if he waited until all the grapes came from their own vineyard and the fermentation and aging were done in their own winery. So Clos Du Val followed the path that was becoming standard for new Napa Valley wineries: buy grapes from local growers for the first year or so and ferment and age the wine at another winery. Portet, though, maintained total control over the wine’s development from grape to bottle, visiting the vineyards regularly during the growing season and carefully monitoring the winemaking.

  The Frenchman was surprised by the cooperation of California winemakers, which contrasted sharply with the guarded privacy of those in France. He asked his brother Dominique, who was also following the family wine tradition, to join him in the valley for the 1972 vintage. The Portet brothers listened to what local grape growers and winemakers told them about making wine in California, but they also had their own ideas. Everyone was telling them, for example, to pick grapes late so they would be sweet and have a high alcohol content. Bernard Portet, though, wanted to avoid a strong alcohol taste. So he had the Clos Du Val grapes picked early, when they would be less sweet and have less alcohol. The brothers were lucky because it rained heavily in September and October 1972. That made it very difficult for other Napa Valley wineries to harvest their grapes, but by then Clos Du Val had picked 80 percent of its crop.

  Like his neighbor Warren Winiarski, Bernard Portet also went against the advice of local winemakers by blending. They urged him not to tone down the varietal intensity of Cabernet Sauvignon by mixing it with other wines, but he strongly believed that blending improved the wine. For the 1972 vintage Portet combined 80 percent Cabernet Sauvignon with 20 percent Merlot. The wine was then aged in French oak barrels for eighteen months. It had an alcohol level of 12.8 percent, which was a little higher than a typical Bordeaux red. The total Clos Du Val harvest in 1972 was just 5,000 cases—3,500 Cabernet Sauvignon and 1,500 Zinfandel.

  In 1975,Robert Finigan’s Private Guide to Wines gave the 1972 Clos Du Val only an “average” rating, although it held out the hope for more. Wrote Finigan: “Bernard Portet has debuted with an agreeable, rather austere wine which portends well for his future bottlings while suffering the limits of the unexciting 1972 harvest.”

  Clos Du Val was among the first of the new boutique Napa wineries to sell in the important New York
City market, and in September 1974 Portet made a promotional trip there. Given his background and training, Portet knew his wines were good, with a French style of balance, complexity, and elegance. It was tough, though, to get the attention of wine buyers. Portet consciously played up his French accent, but wine buyers were still not interested in California wines—even if a French-trained winemaker made them.

  Freemark Abbey Winery, 1969

  Freemark Abbey was the only winery to have two wines in the Paris Tasting: a 1972 Chardonnay and a 1969 Cabernet Sauvignon. This Cabernet Sauvignon was the first bottling of a wine that Freemark Abbey has since marketed as its top of the line Bosché. The 1972 wine was a blend of 88 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 12 percent Merlot from the Charles Carpy and Laurie Wood vineyards.

  Heitz Cellars Martha’s Vineyard, 1970

  Like many American GIs born around the country and stationed in California during World War II, Joe Heitz decided when hostilities ended to stay in the land with beautiful weather and lots of opportunity. He had grown up on a farm in Princeton, Illinois, and served in the Army Air Corps in Fresno, the center of California’s jug-wine business. Heitz got his first job in wine doing pick-up work at an Italian Swiss Colony plant outside Clovis. His boss there suggested he get a degree in winemaking from UC Davis, so he could get a better job when he graduated.

  Heitz took that advice and went to Davis on the GI Bill, graduating in 1948. There were less than a half-dozen enology graduates in his class but no work for any of them. The next year Heitz finally landed a job at Gallo doing quality control. After only nine months, he left to work for the Wine Growers Guild, a trade group. From 1951 to 1958, Heitz worked at Beaulieu Vineyard, starting at $325 a month as the lab assistant for André Tchelistcheff and eventually moving up to the post of manager.

  Heitz realized he could not advance further because Tchelistcheff would not be retiring anytime soon. So just before the 1958 harvest he accepted an offer to establish a new viticulture program at Fresno State College. After three years there, he decided he wasn’t meant for academic life or the quiet town of Fresno. Then with the help of a $5,000 loan from an East Coast friend, Heitz made the down payment on an eight-acre vineyard and winery south of St. Helena. He called his new place Heitz Cellars. The full price was $45,000, and the property included two houses, a small winery, and about five thousand gallons of wine inventory. Four years later, he bought an additional 160 acres on the eastern side of the Napa Valley, just as the wine business began to pick up.

  Heitz made a potpourri of wines—more than a dozen different kinds ranging from Sherry to Cabernet Sauvignon. His first Cabernet sold for $1.63 a bottle and was soon doing well. Heitz discovered that when he increased the price he charged wholesalers or at his tasting room, he sold even more. Although he was always a little incredulous that people were willing to pay that much, Heitz kept gradually pushing the price to $1.79, $1.99, $2.20, and higher. Heitz never apologized for his prices, saying, “If you’ve got a good product, people want to pay for it.” He was one of the first winemakers to believe that California wines of French quality should also get French prices.

  In 1965, Heitz bought some Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from Tom May, a former schoolteacher in Ojai, a town north of Los Angeles. The fruit came from a vineyard May had planted in Oakville and named after his wife, Martha. Heitz blended the wine from Martha’s vineyard with that from his other Cabernet grapes in 1965 and sold it under the generic Heitz Cabernet Sauvignon label. But the next year he kept the wine separate, and as a gesture to Tom and Martha, Heitz released it under the name Heitz Cellars Martha’s Vineyard. It cost $7 a bottle, a price only the top French wines were then getting. The wine, which had a hint of minty eucalyptus taste, was a hit. Heitz was not the first winemaker to name a wine after the vineyard where the grapes were grown, but the success of Martha’s Vineyard soon led others to do it. Heitz said later, “By a stroke of what turned out to be genius, but was pure luck, we put the vineyard name ‘Martha’s Vineyard’ on the label. The wine writers liked it, the connoisseurs liked it, the restaurants liked it.”

  There have long been questions about the unique taste of the Martha’s Vineyard wine. Heitz made no attempt to explain it, saying that if he knew how to do it, he’d repeat it in his other vineyards. Some speculated that it came from eucalyptus trees growing near the vineyard, since prevailing winds can carry oils from the leaves of those trees to grapes that are ripening, leaving a minty residue on the skin. But such trees grow all over the valley, and Martha’s Vineyard wines had a special taste. Heitz said it was like growing different types of tomatoes in different soil. The hint of mint, Heitz believed, came from both the clone used for the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes grown there and from the Oakville soil where they were planted.

  Heitz was a purist. His Cabernet Sauvignon wines were 100 percent varietal without a touch of Merlot or other wines. Heitz argued that California Cabernet did not need to be a blend because of the conditions under which the grapes grew. Unlike in Bordeaux, where the weather varies greatly from one year to the next, in the Napa Valley, “We can get Cabernet ripe here almost every year,” he said. “They never get it as ripe as we do here. So they need those other varieties that develop more sugar, or sugar sooner, to make a sound wine.” Heitz greatly admired Bordeaux wines, but he didn’t want to just copy them. He wanted to make a world-class Cabernet Sauvignon that would be judged on its Napa Valley merits. Frequently he said, “If you always imitate, then you’re going to be second best.”

  In his October 1975 review of California Cabernets, Finigan wrote of the 1969 Martha’s Vineyard, “Rich minty Cabernet aromas and flavors with that unmistakable Martha’s Vineyard eucalyptus much in evidence.” Finigan also wrote that the wine was “unconscionably priced” at $21 a bottle, twice the price of other top-of-the-line California wines.

  Although Joe Heitz had disdain for wine tastings, Martha’s Vineyard did very well in them. For its October 1975 issue, theSan Diego Grapevine newsletter had twenty-eight experienced wine tasters rate eight Bordeaux wines and two California Cabernets from the 1970 vintage. The Martha’s Vineyard, the vintage that would later be in the Paris Tasting, came in first. Château Latour and Château Mouton Rothschild tied for second. It was a small event and the judges were Americans, however, so few people paid much attention.

  Mayacamas Vineyards, 1971

  A native Californian, Bob Travers hoped to get into oil exploration when he picked engineering as his major at Stanford University. Travers became interested in wines just before graduating in 1959, and by then he had also decided that he liked stocks and bonds better than engineering. He spent the next eight years doing investment research in San Francisco, primarily on the new electronics firms popping up in what would later be called the Silicon Valley. While working in San Francisco, Travers was deepening his knowledge of wines with courses at the University of California campuses in Berkeley and Davis.

  Both of his parents came from farming families, which was perhaps why Travers started to think about a life on the land. He looked at raising cattle or sheep, but quickly turned to the more promising possibilities of wine. Just before the 1967 harvest, winemaker Joe Heitz lost one of his day laborers at the same time Bob Travers was looking for a job where he could get some hands-on experience. Travers stayed with Heitz just a year, but it was long enough for him to confirm his plans to buy a winery.

  Fortunately, there was one for sale. John Henry Fisher, a German immigrant and sometime sword engraver and pickle merchant, in 1889 built a beautiful stone winery at about two thousand feet near the top of Mount Veeder on the western side of the Napa Valley. The region was known as the Napa Redwoods since the heavy rains made it a good area for those trees. Fisher sold both wine and pickles by the barrel, which horse-drawn wagons took to Napa, where they were loaded onto ferry boats that carried them to San Francisco.

  Fisher went bankrupt at the turn of the twentieth century, and the J. H. Fisher Winery stood abandone
d for nearly forty years, although bootleggers are believed to have made illegal wine there during Prohibition. Jack Taylor, a British chemist, and his American wife, Mary, bought the property in 1941 and restored the winery, which they named Mayacamas Vineyards after the mountain range where it is located. Mayacamas means “cry of the mountain lion” in the language of the Wappo Indians who once lived there. The first Mayacamas vintage was 1946.

  The Taylors worked hard on the land for the next twenty years, bringing back some of the vineyard and fencing it in to keep out wandering deer and other animals. They were also good promoters, starting a newsletter and in 1958 selling stock in the winery at ten dollars a share, with dividends promised in bottles of wine. Some five hundred people put their money down. In the late 1960s, however, the Taylors retired and moved away, leaving the management to hired hands. In the fall of 1968, Travers and his wife, Elinor (Nonie), bought Mayacamas Vineyards from the Taylors. Bob Travers was thirty years old, and at the time he counted only seventeen active wineries in the Napa Valley. As far as Travers knew, Mayacamas was the only one then for sale.

  The vineyard and property needed lots of work. The Taylors had planted quality Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grapes, but they had not been maintained after the couple moved. Travers brought back about twenty-five acres of the abandoned vines with careful pruning and cultivating and planted another thirty acres. The antiquated equipment in the winery was also replaced piece by piece, as cash flow permitted.

  When Travers bought the property, Mayacamas was producing about 2,500 cases a year and had twenty different wines for sale, far too many for a small winery to produce properly. Nearly all the wines were made from grapes bought from local farmers. Travers discontinued the poorer-selling wines and began concentrating on the more popular ones. By the mid-1970s, annual production was up to 5,000 cases, and he was now selling only two wines—Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.