A Golden Age for Grapes

By John Elson

All across western California, in huge steel tanks and small oak barrels, grape juice from the autumn harvest is bubbling to be reborn as wine -- and omens for the 1990 vintage look good. True, late spring rains on the north coast meant that the crop of Chardonnay, the state's premier white-wine grape, was smaller than normal. No such problem with the reds, though. And the nose knows. Jim Fetzer, one of 10 siblings who run the family's 1,400-acre vineyard in Mendocino County, says his vintners tell him that "the winery hasn't smelled this good in 10 years."

"This is the golden age for California wines," says Forrest Tancer, 43, a co-owner of Sonoma County's Iron Horse Vineyards. Renowned for his crisp, elegant sparkling wines, which have been served at White House state dinners, Tancer belongs to the cadre of talented young vintners who are largely responsible for this era of excellence. Their success has inspired ambitious new winemakers all across the nation, even in areas where grape growing is an experimental novelty.

An old wine-country joke has it that the surest way to turn a large fortune into a small one is to buy a vineyard. Perhaps so, but there seems to be an endless supply of multimillionaires whose ideal of a little place in the country is a boutique winery on Napa County's Howell Mountain or Rutherford Bench. Twenty-five years ago, the county had a scant two dozen wineries; today there are more than 200, and about a dozen more are on the drawing boards.

Statewide, California has some 800 bonded wineries, and the industry employs nearly 120,000 people. Last year California winemaking generated $6 billion in retail sales. This year wine sales nationwide are flat, but vintners argue that while people may be drinking less, they're drinking better. According to a survey by Hambrecht & Quist, a San Francisco investment firm, sales of California's premium wines have increased an average of 19.6% a year over the past five years. At the peak of the scale, California's ultra-premiums command prices that come close to matching those of Europe's best. Diamond Creek's tannic, concentrated 1987 Lake Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon went on sale last year at $100 a bottle. The 75 cases were gone within days.

No wonder that big money, much of it foreign, has moved into the wine country. Napa's Raymond Vineyard, Sonoma's Chateau St. Jean and Firestone (near Santa Barbara) -- all premium labels -- are owned in whole or part by Japanese interests. Beaulieu, Inglenook and Christian Bros. in Napa County are subsidiaries of the British conglomerate Grand Metropolitan. Most of the major French champagne producers, including Moet & Chandon, Mumm, Louis Roederer and Piper Heidsieck, have subsidiaries turning out California sparklers.

There are venturesome international collaborations as well. The Champagne firm of Taittinger is co-owner of Domaine Carneros, which makes sparklers in Napa's Carneros district, an area known for its Pinot Noirs. One highly publicized Napa red is called Opus One; this Cabernet-based wine, which carries a $50-a-bottle price tag, is a joint production of Napa's Robert Mondavi and Bordeaux's Chateau Mouton Rothschild. Not to be outdone, Eric de Rothschild, managing director of Mouton's archrival Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, last year signed a joint-venture contract with the Chalone group, an American consortium that includes such prestige California labels as Carmenet, Acacia and Edna Valley.

Despite all the offshore interest, Marvin Shanken, editor and publisher of the biweekly Wine Spectator, contends that "California's wines are among the world's best-kept secrets. Europeans have yet to give them a chance." Less than 2% of California's output is currently sold in Europe, although over the past five years the annual growth rate has been about 34%. Some experts contend that the state's enological golden age began at a now legendary 1976 comparative blind tasting in Paris. To its shock and everlasting dismay, a panel of French judges gave place of honor to a 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa's Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, ahead of such prestigious Bordeaux as Mouton Rothschild and Chateaux Haut-Brion. (For good measure, a Chardonnay from Napa's Chateau Montelena bested a comparably distinguished flight of white Burgundies.)

Warren Winiarski, Stag's Leap's thoughtful proprietor, believes he and his colleagues have learned a lot since then. "We used to treat all grapes alike," he says. "Now we try to make wines of delicacy and finesse." One thing that is making the vocation more interesting is the flair of the thirtysomething vintners who have emerged as successors to such Napa pioneers as Winiarski, Robert Mondavi and Joseph Heitz. These winemakers have paid their dues as "cellar rats," hosing out barrels and raking lees for low pay. But many of them have also earned degrees in fermentation science at the University of California at Davis, which boasts the world's most prestigious school of enology.

Some of the new-wave winemakers still look to France as their model. At Napa Valley's Spottswoode Vineyard & Winery, Tony Soter, 38, makes a silky, toasty Cabernet Sauvignon that could pass for a rated Medoc; collectors snap up most of his 3,000 cases while the wine is still in barrel. Stephen Kistler, 44, whose eponymous winery is set back in the lonely hills north of Sonoma's Valley of the Moon, wants to make a Chardonnay that will compare with Meursaults and Montrachets made by a handful of prestigious vintners in Burgundy. Can he do so? "Ask me in 10 years," he says with a smile. In fact, experts agree that Kistler already makes some of California's most elegant white wines.

To the U.S. buying public, white wine basically means Chardonnay and red is Cabernet Sauvignon, so it makes economic sense for winemakers to concentrate on those two grapes. But not to Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard near Santa Cruz. "To limit yourself to two flavors is boring," he says. Grahm, Bob Lindquist of Qupe and John Buechsenstein of McDowell Valley are among the most prominent of the so-called Rhone Rangers, who are producing wines from such southern French varietals as Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre and Roussanne. The names of Grahm's fruity blends slyly honor their links to Provence. Old Telegram is a tribute to a famous Chateauneuf-du-Pape label called Vieux Telegraphe. Le Cigare Volant (the French term for flying saucer) refers to a whimsical law passed by Chateauneuf's council banning flying saucers from landing in the town's vineyards.

Other vintners are taking their cues from Italy. Iron Horse's Tancer and Dominic Martin of San Luis Obispo's Martin Bros. are among winemakers who have planted such Italian varietals as Nebbiolo and Sangiovese; Tancer intends to blend his Sangiovese with Cabernet or Merlot in new proprietary wines similar to ones being produced in Tuscany. There is a certain irony here. Investment banker William Hambrecht, who sells the Zinfandel grapes from his Sonoma ranch to Ridge Vineyards, notes that many of these newly fashionable varietals were first planted in California at the century's turn by Italian immigrants for their homemade table wines.

In California, as in Europe, winemaking has historically been a male prerogative. No longer. Inspired and encouraged by Mary Ann Graf and then Zelma Long at Sonoma's Simi Winery, a number of women have taken up the vinting craft, and are increasingly making their talents known. Kristin Belair, 31, a graduate of the University of California at Davis, is a newcomer to reckon with: the Wine Spectator rated her 1986 Johnson Turnbull Cabernet Sauvignon 13th on its recent list of 100 "Hottest Wines." "Winemaking is a nice mix of art and science," she says. "I really like blending and all the little decisions along the way. An amount as small as 2% or 3% of blended wine will make a difference in the taste."

The vintner is the winery's wizard, responsible for deciding what grapes to plant where, when to harvest, how long to age a wine and in what kind of container. The names and reputations of California's star vintners are as well known to oenophiles as those of celebrity chefs are to ardent foodies. Sometimes their comings and goings provide rich material for gossip. Five days before the start of this year's harvest, Lake County's ambitious Kendall- Jackson Vineyard hired away John Hawley, the chief vintner at Sonoma's Clos du Bois. That was the sneaky equivalent of a chic bistro's signing up a rival's chef two hours before Saturday dinnertime. (Hawley's successor at Clos du Bois, as it happens, is another promising distaff vintner, Margaret Davenport.)

If these are the best of times for California winemakers, they are also the worst. The vintners feel besieged by a burgeoning neo-prohibitionist movement that seeks not to ban alcohol but to surround its sale with crippling restrictions. Many winemakers thought it unhappily symbolic that the Oakland Athletics, playing in a stadium less than 40 miles from the state's leading wine county, celebrated their American League championship win with foaming bottles of carbonated cider. League president Bobby Brown thought it unseemly that role-model athletes should be seen on national TV swigging champagne.

Vintners blame neo-prohibitionism for federal legislation that requires them to clutter bottles with precautionary print. In 1988, for example, labels were required to note the presence of sulfites, which can cause certain allergic reactions, but for relatively few imbibers and only if consumed at levels well in excess of what is found in table wines. Last year two new warnings were mandated: one about the risk of birth defects for pregnant women who drink and another about consumption impairing the ability to drive.

Led by Robert Mondavi, California's winemakers have banded together to promote table wine as a liquid form of food and as "the beverage of moderation." Yet the industry remains on the defensive, in part because some major members have divided loyalties. Despite its increased production of varietals, E. & J. Gallo, the nation's largest wine producer by far, earns considerable profit from Thunderbird, a cheap, fortified beverage that winos call "sneaky pete." And some corporate proprietors of prestigious wineries -- such as Britain's Grand Metropolitan or Hiram Walker, which owns Clos du Bois -- have major investments in hard liquor.

With his customary common sense, Thomas Jefferson in 1791 applauded a congressional bill that subjected liquor, but not American-made wines, to an excise tax. "It is an error to view a tax on that liquor as merely a tax on the rich," he wrote. "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey." Jefferson, alas, failed miserably to convert fellow citizens to his favorite beverage. Americans last year drank 23.5 gal. of beer and 26.6 gal. of coffee per capita but only 2.1 gal. of wine. As a result, although the U.S. ranks sixth among the world's wine-producing nations, it is 29th in terms of wine consumption.

That standing is unlikely to increase soon. Starting Jan. 1, vintners must cope with an increase in the federal excise tax on table wine from 17 cents to $1.07 per gal., which may add 50 cents to the retail price of a standard (750- ml) bottle of wine. Pessimists in the industry predict that the increase could reduce wine consumption by 12% and lead to the loss of 7,000 jobs. The tax hike comes at a time when many growers are also worried about phylloxera, a mite-size plant louse that is gnawing away at vines, primarily in Napa and Sonoma counties. An estimated 250 acres have been affected so far, and replanting with new phylloxera-resistant vines may cost upwards of $250 million in Napa Valley alone.

Another danger, particularly near San Francisco, is California's inexorable urge to build. Winiarski rightly calls the Napa Valley "a national treasure." Yet some county officials, mindful only of tax revenue and tourist dollars, want a four-lane highway to ease heavy weekend traffic and are openly sympathetic to developers who would perch condos on fragile hills overlooking the vineyards. On Nov. 6 voters approved Proposition J, which prohibits any change until the year 2020 in the county's general plan for preserving vineyards. Pessimists think it only a matter of time before the plan comes under renewed threat. "Once we have a four-lane highway," warns Winiarski, who lectured in political theory at the University of Chicago, "the valley is finished."

Each man kills the thing he loves, Oscar Wilde wrote. And a sad thing it would be if Californians, basking in their wine's golden age, should turn the era into a dark one.

With reporting by Paul A. Witteman/Rutherford