A 50th Anniversary is a big deal not only for couples and businesses but also for California wineries. Throughout 2021, neither fires, pandemics nor earthquakes prevented two dozen wineries from celebrating their 50th harvest. While those special events were low key by necessity, celebrations can now be more festive this year and next.
As I sip its delicious 2021 Fume Blanc, Dry Creek Vineyards, a member of the Class of 1972, was the first to remind me it has good reason to recognize the accomplishments of Dave Stare and his family.
Milestones tend to be ignored or pushed into the background when the current issues are major ones like smoke taint, climate change and pandemics. Nevertheless, the class of 1972 brought us many exciting new wineries and the class of 1973 was ever bigger. Fifty years pale when compared to Old World wine history, but what happened in 1972 and ‘73 signaled the beginning of the small winery proliferation which dramatically changed California wine.
A look back at these early start-ups, to use the current term, helps us better understand California wine. And why starting a winery is so wrapped up in the California dream even today. It began in Napa and spilled over into Sonoma and Mendocino in the 70s and continued to Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, and the Sierra Foothills during the1980s and 90s.
Yes, I’m aware there were pre-1972 small wineries like Stony Hill, Mayacamas, Hanzell, Heitz and Martin Ray, but from 72 on, the newcomers were more numerous and shared one thing in common.
Members of the class of 72 and 73 were for the most part outsiders making life-altering career choices. In one of those “road not taken moments,” they decided to take the plunge, pursue their dream, to follow their bliss as a result of a whim, an epiphany or maybe after too much fine wine the night before.
And these newbies in the early 70s opened the door widely for others with no wine heritage. My random survey of those two years reveals many founders were doctors, lawyers, and engineers. But the backgrounds vary widely to include bankers, teachers, wine merchants, airline pilots and artists. One was a geologist; another a private investigator. A few, like Jack and Mary Novak of Spottswoode, simply wanted to retire to a rural retreat.
The Anniversary Gang & Where They Came From
Burgess Cellars: Retired airline pilot
Chateau Montelena: Jim Barrett, lawyer
Carneros Creek Vineyards: wine retailer
Cakebread Cellars: photographer & auto repair
Diamond Creek: pharmaceutical salesman
Franciscan: Justin Meyer, defrocked Christian Brother
Joseph Phelps Vineyard: Building contractor/developer
Rutherford Hill : lawyers and grape growers
Silver Oak: Ray Duncan, contractor from Colorado
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars: Political Science professor from Chicago
Stags’ Leap Winery: Restaurant owner, property developer
Stonegate Winery: Teacher
Trefethen Vineyards: Executive from Kaiser Industries
Jordan Vineyards: Oil explorer from Colorado
Dry Creek Vineyards: MIT grad, civil engineer
Hoffman Mountain Ranch—Stanley Hoffman, medical doctor
Montevina Vineyards: Banker
Edmeades Vineyards: Cardiologist from Pasadena
Enz Vineyards: engineer
Lazy Creek Vineyards: restaurant worker
Of course, some had deep pockets, the cliched “Rich Americans.” The old saying was that “If you want to make a million in the wine biz, you have to start with 2 million.” Sure there were people like Tom Jordan, the wealthy Colorado oil executive, who built a replica of a French chateau in 1973, but there were also many more like Hans Kobler, a San Francisco maitre d’ who bought an old barn in Anderson Valley in 1973 and commuted while developing Lazy Creek Vineyards in Mendocino.
The who is one part of the story, but the why, the motive for changing careers, is also telling. The two primary figures in the Judgment of Paris were both newbies. Chateau Montelena’s founder, Jim Barrett, was a Los Angeles based real estate lawyer. With an expanded business and staff, he was seeking a retreat, a getaway from LaLa land. Warren Winiarski of Stags Leap said he had an epiphany over a glass of wine. Winiarski, the University of Chicago professor, was drawn to the rural lifestyle and in 1964 packed up his family and drove the station wagon to Napa.
Barrett got a good deal on a historic dilapidated chateau. Winiarski studied wine and once in Napa, was hired to perform basic tasks like cleaning tanks and barrels and doing lab analysis at Souverain Cellars. During an interview with Lee Stewart, Souverain’s founder, he mentioned he had hired both Warren and Mike Grich to work in his lab. And, neither when they began, he noted, knew how to titrate acidity.
But they help define the two pathways to fulfilling the dream. Those with money, build a chateau or remodel an ancient one and hire people.Those who don’t have the bucks, , start from the bottom, gain cellar experience and/or take classes.
Jack Cakebread is a favorite example of the “anyone can” own a winery. Assigned as a semi-professional photographer to illustrate Napa wineries for a book, he fell in love with the lifestyle. Meeting an owner, on a lark he said, “if you ever want to sell.” They did, and Jack then used his $2500 photography commission as a down payment on the land for Cakebread Cellars. For the first several years, he kept his day job running the family’s auto repair shop in Oakland.
Whatever career the startups abandoned in the 70s, the common denominator was a lack of winemaking tradition. Caymus Vineyards and Raymond Vineyards were exceptions, started by people who knew how to prune a vine and drive a tractor. Clos du Val had a French winemaking connection, and two of Freemark Abby’s partners owned vineyards.
Neither Normal nor Logical
The upside for the others is without being tradition-bound, anything goes. Lacking preconceptions they can think out of the box. Winiarski bet the farm on a sub-region called Stags Leap. MIT grad, Dave Stare of Dry Creek Vineyards converted a prune orchard to focus on Fume Blanc. Rich Sanford returned from a Naval stint in Viet Nam, studied Santa Barbara’s unusual geography, borrowed money to plant one acre and is now commonly referred to as the “Godfather of Central Coast Pinot Noir.” A pharmaceutical wholesaler from Los Angeles, Al Brounstein of Diamond Creek Vineyards made not one, but 4 vineyard-specific Cabernets from his mountain vineyards. None of these focuses could be defined as normal.
This free 70s spirit of going against the grain carries over into today’s wine scene. While no denying that California wine production is dominated by the top 3 or 4 wine companies/corporations, over 80% of today’s 4,775 wineries make under 5,000 cases annually and 95% of Napa’s wineries are family owned.
And career-changers still lead the way. Napa’s ultra high tech Palmaz Vineyard was founded in 1997 by Dr. Julio Palmaz from Argentina who among other things developed the balloon-expanding coronary stent. Yes, “the” stent.
Don’t know what it is about photographers, but Aperture Cellars in Alexander Valley, recently bursting on the scene, was founded by Andy Katz, a famous photographer.
But not all bring such fame and fortune. Typifying the other side is Jeff Fadness of La Vie Dansante in Gilroy. He’s had several careers, speaks several languages and after leaving the corporate world to take a year off wrote: “To be clear, I never meant to own a winery, swore I wouldn’t in fact – that would be stupid.” But as it happens somehow by 2015, “Suddenly, against all odds, I own a winery.” And, he makes excellent wines, especially Rhones.
Since 2015, 100 or more new wineries have started up each year led by career changers reinventing themselves.
Raising a Toast
So to those members of the class of 1972 who went against all odds and are organizing their 50th anniversary events, I think it’s time for the rest of us to remember what got them into the wine world, to think about their achievements, and of course to raise a glass in their honor.
Dry Creek Vineyards and founder Dave Stare are my favorite examples of this can-do spirit.
Why would a graduate of MIT and a devout sailor raised on the East Coast be drawn to the unknown Sonoma County region, the Dry Creek Valley and focus on Fume Blanc, still not widely known in 1972?
He also has a degree in Business, so none of this makes sense.
Once when visiting Chile in 1993, my wife. Ginny, and I had ventured way south to a tiny resort town. There we bumped into a young honeymooning couple, both in a D.C. law school. After a brief exchange and a second Pisco Sour, they said their dream was to make a lot of money as lawyers, then quit and start a winery in Napa. And it wasn’t just the Pisco talking!
Yes, it is nuts! While most young people in France or Italy want nothing to do with the family vineyard, it was and remains a part of the California dreaming attitude. The winery dream is often a shared dream, a couple turning their backs on the material world and enjoying a Folie a Deux.
A shared fantasy; that was one of the best names ever for a Napa Winery. And the owners of Folie A Deux, the Dizmangs, Eva and Larry, were both shrinks who lived the dream for about 20 years, then gladly sold the winery in 1995. But they did it! They lived the Dream.
Norm Roby's Unfiltered Guide to Savvy Wine Shopping 