Napa at Last Light

by James Conaway

  He shakes his head. Caymus, owned by the Wagner family, is more representative than anyone wants to admit, he says. It was old Charlie Wagner who hired the fledgling Randy Dunn to make his wine for him, way back, and Charlie was generally known for fairness and tenacity. After his father’s death, Charlie’s son, Chuck, cofounder of the winery with his mother and father, built on his grandfathered privileges and turned it into “another slam-dunk mega-producer.” In an extraordinary statement to the Napa Valley Register, Chuck Wagner suggested that regulations on wineries are somehow anti-agriculture when, in fact, regulation is the one thing that has so far prevented agriculture’s demise in Napa.

  The lucky spermer factor seems to have been at play at Caymus, meaning inherited wealth bestows advantages not enjoyed by most. Chuck’s son and old Charlie Wagner’s grandson Joe sold his label in 2014 for a reported $315 million, a brand play with little inventory but a good reputation among lovers of softness on the palate.

  Caymus’s claimed overproduction under Chuck’s leadership (which they maintained throughout was in fact permitted) is nothing exceptional in the valley. Vintners today are a different lot from those in the days of the nascent white elephants. Now they lament the effect of law enforcement, spotty as it is, on their behavior and bottom lines; this is a vintner of another sort, and this one sees more similarity to the big oil companies who, accommodated by the federal government, are well aware of the favoritism they enjoy.

  “I went to a meeting of past presidents of the Napa Valley Vintners Association to discuss the enforcement of winery permit regulations. A vote was held on whether or not this was a good idea, and not one hand was raised in favor.” He sips his coffee. “The game-changer in all this is citizens’ objections. People are finally asking why they should be subsidizing a rich man’s hobby.

  “As for the vintners, we’ve met the enemy and he is us.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN:

  Voices

  1. The Assistant

  It’s all so cynical, and so surprising in a place of such natural beauty. You look up at that view of the Mayacamas, but down here everyone’s trying to figure out how to deal with incompetent bosses who hire people just to put them in front of other people in management meetings. Then they fire them two weeks later.

  None of the managers of these businesses, whether wineries, restaurants, whatever, have time to actually manage because they’re training assistant managers all the time. And they don’t last. There’s no real connection to anything anymore.

  People with real talent and sophistication—mostly women like me—find themselves up against twin barriers: incompetent men, and members of our own sex who don’t like the fact that some of us accent our clothes with designer touches and speak three languages.

  Meanwhile billionaires drift in and out, innocents in their own ways, thinking everybody welcomes them when in reality they’re just part of the wallpaper, exploitable and without intrinsic value. They don’t realize that everybody who takes their money laughs at them.

  In the 1990s, people would say, “I’m writing a movie script.” That was cool. Then a few years passed and people started saying, “I’m writing a book.” That was okay. Now you meet some guy who just got here after lucking into millions by selling some sugary label or bizarre phone app. He sidles up, all cozy, and says, “Guess what. I’m making a wine!”

  You want to puke. Another wine. It’s like these guys—first it was dot-commers, now sports figures, all without a clue—fell out of a crib and saw an empty wine bottle and thought they had gone to heaven.

  The multinational effect doesn’t help. Paradoxically, the big corporations display the worst parochialism. They refer all decisions, important and otherwise, back to the home office, and impose on the valley the true ineptitude of the corporate citizen. They’re disassociated and, in the end, uncaring because caring gets in the way of hard decisions. These always favor the parent company and pave the way for the company’s exit from a valley that was too alluring, and then proved to be too difficult.

  These companies are accustomed to automatic profits uncomplicated by things like quality, laws, and promises. They have poisoned the well for everyone.

  2. The Dot-commer

  In this age of digital Darwinism the failure of the wineries to take advantage of the ongoing Internet revolution is amazing. But wineries have succumbed to Hollywood syndrome. Everybody wants to be a part of it, and the vintners know people will work for less money, for glamour. So what if the wineries don’t get real talent? This inherent sloth comes from enotourism being so good and so easy.

  The wine industry should focus on what people do after they go home, not just on luring them to the wineries. It needs e-commerce, but you don’t find these technologies being developed. There’s been no game-changer since the 1970s, except the cult wine phenomenon. Money’s falling through most vintners’ hands. They’ve begun to focus on this since the recession, when worldwide competition increased as never before. But too many are merely doubling down on enotourism while the digital boom a few miles south of us is transforming the universe.

  3. The Investigator

  No one knows how much wine the wineries are actually producing. As an investigator for the district attorney I go after tasting violations, but another whole level is the political. We had one investigator leave because she was told not to pursue a winery owned by a well-connected person. And you can’t go to the supervisors with something like this and ask for help because the board’s so treacherous.

  In most counties you can go to Human Resources, too, but Napa’s department is very weak and doesn’t help with investigations of improper behavior in county government. They should be worried about liability but are afraid to cross the district attorney . . . It’s so easy to make things disappear if you’re the DA. People who might complain don’t because of a spouse working elsewhere who might be fired if they do, or some other retaliation.

  I didn’t plan on living and working in such a place. The amount of money here is just unreal. Guys who know nothing buy a winery and then go to the DA to make sure they’re covered, in case they get into trouble, a practice that’s expanding. This is what I have to deal with. What I love about it is being able to help victims get back on the road to a decent life. But that’s very hard because of the political situation.

  4. The Researcher

  I am often questioned about my work, which relates to foreign nationals, foreign banks, and offshore corporations that pose threats to the United States. It isn’t focused on the county, only as it relates to projects that should have sought guidance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. when foreign nationals are involved, such as Montalcino resort. That project was to develop in the Napa County Airport Specific Zone and by admission of the developer included foreign investors whose money was handled by a Chinese national. The project was rejected in 2001 but revived in 2004. I was astounded by this and appeared to challenge it on public safety grounds. The planning commission rejected the project, but within a month it was reversed again by the board of supervisors. One demonstrated her love of the project, even kissing her fingers and blowing off a kiss.I consider the people who threaten me to be associates of organized crime, for they definitely conspire as well. My position makes me a target of murder threats, stalking, and other unsavory behavior by those I dare to challenge. I am, however, well protected and not discounted by law enforcement when I need to report threats.

  I highly recommend public service, particularly to the federal government when one’s asked to help, as I was. It’s a shame so many have tarnished their own names just to market their wines, or to see that they aren’t harmed financially. And I am dismayed by how many people never read local papers, the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times. They live in their own little worlds, oblivious to the biggest changes this country is experiencing, and behave like sheep.

  5. The Startup

  I worked as a sommelier for a while and the
n moved here and got a harvest job. I started a label with a few barrels of pinot noir in 2001. I got up to eight hundred cases and started a development plan for here in Soda Canyon. The recession was on, and the county was enthusiastic and thought we had the right scope.

  We got through most of the hearing before the planning commission, and then a couple of neighbors showed up and objected to everything—traffic, noise, the installation of equipment, fire danger. My wife and I had reached out to the neighbors already, but these wouldn’t even look at the plans. One said he’d object permanently, whatever changes we proposed, and that if we built our little winery, “we can’t have sex on the deck anymore.”

  We settled with one by reducing visitation and making sight-line changes, but another one sued. He has a pro bono counsel. Then the planning department started asking for changes in plans already agreed on. We’re also fighting on the state level. The Alcohol Beverage Control Board upheld our application, but the discovery demands were vast . . . So far we’re allowed twenty visitors a day, six days a week. We can have one party during the Napa Valley wine auction, and two parties a year with up to fifty people, plus some smaller ones.

  We were never interested in blowing up a brand to sell to a venture capitalist. We didn’t want to get big, but people like us should have a legal pathway forward. We make compromises and agreements, but the ongoing fight’s unsettling. We’re up to three thousand cases a year and could go up to eight thousand. I’m forty-two years old and have never drawn a salary from the winery. We cobble together a livelihood, the bank coaching us on how to do it without partners.

  It still looks like a wine camp in a beautiful place. As an artisan I want to make Rhône-type wines in a quiet environment, to experiment and use big puncheons. It’s risky, but we don’t plan to get larger. We’re willing to pay more for grapes, and have some pinot noir and chardonnay from the Sonoma Coast. Is Napa losing its cachet? Maybe. But whatever happens I believe in Napa—the terroir and the climate.

  We have to rediscover some things. We have to be flexible.

  6. The Tourist

  We tried to get a reservation at the French Laundry in Yountville for years. You have to call exactly one month before the date and callers are already lined up by the time the line opens. Well, we finally get through and the woman turns me down again but then I get a call a few days later. A reservation has opened up! It’s more for late afternoon than evening, but would we like this opportunity?

  We get there and are surprised by how small the place is. Almost cramped. But it’s a very well-oiled operation. They get us to a table next to a stone wall, close to other tables but everybody behaving very well, a kind of hushed appreciation like you get in church. The other diners are middle-aged, too, and it’s clear that a lot of them are on an expense account. This guy with a full head of prematurely white hair shows up in a bespoke suit and hands us menus, not the maître d’ and not exactly a waiter, either. More like an impresario. He asks, “Would you like a glass of Champagne?”—real champagne, not California—and we say, “Sure.”

  We toast each other, and open the menus. It’s going to be expensive, we know that, but we’re ready. My wife orders from the vegetarian side and I order from the meat side—duck breasts—and the impresario asks, “Would you like some more Champagne?” We would, although I can tell that’s not the right answer.

  He pours, and then this whole train of dishes starts arriving, beautifully conceived and executed bits of stylized food on individual plates. We keep drinking the complimentary Champagne even though by now it’s clear the impresario wants us to order something from the huge wine list. Eventually we do order two glasses of French wine because that seems to be mostly what they’ve got.

  My duck breasts are pink and delicious. It doesn’t matter so much how small they are because by now we’ve had all this other little stuff to eat. Then I see a guy in a white apron pushing a trolley among the tables, and on it is a domed serving dish. What I think is the waitress intercepts the trolley and pushes it the final ten feet to our table, and then the impresario appears and grandly lifts the silver cover. And there, in the middle of a cutting board, is what looks like a charred golf ball.

  The impresario picks up a little silver hammer and taps the golf ball. The blackened sides fall away, revealing a beautiful little pearly turnip. I can hear someone murmur appreciatively at another table. The impresario takes this one-and-a-half-foot-long carving knife, sharpens it, extends his elbows out to the sides, and meticulously carves, fanning out quarter-size slices on a big plate. He places these in front of my wife and says, very seriously, “This turnip was grown less than one hundred yards from where you’re sitting.”

  Later, as we walk back to the car, we can see the vegetable garden sandwiched between Washington Street and Highway 29. Those must be the most valuable vegetables in Napa Valley. Our bill was seven hundred dollars, but we did drink a lot of free Champagne and were given copies of our menus. And that turnip was really special.

  7. The Changeling

  I worked for Time and Sports Illustrated in New York, sales and marketing, and pitched the idea for an e-company that failed. I still use the old Luce quote: “You can teach an editor to count, but you can’t teach a salesman to write.”

  In 2000 I was still having three-martini lunches with journalists on expense account. I read a lot about wine so I wouldn’t just be picking Opus One to drink. I wanted to be able to tell a more interesting story and needed educating. Then I got caught up in all the stories.

  I got a chance to go to the Wall Street Journal and put down a deposit on an apartment in Brooklyn. Then I said to myself, “You’re going to be working for forty years.” So I turned the job down and moved to Sicily. I worked for a wine cooperative and learned to appreciate wine instead of just drinking it. We used wine as a condiment, like salt and pepper, not the way wine’s used in the fantasies of Napa wine enthusiasts.

  I returned to New York and worked for a wine importer. I had been one of the “thirty under thirty” in the publishing world, a comer, and it shocked people that now I couldn’t get a job in wine sales and marketing. Through a friend I did get one in Napa, in a cellar, where I learned about fermentation and vineyard management, and after four years I started my own wine and wrote my own marketing plan. But I still thought of Sicily where we drank fresh, crisp wines.

  Now I’m a cabernet maker by day and a white wine maker by night. I did a field blend using Ribolla Gialla. All wine is intimidating, and most people won’t buy a wine they can’t pronounce, but white is a cash wine. You pick, make, and sell it, all in the first year, which turned out to be an opportunity. I was up 30 percent after the next year, 400 percent after five.

  Doing weird, eccentric wines in cabernet country isn’t a good business model. You have to build a platform. But the beauty of Napa Valley is cash flow; the problem is the cost of doing business. One acre isn’t enough, you need ten acres and a winery, and a minimum of $8 million, total. It’s a lifestyle business.

  Now I have a representative who pours my wine at the French Laundry and some chic little places in San Francisco and in bistros from the Bowery to upper Manhattan. I can eat at four-star restaurants and explore more wines of the world. My job has enhanced my life. I can rent a better house, but I still have to work a second job. And I still work my ass off. Someday I may have the American dream and own a winery. I can even sell my dream, but people can’t visit it because it’s virtual.

  We have a boom again in Napa. Without significant resources, it’s very hard to even get your foot in the door. All the big icons—Montelena, Mondavi—have been leap-frogged, although the names still carry sales. Brand value, that’s all, not quality.

  Here the younger generation is saying, “My parents drank cabernet, I’m going to drink a cool wine.” It’s a DIY economy, everybody following a different dream, wanting their own business but wanting to be famous, too. I’m too old for this. You have to always be representing your
self on social media, and there are all these different groups now—anti-Parker, and the big flavor group. You don’t like one critic, or you do. It’s no different from the early movements, and a fucking headache, with people fighting what they see as the establishment.

  The so-called New Californians isn’t a cohesive group, there’s no collective, unifying force. Just a bunch of people throwing rocks from different directions. Napa produces such a small amount of wine, a drop in the global bucket, and we’re at a crucial point in the industry and don’t know where it’s going.

  The real question is what’s going to happen during a thirty-, fifty-, maybe a hundred-year drought. The one percent of the one percent will still be making wine in 2050 but it’ll all be a thousand dollars a bottle and up, and all cabernet. There’ll be a lot less of it. Crop yields will fall, the cost of water and farming will go up. And up. Grapes will cost twenty thousand dollars a ton for starters, instead of five, and no one will be planting esoteric varieties.

  I joined a climate change task force in 2008. Someone said that the best grapes in 2100 won’t be grown in Napa, they’ll be grown in the Rockies. The Napa Valley Vintners Association had to fight that, and spent a lot of money trying to refute the argument.

  I’ve been here ten years, and harvest already comes six weeks sooner today. The style of wine has shifted from using vines as sugar-making machines to replanting those that produce better, cleaner, healthier grapes. But I’m too close to it all and I’m trying to isolate a bit. People are beginning to settle down, some have ADD and won’t listen to you complain for long, and the older generation, the boomers, doesn’t give a shit. You can play with names and political positions over the ages, but nothing really changes. Eventually you just have to say, “Hey, I’m making wine.”