Chapter Nine
The Transformation Enology and Viticulture in the Napa Valley

If premium wine became a product that was "consumed" intellectually and socially in the late 1950s, it was nevertheless still consumed physically as well. In order to sell a second bottle, wineries had to produce wines that tasted good. There is, after all, a limit to what U.S. consumers will accept in their quest for status. During the 1950s, the quality of California wine in general, and of premium wine in particular, rose dramatically. In 1956, Frank Schoonmaker, whose The Complete Wine Book had so angered the California industry when published in 1934, went on record as saying, "The finer wines of California today have ABSOLUTELY NO RESEMBLANCE to those produced between 1934 and 1937," and Cecil Kahmann reported that magazine editors in 1964 were convinced that the "quality of California wines . . . has sharply improved."^[1] Schoonmaker and the magazine editors were undoubtedly correct in their assessment, and the reasons for the improvement are easily identified: more advanced science and technology in the production process and increased availability and use of varietal wine grapes.

Beginning in the late 1940s and extending through the 1950s, advances in enological science and winemaking technology dramatically increased California wineries' ability to produce wine of consistently higher quality. Winery owners rapidly adopted new technology, including cold fermentation; inert storage containers of glass or stainless steel; blanketing of wines with carbon dioxide or nitrogen; the use of bentonite to ensure protein stability; and early bottling employing sterile filtration and new low-oxygen-pickup bottling systems. Such new tech-

nology completely redefined the possibilities for white wine production, allowing winemakers to emphasize inherent varietal flavors in such varieties as Gewórztraminer, Riesling, and Chenin blanc, and in Napa Gamay for making rosé, with the result that they were able to introduce U.S. wine drinkers to a new type of white wine with distinct fruit aromas.

In red wines, understanding of malolactic fermentation and the isolation of reliable malolactic strains led to improved stability and quality, while the introduction of new oak barrels produced a striking change in the style of some red wines. All wines benefited from improved grape-processing equipment, such as bladder presses, and from the introduction of pure yeast cultures in an easily available, compressed form. This industrywide blossoming of technology and enological science made winemaking a profession, a change that found concrete expression in the formation of the American Society of Enologists in 1950.^[2] Although the University of California helped develop ideas, which the society in turn disseminated, the early experiments and applications almost invariably occurred in the Napa Valley.

Napa's leadership role in quality improvements resulted from a unique combination of trained individuals, wineries dedicated to improving quality, and geographical proximity to one another, which made cooperation relatively easy. Nowhere else in the state was there a similar constellation of winemakers ready to try new ideas to improve quality. The existence of the Napa Valley Wine Technical Society offered a neutral meeting ground where Napa winemakers could gather and share ideas as individuals. Such transfer of technical information was allowed, and in most cases encouraged, by winery owners, who themselves were working together cooperatively as members of the Napa Valley Vintners' Association to build the reputation of their region. The result was that new ideas were tried earlier, experimental results were disseminated faster, and improved technology was adopted sooner by the Napa Valley wineries than elsewhere in the state.

Perhaps the most important set of technological changes were in the making of white wine. Prior to the 1950s, most white wine was produced from inferior varieties such as Palomino, which were processed with excessive skin contact and fermented at warm temperatures. The resulting coarse wine was stored for several years in redwood tanks prior to bottling, producing an oxidized, unaromatic, and often astringent white wine that did not sell well. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Mondavis at Charles Krug and André Tchelistcheff at Beaulieu devel-

oped a new way of producing white wine that resulted in a delicate, fruity product.^[3]

Central to the process was cold fermentation of the juice, which produced a notably fruitier white wine. Peter Mondavi had seen firsthand the difference that temperature could make to white wine when he participated in enology short courses at Berkeley prior to World War II. "The colder we fermented the whites, the fruitier and better was the quality," he concluded.^[4] During the war years, as the Mondavis rebuilt the Charles Krug winery, they made significant investments in refrigeration and replanted the Krug vineyards extensively to white varietal wine grapes. In 1945, the Mondavis sponsored a research project with André Tchelistcheff to compare commercial-scale fermentations at various temperatures. Tchelistcheff specifically noted the "freshness and fruitness" of the cold fermented wines, which were also extremely low in volatile acidity, a measure of acetic acid formation and wine spoilage in general. In contrast, the wines fermented between 78° and 88°F exhibited "a complete absence of freshness . . . [with] pronounced oxidation" and a "garlic or mash flavor of aldehydes."^[5]

The efficacy of cold fermentation was confirmed when the Mondavis won gold medals at the 1948 State Fair competition for their Riesling, Traminer, and Rhine wines, quickly becoming known for their white wines.^[6] That same year, Tchelistcheff convinced Mrs. de Latour of the importance of cold fermentation, and Beaulieu built a special fermentation room and invested in a fifty-horsepower refrigeration system using both ammonia and freon. By 1949, Wines and Vines reported that cold fermentation was "almost universal among the leading wineries of the Napa Valley."^[7]

Cold fermentation was perhaps the most important single variable, but it was only one aspect of ensuring white wine quality. Also important were the processing equipment, early bottling, and, for sweet wines, sterile filtration. Crushing and pressing of unfermented grapes was a problem for premium producers in the early 1950s. Two types of presses were commonly available, the standard 56-inch-diameter vertical basket press, holding about four tons of grapes, which were compressed with a hydraulic ram, and the continuous screw press, which was essentially a helix that rotated within a screened cylinder, from which the juice drained. In the case of the continuous press, the helix was reduced into a cone at the exit end, causing greater compression, but more grinding, of the grapes. The advantage of the continuous press was that it eliminated batch operations and could process large volumes of grapes. The

disadvantage was that it produced low-quality juice. Al Huntsinger, who in the late 1940s managed the Napa Valley Cooperative Winery, which processed about 25 percent of all grapes grown in the valley, and who in 1954 became the winemaker at Almaden, believed continuous press juice was only fit for distilling material.^[8] For those making premium wine in smaller quantities in the early 1950s, the only choice was the vertical basket press.

Labor-intensive and unsanitary, basket presses were not satisfactory. In the early 1950s, the standard processing of dry white wine involved crushing and destemming grapes into a tank fitted with a screen, allowing the free-run juice to drain for eight to twelve hours, and then shoveling the remaining wet pomace out of the tank into a basket mounted on a moveable press cart.^[9] This method prolonged skin contact, increased oxidation, and meant that the skins were shoveled twice, once from the tank to the press and then again from the press to the pomace pile. In an attempt to find a better method, the Charles Krug and Martini wineries experimented with moveable hoppers that could be fitted on top of baskets to increase initial volume.^[10] Grapes could then be crushed directly into the basket press and allowed to settle, while the free-run juice drained prior to pressing. This method reduced grape handling but produced only a modest increase in wine quality.

The real quality breakthrough in presses occurred in the mid 1950s when new types of European presses were exported to America. From Italy came the Garolla press, a modified continuous screw press with two sumps, which reduced the grinding associated with earlier continuous screws and allowed the operator to recover different press fractions of juice. Christian Brothers experimented with a Garolla in 1955 and 1956, and in 1957 purchased a Garolla capable of pressing thirty to fifty tons an hour.^[11] The Almaden and Charles Krug wineries continued with batch presses but chose the newly available Wilmes bladder press from Germany, which was essentially a horizontal cylindrical cage with an internal rubber bladder extending the length of the center axis. As the bladder was expanded by compressed air, grape skins were pressed against the interior surface of the cage. Because of its low operating pressures, the bladder press produced very high-quality juice, and at eight tons of grapes every hour and three quarters, the press cycle was a bit faster than basket presses, although it was not nearly as productive as the Garolla.

In 1955, Almaden became the first California winery to use a Wilmes, and Charles Krug winery purchased its first Wilmes in 1957.^[12] In the late 1950s, the Martini winery bought a Garolla, which it used for a few

years, before switching to a Wilmes in 1961.^[13] Both types of presses allowed for immediate processing of fresh grapes, eliminating the need to hold and drain crushed white grapes in a tank, thus reducing the amount of skin contract and possible bitterness in the wines. Of the two, the Wilmes clearly produced the higher-quality juice.^[14]

In 1955, Julius Fessler of the Berkeley Yeast Lab noted "a trend toward smoother and fruitier wines" in his column in Wines and Vines and cautioned that "aging usually causes loss of fruitiness."^[15] This was especially true in the case of white wines, which, prior to the 1950s, were generally stored in wooden cooperage for one or two years prior to bottling. Having worked hard to emphasize fruitiness through the use of cold fermentation and better presses, Napa wineries experimented with earlier bottling of white wines.

At Charles Krug, Peter Mondavi concluded that the wines were best after about three months in wood. However, since it was impossible to bottle all the white wine at once, the Mondavis invested in inert storage containers. In 1957, the Krug winery purchased seventeen glass-lined steel tanks with a total capacity of 125,000 gallons.^[16] To minimize oxidation of wine stored in partially filled tanks, the Mondavis developed a system in which the head space in the tank was filled with nitrogen gas, the first such recorded use in the industry. Storing the white wines in inert containers under a positive nitrogen atmosphere maintained the varietal character and fruitiness of the wines, and, as Peter Mondavi told industry members at a technical conference, such storage had the benefit of "cutting down case goods inventory to two months' supply against nine months' supply previously required," since it was no longer necessary to bottle the wines immediately to preserve quality.^[17]

One result of the earlier bottlings of white wines was the occasional development of cloudiness in the bottle because of the tendency of proteins in wine to become denatured and coagulate when warmed, creating a thin haze. White wines may be filtered and appear brilliantly clear at cellar temperature, but nonetheless throw a protein haze after bottling and being moved to a warmer storehouse or retail shelf. Protein instability had not been much of a problem for white wine produced prior to the 1950s because of the style of production. As a result of excessive skin contact earlier wines generally had more tannin, which bound with the proteins. In addition, the wine was stored for one or two years, allowing some protein to precipitate naturally during storage. The wines were often also fined with bentonite as a clarifying agent, which helped remove protein, although winemakers in the 1940s did not realize it was

doing so.^[18] Finally, many wines were pasteurized prior to bottling, which effectively denatured the protein. The new style of white wine production developed by Charles Krug and emulated by other quality producers increased the chances that a wine would not be protein-stable.

In th mid 1950s, Tchelistcheff and Joe Heitz tackled protein instability in white wines at Beaulieu. Tchelistcheff first tried to solve the problem by heating the wines to 140°F in combination with large doses of sulfur dioxide to minimize oxidization. The wines became "very brownish — clear, but brownish, fatigued, not corresponding to the quality at all."^[19] He then began examining stability on a wine-by-wine, variety-by-variety basis and discovered tremendous variation between wines. Ultimately, he and Heitz hit on bentonite and developed a method to test wines for potential heat-stability problems and determine the amount of bentonite required, thus creating a solution tied to the unique needs of each wine, rather than attempting a generic solution, such as heating. With the protein-instability problem solved, the last obstacle to the production of high-quality white wines was eliminated.^[20]

Having produced a fine wine, a winery had to bottle it in confidence that it would remain of high quality. Wines with residual sugar always posed the threat of refermentation in the bottle, and delicate white wines could be marred by oxygen pickup at bottling. The addition of high levels of sulfur dioxide helped reduce the risk of either occurrence, but such levels had a negative effect on wine quality. During the 1950s, two technologies were introduced, sterile filtration and low-oxygen-pickup bottling, and Napa wineries were in the forefront of their adoption.

Cold sterile bottling following a sterile filtration was a significant quality improvement, since it eliminated the need for pasteurization, which adversely affected wine quality. Following World War II, sterile pad filtration developed by the pharmaceutical industry in West Germany was extended to the German wine industry, and by the late 1940s pad filters of 1 micron or less in porosity were available to U.S. winemakers. Julius Fessler of the Berkeley Yeast Lab worked with several quality producers to develop a protocol that would ensure, not just sterile filtration, but sterile bottling of the filtered wine. One of the earliest adopters of the new technology was Christian Brothers, which began sterile bottling of all its table wines in 1949.^[21] Its success encouraged Peter Mondavi to sterile bottle a slightly sweet Chenin blanc in 1954, creating a new style of white wine that was "so well accepted it sold itself."^[22]

Christian Brothers was again the industry leader in 1955 when it added a new filler to its bottling line. the Biner Ellison bottom-filler was a new

piece of machinery designed to reduce oxygen pickup by filling the bottles from the bottom.^[23] Once again, the technology spread rapidly. The following year, Beaulieu Vineyards added an automatic bottling line, including the Biner-Ellison bottom filler.^[24] The Martini winery automated its bottling line in 1958, choosing to use a Horix filler but filling the bottles with carbon dioxide prior to filling them with wine, thus minimizing oxygen pickup. The Martini bottling line also introduced a new piece of equipment to the Napa Valley, a corker that pulled a vacuum on the bottle prior to inserting the cork.^[25] In the same year, the Charles Krug winery added its bottling line, choosing a bottom filler and pushing the white wine to the bottling line with nitrogen gas, rather than using a pump. In 1959, Krug upgraded the line by adding a vacuum corker supplied by I.F. Schnier.^[26] Thus, in the four years form 1955 to 1958, four Napa producers made the transition from manual to state-of-the-art automatic bottling lines, a rapid adoption of new technology that was typical of Napa's quality wineries.

In red wine production, the most important discovery clearly was the understanding and eventual control of malolactic fermentation, in which André Tchelistcheff played a key role. Malic acid and tartaric acid are the two major acids found in grapes and are primarily responsible for a wine's acidity. Under certain conditions, a group of bacteria now known as malolactic bacteria can consume one of the acid groups in malic acid, producing lactic acid and carbon dioxide. The result is a general lowering of acidity in the wine and, in some cases, depending upon the bacterial agent, a "definite flavor and aroma reminiscent of fermenting cabbages,"^[27] The loss of acidity might or might not be desirable, depending upon the wine's initial acidity, but the cabbage flavor was universally considered a defect. The malolactic fermentation had been described in European wines in the early twentieth century, but had not been recognized in California wines until after Repeal, and it was generally considered to be the effect of an unwanted spoilage organism.

Tchelistcheff had begun his study of malolactic fermentation at his Napa Valley Enological Research Laboratory during World War II, and he presented his findings in 1949 at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco. Tchelistcheff identified different bacteria that could produce a malolactic fermentation, explained factors that seemed to affect such fermentations, and discussed possible forms of control, concluding that it was perhaps desirable to encourage malolactic fermentations at the winery to ensure that wines remained stable after bottling.^[28] His seminal work, done in cooperation with Charles Krug,

Inglenook, Martini, Souverain, and Beaulieu, gave California vintners a basic level of understanding and set the stage for work by other researchers during the 1950s, which resulted in the successful inoculation of wine with a pure bacteria culture in 1959 by Brad Webb and John Ingraham.^[29] By the mid 1960s, the malolactic fermentation was generally understood by California winemakers, pure cultures that did not produce off odors were available for inoculation, and paper chromatography for relatively easy monitoring of a wine's status was being used by progressive winemakers throughout the state.

The practical solution of malolactic fermentations in the early 1960s was concurrent with another microbiological advance, the development and introduction of commercially available compressed yeast cultures. More a commercialization of technology used in the baking industry than a true technological or intellectual advance, compressed yeast was an important step for improved wine quality, since it meant that pure yeast became widely available in an easily used form. Most winemakers in the 1950s understood the desirability of using pure yeast cultures to conduct fermentations, but their use meant either purchasing an active culture from a laboratory or building a starter culture from a culture purchased from a laboratory, a tedious process at best. Such a starter culture was then carefully maintained during the fermentation season and used to inoculate tanks. The system was surer than relying on wild or endemic yeasts, as had often been done in the 1930s, but it had two main drawbacks. First, it was difficult to maintain the starter culture's purity. Second, since keeping a large active volume was sometimes a problem, inoculations were often made at a concentration of yeast cells that was lower than optimum.

During the 1950s, John Castor, a microbiologists in the Department of Viticulture at Davis, advanced the idea of developing compressed cakes of wine yeast similar to those used by commercial bakeries.^[30] Castor was unable to persuade commercial yeast manufacturers of the potential market, and it was not until 1960, when Gallo began working with the Red Star Yeast Company, the Castor's idea was tried. Gallo experimented with small lots of compressed wine yeast in 1961, and in 1962, the "new method of fermentation was used exclusively with much success" in its commercial production.^[31] One benefit of the compressed-yeast method was that larger initial concentrations of yeast could be employed, allowing less sulfur dioxide to be added, since the pure yeast culture rapidly crowded out any spoilage yeast present. In 1963, compressed pure yeast became commercially available from Red Star, and California winemakers were given another tool for making fine wine.^[32]

The period from the early 1950s through the mid 1960s was thus a time of rapid advance in the science of winemaking. New understanding of biological processes was coupled with new technology, giving winemakers more control over the winemaking process. In turn, the quality of red wines was improved, and fruitier, more attractive new white wines were produced. Essentially, winemaking had changed from a craft into a science, and much of that transformation was centered in the Napa Valley.

The extent of the change is seen in a revealing 1949 article in which the wine broker Charles Schilling noted that there were "somewhere between ten and twenty wineries in California" that specialized in "the preparation of the finest quality wines for sale under their own label." These wineries always produced extra wine, which often would be sold on the open market. Schilling explained that such excess wine represented "insurance," since "in spite of their use of only the finest grape varieties, together with the greatest care in fermentation, finishing and aging, there is always the possibility that something may go wrong."^[33] In other words, the fine wine producers accepted some degree of spoilage as an inevitable cost of doing business. The fine wine industry that Schilling described in 1949 was an artisan affair, with little intellectual understanding of critical control points, no real means to measure quality or spoilage, and primitive technology. Were Schilling to have visited the Napa Valley in 1965, he would have been amazed, not just at the general increase in wine quality, but at the overall sophistication of an industry that no longer accepted spoilage as a cost of doing business.^[34] It is likely that what little wine he might have found available would have been quite expensive.^[35]

The contributions of technology and science represented one set of factors in the quality equation. Equally important to improved wine quality were grapes. In the twenty years from 1947 to 1967, the North Coast, led by the Napa Valley, began a transition from "standard" to varietal vineyards. During the 1950s, the relatively low profitability of vineyards planted to standard varieties led to a decline in North Coast and Napa acreage, but by the early 1960s, a growing consumer demand for varietal wine fueled renewed interest in vineyards and spurred the beginning of a major replanting of the Napa Valley to varietal grapevines. Management techniques developed by researchers in the 1950s and the availability of virus-free vine selections from the University of California would make these new vineyards more productive, increasing the yields per acre, the availability of varietal grapes, and the general profitability of business. The growing importance of varietal grapevines.

received concrete expression in the Napa County agricultural commissioner's report in 1966, when grape acreage was listed by varieties for the first time. "because of so many inquiries on the subject."^[36]

The movement toward varietal wine production began slowly, and even by 1967, it represented only a small portion of the total table wine production. A Gomberg private study published in 1981 estimated that in 1971, varietally labeled wines accounted for just over 30 percent of the total production of twenty-six premium producers, which in turn represented slightly over 10 percent of all California table wine sold that year."^[37] Although there is no way of knowing how much varietally labeled wine was sold in the 1950s, it was probably about 1 percent of total table wine production. We know that the premium wineries accounted for less than 5 percent of all table wine produced, and it is safe to assume that the sales mix in 1971 reported by Gomberg did not represent a decrease in the importance of varietal wine.

Another indication of the limited volume of varietal wine is the number of entries and gallonage of entries in the State Fair wine judging. For instance, in 1950, Chardonnay had only eight entries, and the four medal-winning wines totaled only 2,916 gallons. Cabernet Sauvignon, more widely planted throughout the state, had wines submitted from seventeen wineries. The six medal winners totaled 6,767 gallons.^[38] The Beaulieu entry, the Georges de Latour Private Reserve, amounted to 218 gallons, less than 100 cases. Certainly, the State Fair entries represented neither all varietal producers nor all of the production of those who chose to enter, but the volumes attest to the limited availability of varietal wines at the start of the decade.

The story of the relationship between varietal wine sales and varietal grape supply is a modern version of the riddle of the chicken and the egg. Clearly, varietal wine could not be made without varietal grapes, but additional acreage of shy-bearing varietal grapes would not be planted without increased demand. For the most part, it seems that in the 1950s, the premium wineries were self-sufficient in grapes for premium wine production, and that they acquired or replanted vineyards as needed to match their own sales growth. A rough estimate of Napa acreage controlled or owned by the country's premium producers in 1952 totals about 2,300 acres, or roughly 23 percent of Napa's 10,351 bearing acres that year.^[39] By 1962, total county acreage had dropped to 9,800 acres, but winery-controlled or -owned vineyards had risen to about 3,200 acres, no doubt in response to increased premium wine sales (see table 3).

During the 1950s, Beringer's dry wine sales were static, averaging be-

tween 50,000 and 60,000 cases each year, and its acreage was more than adequate to meet its cased goods sales.^[40] The Wine Review estimated that in 1945, Beringer controlled about 450 acres, but 300 of these consisted of the leased Fawver property, just north of Napa, a lease that ended in 1956.^[41] In 1951, Beringer bought the old Garetto Winery in the Carneros area, which included about 130 acres of vineyards, bringing Beringer's acreage to a high of 580, most of which was planted to standard varieties.^[42] Following the termination of the Fawver lease, and until Beringer began planting new acreage in Knight's Valley, north of Calistoga, in 1962, Beringer-owned vineyards fell to a low of about 250 acres.

In 1952, Beaulieu had 600 acres of grapes spread over four vineyards in the Rutherford area, giving it probably the largest supply of higher-quality varietal grapes in the Napa Valley.^[43] In addition, during the mid and late 1950s, Beaulieu enjoyed an advantageous long-term grape contract with Ivan Schoch, who had bought some 450 acres of the old Stelling vineyard from Italian Swiss Colony.^[44] According to Tchelistcheff, Beaulieu sales had grown in the late 1950s to the point where the home vineyards were insufficient, and the Schoch vineyard contract allowed it to expand production without the expense of planting new acreage. Tchelistcheff's memory corresponds with Gomberg's tracking of sales of cased wine, which showed Beaulieu sales of dry wine as essentially level at around 65,000 cases until 1959, when sales increased, reaching 85,000 cases by 1962. When Schoch sold the vineyard to Charles Krug in 1962, Beaulieu was forced to plant additional acreage, and bought 160 acres in the Carneros region, west of the city of Napa, a cooler region than Rutherford and well suited to Burgundian varieties. Tchelistcheff put in Chardonnay and Pinot noir grapes there.^[45]

Christian Brothers was the largest premium producer in the Napa Valley, selling over 100,000 cases of dry wine in 1952 and reaching 277,000 cases by 1962. One of the three high-volume producers of popularly priced premium wine, Christian Brothers was not self-sufficient in grapes, although its purchase of 520 acres of producing varietal vineyard from Charles Forni and Sons in 1956 brought its total acreage to somewhat more than 1,000 acres.^[46] Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, Christian Brothers did not emphasize varietally labeled wines. After the vineyard acquisition, it probably produced about half the grapes needed for dry wine production, making it one of the largest grape buyers in the Napa Valley. More concerned with grape maturity, as expressed by sugar-acid balance, than with varietal labels, Christian Brothers was an industry leader in setting quality standards for growers, and it paid bonuses for grapes that met its desired maturity standards.^[47]

The smallest of the estate producers, Inglenook, probably owned about 170 acres of producing vineyards in the early 1950s, then expanded acreage slowly, until by 1964 it totaled 225 acres of premium varietals.^[48] A true estate winery, Inglenook produced Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot noir, Gamay, Charbono, Riesling, Traminer, Semillon, Pinot blanc, Gamay rosé, and a small volume of Chardonnay from the vineyard surrounding the winery and the small Napanook vineyard near Yountville.^[49] By 1964, according to the Gomberg Report , Inglenook was selling 26,000 cases of wine, which at two tons to the acre would account for almost all of Inglenook's grape production.

The Martini Winery owned vineyards in Napa and Sonoma counties and was largely self-sufficient in grapes. Louis M. Martini lived at the home ranch, which he had bought in 1935, and which included 100 acres of vineyard. In 1937, Martini also bought the old 580-acre Monte Rosso vineyard in the hills overlooking Sonoma, which bore less than a ton an acre and was gradually replanted. At the start of World War II, Martini acquired the 250-acre La Loma vineyard on Stanley Lane in the Carneros region west of the city of Napa. This brought his Napa acreage to 350 acres. In 1958, the winery added an additional 40 acres to La Loma. Four years later, Martini bought both the Las Amigas vineyard, a separate 60-acre parcel adjacent to the property recently acquired by Beaulieu, and a 200-acre vineyard in the Russian River Valley near Healdsburg in Sonoma County. Finally, in 1964, the winery bought a 900-acre ranch in Chiles Valley to the east, and planted 200 acres of grapes there.^[50] The winery more than doubled its output, from 55,000 cases in 1952 to 142,000 in 1962, and with 1,070 acres of producing vine

yards in Napa and Sonoma, it must have been almost completely self-sufficient.

Such self-sufficiency contrasts sharply with the case of Charles Krug, which until 1962 owned only some 100 acres of vineyard surrounding the winery. When the Mondavis acquired the property in 1943, most of the vineyard was planted to standard varieties, and they slowly replanted it during the 1940s and 1950s, choosing such varieties as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot noir, Riesling, Traminer, Chenin blanc, Muscat Canelli, and Gewórztraminer. Peter Mondavi recalled that they deliberately chose varieties not readily available, and decided not to plant Zinfandel or Gamay because local growers had adequate supplies.^[51] Prior to the purchase of Charles Krug, the Mondavis had not owned any vineyards in the Napa Valley and had bought grapes from growers in Napa and San Joaquin counties for crushing at the Sunny St. Helena Winery. This continued after the move to Charles Krug, although during the 1950s, some of the San Joaquin County grapes were crushed for the Mondavis by wineries in the Lodi area.^[52]

In 1957, the Mondavis formed a new cooperative with twenty-eight local growers, the Sunny St. Helena Cooperative. The co-op served two basic purposes. First, it allowed the Mondavis to concentrate production of much of the C.K. Mondavi brand nonvarietal wine at the leased Sunny St. Helena Winery south of town. Second, it helped them finance grape purchases, since payments to members were not made until after the wine was purchased by the Krug Winery. In the late 1950s, the co-op crushed slightly less than 3,000 tons of members grapes each year, which should have provided enough wine for about 200,000 cases.^[53]

Starting in the 1960s, the Mondavis acquired their own vineyard properties. First was the Tokalon vineyard, purchased from Schoch in 1962. Covering 500 acres and established by Martin Stelling during World War II, the vineyard was "one of the best premium wine growing locations in California" and included over 100 acres of Cabernet, with significant acreage in Sylvaner, Riesling, Pinot noir, Sauvignon blanc, Chenin blanc, Semillon, and Gamay. The Mondavis estimated that the new vineyard would provide an additional quarter million gallons of varietal wine.^[54] In 1966, they bought a 100-acre vineyard near St. Helena, and followed that with an additional 57 acres in 1968 and 105 acres in 1969. In 1968, they acquired property in the Carneros area for the first time, buying the 174-acre Brown ranch. Two years later, they purchased the 196-acre Cabral ranch, adjoining the Beaulieu and Martini properties.^[55] Thus by 1970, the Mondavis owned well over 1,000 acres of

Napa County vineyards, although they remained a major purchaser of Napa grapes, since Gomberg estimated C. Mondavi's 1968 sales at over one million cases, and the Mondavi vineyards could only have supplied a quarter of such production at best.

The pattern that emerges is that the premium producers added vineyard land sufficient to meet their varietal needs as sales expanded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The attempt by premium producers to secure sources of supply meant that varietal vineyards changed hands from independent growers to wineries, such as Christian Brothers' purchase of the 520-acre Forni vineyard in 1956 and the Mondavis' purchase of the 500-acre Tokalon vineyard in 1962, and that new vineyards were planted in new areas, such as the expansions of Beaulieu and Martini into the Carneros area in 1962 and Beringer's planting of vineyards in Knight's Valley. For large producers, there was also a need to assure a supply of high-quality Napa Valley standard varieties, as evidenced by the establishment of the Sunny St. Helena Cooperative by the Mondavis in 1957 and Christian Brothers' attempts to define and reward high grape quality.

For Krug and Christian Brothers, access to Napa Valley standard red grapes had been a problem ever since Gallo had contracted with the Napa co-op and the St. Helena co-op in 1952 and 1954 to buy all the wine produced from their members' grapes. Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, the majority of Napa's vineyards were planted to standard mixed black grapes such as Carignane, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Alicante, and other black varieties not normally considered varietal. Even by 1966, after several years of replanting in the valley, such standard black varieties accounted for 36 percent of Napa's 11,381 acres and over half of the total red wine acreage.^[56] During the 1950s and early 1960s, probably slightly more than half of all the standard mixed black varieties were crushed and fermented by either the Napa (or "big") co-op, south of St. Helena, or by the St. Helena (or "little") co-op, located north of St. Helena. A comparison of the Napa co-op's crush records with county tonnage figures provided in the county agricultural commissioner's annual report shows that on average the big co-op processed 27 percent of all Napa County grapes from 1952 through 1965. A similar record is not available for the little co-op, but a Wines and Vines article in 1959 indicates that in 1958, it had crushed 5,503 tons, as opposed to the 11,937 tons processed by the Napa co-op that year.^[57] Thus in 1958, the two cooperatives combined to process 17,440 tons out of Napa County's total production of 39,959 tons, or 43 percent of all the grapes grown in the county. Since

varietal vineyards controlled by the premium wineries accounted for at least 3,000 acres, and thus a minimum of 6,000 tons, it is clear that the two co-ops combined to crush at least half of the standard varieties produced in the county. After 1954, all of this wine went to Gallo.

The founding premise of both co-ops had been to liberate the grower from the forced sale at harvest of a perishable crop by processing the grapes and then marketing the relatively nonperishable wine. The premise was sound, if the wine could be sold. The Napa co-op had been a member of the Fruit Industries marketing cooperative, but had withdrawn from it during World War II, believing itself able to sell its bulk wine without Fruit Industries' aid. In 1945, the St. Helena co-op had joined Wine Growers' Guild, the other major cooperative marketing organization, and it apparently was still a member of the guild in the early 1950s.^[58]

Most California wine cooperatives felt the pinch for a few years following the collapse of the wine market in 1947. From 1947 through 1950, the Napa co-op pursued bulk sales, hired and fired brokers, and even invested in a bottling line in order to sell bottled wine under its own brand, Vin Mont, and to private label customers such as Safeway. Nothing had helped until Gallo approached the co-op to discuss a long-term agreement to buy all of its production.

Gallo saw a future in table wine and realized that wine made from standard North Coast grapes could be blended with Central Valley wine to raise the overall quality of Gallo table wines. During World War II, Gallo had bought specific lots of wine from the numerous co-ops and small wineries on the North Coast, and it now wanted to secure a source of supply. Gallo offered to buy all the co-op members' grapes at an average North Coast price, and to pay the co-op a flat fee per ton for processing. The main disadvantage was that the co-op was essentially abandoning its original plan, which had been to market wine as a winery and to profit when wine prices were high. It would also be putting all of its eggs in one basket, since it would have to terminate its own sales program, which might prove difficult to revive if the proposed arrangement with Gallo did not work out. On the other hand, the immediate advantages were obvious. All sales risks were eliminated, and the members would receive payment for their grapes within a year, rather than over a period of years as the wine was sold by the co-op.

In 1951, the co-op eased into the arrangement, selling roughly half its production to Gallo. The following year, the members signed a renewable five-year contract to crush and sell all of their production to Gallo.^[59]

The St. Helena co-op had watched the negotiations, and in 1953, it began its own discussion with the Gallos. The result was that in 1954, the little co-op closed out all of its old pools and paid off members, reorganized to admit new members, and signed a ten-year contract with Gallo.^[60] Thus, by the 1954 crush, Gallo had essentially acquired 40 percent of the Napa Valley's grape tonnage, including well over half of its output of standard grape varieties.

The Gallo contracts came at a time when North Coast acreage was declining but table wine consumption was beginning to rise. In a review of the table wine outlook for 1953, Robert Mondavi pointed out that grape acreage had fallen by 25 percent in the North Coast counties, from almost 63,000 acres in 1936 to just under 48,000 acres in 1951, and that much of the acreage was "already definitely committed" to specific producers.^[61] The trend was not as dramatic in Napa, but acreage did decline in the 1950s, falling from a high of 10,514 acres in 1953 to a low of 9,623 acres in 1960, a decline of almost 10 percent.

North Coast acreage of standard varieties decreased in the 1950s for the simple reason that growing them was not a very profitable endeavor. A Cooperative Extension cost survey for Sonoma County reviewed seven vineyard operations in 1953 and 1954. Only two of the seven had made money in 1954, and the overall group averaged a profit of just $4.21 an acre, an improvement over an average loss of $32.34 a year before.^[62] The following year, Herman Wente of Wente Brothers in the Livermore Valley and Eugene Seghesio of Seghesio Winery in Sonoma County presented papers on grape growing in their respective areas at the annual meeting of the American Society of Enologists. Both concluded that grape growing was a marginal occupation under current conditions. Wente cautioned that it required a heavy capital outlay by the viticulturist, for a "net return less than if he were employed in industry."^[63] Pointing to the aging vineyards, declining yields, generally low prices, industry instability, and high overhead, Seghesio was even less sanguine. Sonoma County might "cease to be a grape and wine producing area," he concluded.^[64] In 1956, Dr. Sherwood Shear, agricultural economist with the University of California's Giannini Foundation, apparently confirmed their opinions in a study comparing the profitability of twenty-four fruit and nut crops for the period 1949–53. Wine grapes came in dead last, grossing $153.60 per acre.^[65]

The North Coast grower confronted two major problems: price and productivity. Although there was an increasing demand for North Coast grapes at a time of slowly declining supply, grape prices did not increase,

but instead remained fairly constant during the 1950s. The probable cause was the continued oversupply of grapes in the northern San Joaquin Valley. Most wineries that produced lower-priced "generic" Burgundies recognized the superiority of North Coast grapes, but they blended wine made from them with wine made from Central Valley grapes. The availability of standard wine grapes in the Central Valley thus acted as an indirect check on the prices received for North Coast grapes. Throughout the 1950s, standard black grapes from the North Coast fetched $50 a ton, while the same varieties grown near Lodi in San Joaquin County averaged around $40 a ton.^[66] It was not until 1959, when standard North Coast grapes brought $85 a ton, with San Joaquin County grapes getting $45, that the old price relationship broke down.^[67]

During the 1950s, yields averaged slightly over three tons per acre on the North Coast. This figure represented the break-even point, and the 1954 Cooperative Extension study concluded that "yields below three tons per acre will not cover costs at current levels."^[68] There was little that could be done to increase yields from existing vineyards. Most were forty to fifty years old and coming to the end of their economic lives. Virus diseases were endemic, and the Napa farm advisor, Jim Lider, believed that if mosaic and fan leaf could be controlled in some way, yields might double.^[69] But in the 1950s, no practical means to control viruses existed.

In 1951, in response to the virus problem and the need for improved varietal selections, the University of California initiated a program to select and import healthy, high-yielding clones of important wine grape varieties, to heat-treat these selections to eliminate viruses, and to propagate and provide certified cuttings to commercial nurseries, which in turn would increase the number of cuttings in "mother blocks" for commercial sale to California vineyardists.^[70] In 1952, the California Grape Certification Association was formed, and in 1951 and again in 1953, Dr. Harold Olmo, the university's grape breeder, traveled to Europe to select cuttings of wine grape varieties for inclusion in the new certification program.^[71] These importations were included in Olmo's clonal evaluation trials for Cabernet Sauvignon and his new trial of Chardonnay clones, which began in 1955 at Martini's La Loma vineyard.^[72] The virus-free certified stocks finally became available to the industry in 1959 and provided the basis for the vineyard expansion that took place in the 1960s.^[73]

Concurrent with grape certification and clonal evaluation were other university research efforts intended to increase yield and grape quality.

New rootstock trials were conducted to find phylloxera-and nematode-resistant rootstocks to replace the old industry standby, Rupestris St. George, which suckered badly and tended "to make shy bearing varieties bear less."^[74] These studies resulted in the university's recommendation in the 1960s to replace St. George with AXR (Aramon X Rupestris), a rootstock that had grown well in trials conducted in soils with moderate phylloxera populations and that consistently gave increased yields.^[75] The effectiveness of nitrogen fertilization was studied at the Oakville Experimental Vineyard, and petiole analysis was introduced, allowing growers to monitor the nitrogen status of their own vineyards and control levels of fertilizer application based on actual need.^[76] Vineyard spacing and trellising were examined, and researchers concluded that less densely planted vineyards ripened grapes earlier and more evenly, maintained or increased yields, allowed increased mechanization, and ultimately lowered management costs.^[77] While nutritional analysis and respacing of dense vineyards were management decisions that could be implemented in existing North Coast vineyards, much of the university's research was not applied until the 1960s, when the North Coast began replanting.

In 1963, John Daniel of Inglenook observed that growers would "plant better grapes when it's made worth their while to do so."^[78] By 1964, that had already occurred, as is evident in the listing of prices per ton for standard and varietal grapes (see table 4).

Napa vineyard acreage ended its decline in 1960, at 9,623 bearing acres, and by 1967 had expanded to 11,449 bearing acres, almost 1,000 acres more than in 1953, when acreage had begun to decrease. The new plantings represented almost a 20 percent increase over 1960 acreage, and they were only the beginning.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the new vineyards were planted to varietal grapes. The vineyard-management techniques developed in the 1950s combined with newly available heat-treated varietal selections to ensure that fine varietal grapes would be almost as prolific as standard varieties, but at a much higher return per ton. A 1964 university cost study estimated that a head-pruned variety with a yield of four tons an acre, which was quite a reasonable output, would cost just under $80 a ton to grow, including depreciation and interest. In 1964, varietal grapes were selling at a minimum of $200 a ton, depending upon variety, and standard black grapes sold for between $115 and $130. There was a significant return on investment in both cases, but the logic of planting varietal wine grapes was clear.

In 1960, there were enough Napa growers interested in replanting their vineyards for the farm advisor to hold a series of five evening meetings to examine the issues involved in replanting. By 1964, he reported that "planting of grapes continue[s] to increase," with a "definite trend towards the planting of fine wine types" including Johannisberg Riesling, Pinot noir, Gamay Beaujolais, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chenin blanc (White Pinot), Gray (sic ) Riesling, and Gewórztraminer.^[79] The following year, he estimated that "there would be approximately 1,000 acres of premium grapes planted per year for the next five years," of which the "principal interest centers on Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Chardonnay."^[80]

The varietal boom was not confined to Napa County. Professor Emeritus Winkler conducted a survey of varietal acreage and plantings in the coastal counties in 1963 and concluded, "It is heartening to note how the plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot noir, and White Riesling are being extended in this area."^[81] According to Winkler's survey, the variety with the most nonbearing acreage, and thus new plantings, was French Colombard, with 597 acres. But right behind Colombard were Cabernet Sauvignon with 538 new acres, Pinot noir with 438, and Chardonnay with 406. The Napa agricultural commissioner was thus bowing to a trend when he gave an acreage breakdown by variety in his annual report in 1966, rather than lumping all grapes into two categories, black and white.

By 1967, the year table wine passed dessert wine in sales, the grape world was no longer "black and white." The scientific and technological changes of the 1950s had made possible many intermediate shades. A public relations campaign had introduced U.S. consumers to California

wine, educating them in the differences between regions and varietals. Consumer demand for fine varietal wines led to higher grape prices, which in turn spurred vineyard replanting to varietals. For both vineyard owners and wineries, the mid 1960s were a point of departure, a threshold. No one knew what lay on the other side, except that it seemed prosperous and different from the 1950s. Few had any idea just how different it would be.