Author: AffinityAdmin2

Wine bottled by vineyard owners in their own cellars has always been regarded as a guarantee of authenticity and often of wine quality, whether it is called mis en bouteille an domaine, as in France, Erzeugerabfüllung in Germany, or estate-bottled in the US.

This cachet of quality or assumed quality has lost a good bit of its value in California – the victim, according to some, of abuse of US regulations concerning the estate bottled name, while others believe the wine consumer isn’t really interested. In the US, the term estate bottled is defined as wine made from grapes grown in the winery vineyards or vineyards leased and controlled by the winery on a long-term basis. There was no requirement that the vineyards be contiguous to the winery, only that the winery and

the vineyards be in the same appellation.
The problem is in the interpretation of the phrase ‘leased and controlled’.

There are many cases where contracts are written between growers and winery owner with a clause asserting that the winery has ‘viticultural control’ of the vineyard, even when no lease, either short- or long-term, is involved. These clauses are called ‘paper control’, or ‘the Beaulieu clause’. The Beaulieu vineyard was, early on, a strong proponent of estate-bottled wines, but in later years, critics said that Beaulieu s actual control of the vineyards was minimal.

Marc Mondavi, of the Charles Krng winery, has been one of Beaulieu’s critics in the past. “I have serious questions about the definition of viticultural control when the actual winery isn’t farming the vineyard,’ he says. ‘I think in the past, Beaulieu has had contracts like that. I think the winery should at least lease the vineyard, if not own it, and have real viticultural control. We have vineyards in the Carneros region which we

could call estate bottled if we wanted to use the Napa appellation, and under US regulations, we can’t call them estate bottled since our winery is outside the Carneros appellation.’ At present Krug does not produce a wine which is labelled estate bottled, although according to Mondavi, most of the company’s wines could carry such a label.

Andy Beckstoffer owns Beckstoffer Vineyards, a farming operation that owns over 2,000 acres of vineyards in Napa and Mendocino county Beckstoffer was with Heublein at the Beaulieu winery when the estate bottled concept was first developed in California.
‘In the early days, we thought estate bottled was very important because what it meant was that the winery had complete control over the whole project. I think over the years the controls have been relaxed,’ he said. It can definitely be a paper control.’

Beckstoffer now sells grapes to Beaulieu, and says that the winery does have some viticultural controls. ‘They can come in and tell us how they want the grapes farmed. Ideally, what happens is that you work with people for years and years and develop a good working relationship in terms of doing the

same things with grapes year after year.’
Richard Walton, a wine industry veteran who was named president of Beaulieu in January of this year,

says the importance of the concept of estate bottled has lessened. ‘It is no longer the focus here, no longer the key factor it was in the past,’ he says. ‘The emphasis is going in a different direction – that is, towards the appellation of origin.’

Walton says that it wasn’t industry abuse of the term or customer confusion that was behind the thinking at Beaulieu, but a desire to use terms with which the consumer could emphasize, such as origin of appellation.

‘For example,’ he explains, ‘I think the Carneros people have done a tremendous promotional job of giving meaning to the Carneros appellation. That is something the consumer can relate to.’ Walton cautions that estate bottled was not a dead concept, although there are no plans at present for Beaulieu to produce an estate bottled wine.

Beringer Vineyards is another Napa winery that could use the term estate bottled, but doesn’t. Tor Kenward, a winery spokesperson, says that Beringer has come more to rely on vineyard designation: ‘I suppose in a lot of cases, we could add “estate bottled”, but there is only so much room on the label. To us, the vineyard designation means a lot. For some, estate bottled might be a useful marketing tool, however.’

Robert Steinhauer, the vineyard manager at Beringer, says even though Beringer didn’t use the term anymore, he would not want to give up the possibility of using it in the future. ‘Most of our vineyards we either own outright, or we have 30-year leases, which give us complete viticultural control,’ he explains. ‘We actually farm the land. That would he a case where estate bottled could rightfully be used.

‘I think the general feeling is that the term doesn’t have a great deal of meaning anymore,’ he continues. ‘I think it needs a better definition, it needs to be tightened up. I would personally like to narrow the definition. The vineyards should be under total control of the winery, not just a clause in the purchase contract. Also, I don’t believe that purchased fruit should ever qualify for estate bottled, no matter what the contract says.’

Beckstoffer agrees with Kenward’s point regarding vineyard designation.

‘I think that vineyard designation is what estate bottling used to be,’ he says. With vineyard designation, the consumer now has the guarantee that year after year, grapes are coming from the same vineyard to go into the bottle.’

Beckstoffer’s point was that the consumer would become familiar with the vineyard name and, over the years, come to depend on it.

‘You get that consistency over the years,’ he explains. ‘If you don’t like, say, Martha’s Vineyard wines now, you’re probably never going to like them.

‘1 think if we do the vineyard designation thing right, it will begin to mean something to the consumer,’ Beckstoffer continues. ‘And it should be a long-term
relationship in order to get vineyard designation on the bottle.’

Several of the wineries on California’s north coast use Beckstoffer Vineyards on their labels because of the company’s reputation for good viticultural practices. ‘That has always been our thing: the close association between our growing the grapes and somebody making the wine,’ stresses Beckstoffer. ‘That’s what’s important.’

Another sub-argument for the importance of the vineyard designation is the very sketchy requirements for establishing the US viticultural areas (VAs). The basic regulations sound good. The Bureau of

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) requires that those who want to establish a VA show some evidence of similar growing conditions and that the use of the name to describe the region has some historical basis, even though that basis need have nothing to do with wine grapes. In order to use a VA description, only two real requirements must be met:

•Eighty-five percent of the wine must originate within the named area.
•If the wine is a varietal wine, then 75% of the named varietal must come from the area.
That may well sound like double talk until you remember that a named varietal need only be 75% of

the wine in the bottle; in other words all the named varietal must come from within a VA. Obviously, anything else from anywhere else can be used.

There are no qualifying requirements regarding grape variety, level of production, method of growth, irrigation, or how the wine is made.

Whatever the original intent of the VA system, the BATF has tended to be inclusive rather than exclusive. American wineries use the system as a marketing
tool. Obviously, to be able to say your wine originated in ‘Napa Valley’ is a boost to your sales pitch.

Therefore, there is great pressure to stretch the boundaries to meaningless points. The Napa Valley VAs, for example, include the whole of Napa County, which takes in Pope Valley and Chiles Valley, two areas with river drainage systems and soils completely outside the Napa Valley itself.

In a real sense, the argument that the vineyard designation is the next step up from estate bottled and a meaningful alternative to VA does make sense. Both terms are geographical descriptions, but vineyard designated, according to Beckstoffer and others, implies that special care is taken. It is closer to being a guarantee of quality.

It would also solve another problem for California winemakers. Many vineyards in California are simply planted in the wrong place; whether or not they are estate vineyards is simply beside the point. If your winery is in a warm growing region and your estate vineyards are planted to Pinot Noir, then estate bottled doesn’t really mean much. Ah, but if you could bag a long-term lease on a cool-climate vineyard, and make your Pinot Noir from those grapes, then you might have something worth putting on the label.

Always, of course, provided that your winemaker didn’t screw up.

A former marathon runner who still runs 10Ks, W. Andrew Beckstoffer has the right read on the business of growing grapes for wine. He knows that, like the wine business it feeds, building assets works and that looking for return on investment doesn’t.

He also understands that farming, to hold off development interests, has to be run as a business. Unlike many old-time farmers, Andy Beckstoffer understands the purely business need for knowing and controlling costs. Why, then, has he so often been accused of ‘paying too much’ for so many parcels of ground?

“I’m convinced that survival, in this part of the country, is tied to the top, top tier of quality,”
he says with just a trace of native Virginia drawl. “Yes, people have said that we paid too much, but we’ve always bought the best property we could. And ten years after we ‘paid too much,’ we seem to have a ‘bargain’ on our hands!”

Beckstoffer is once again on a tear, buying up quality vineyard sites and applying the best science and technology to make them quality wine grape producers. After picking up Krug’s Cabral Ranch (196 acres in Carneros) in ’92, last year saw him add Louis Martini’s historic Las Amigas Ranch (138 acres, also Carneros) and Beaulieu Vineyard #4 (89 acres of Rutherford Bench, once part of Hamilton Walker Crabb’s famed To Kalon Vineyard).

“When I left Heublein in 1973 to form my own vineyard company, my goal was to have a thousand acres in Napa Valley and a thousand acres in Mendocino County,” says Beckstoffer, who went to Virginia Tech on a football scholarship. (He was a guard. Must have been a pulling guard.) He is now within 100 Mendocino acres of fulfilling that goal, which pleases him no end.

“I really enjoy this side of the business, and I take a lot of pride in being a farmer, being a grower of grapes for fine wine. But to do it well, you have to take advantage of the technology. The technology of business: knowing and controlling your costs. The technology of viticulture: being ahead of the curve on canopy management, clonal selection for complexity, knowing that phylloxera is yesterday’s problem and that fan leaf virus is tomorrow’s problem. The technology of marketing your product effectively, based on quality, based on having the right variety in the right location.”

Beckstoffer is especially excited about the Beaulieu #4 purchase (he acquired Beaulieu #3 five years ago). “It was a great opportunity,” he enthuses. “Where else could you find a vineyard with so much history to it? In the last century it was To Kalon, known both for its excellent wines and as an experimental station. In this century, it has been valued as one of the prime sources for the great Beaulieu Vineyard Cabernets. I don’t know of any other vineyard, save perhaps the Niebaum-Inglenook piece in front of the winery, that has the same pre- and post-prohibition history.”

Hamilton Walker Crabb, an Ohio native, came to the Napa Valley as the Civil War ended, purchasing a 240-acre tract on the northwest corner of Walnut Drive and Highway 29 in Rutherford in January 1868. Four years later he had a winery in full operation and eventually had over 350 acres planted to vines.

Crabb wore his hair short and sported a grizzled beard, and as a vintner was known for his Burgundy, made from “Crabb’ s Black Burgundy” grapes. Also known as Refosco, which hails from northern Italy. He called his vineyard To Kalon, which he said was the Greek for “the highest beauty” or “the highest good.” But he himself was quoted as saying, “I try to make it

mean the boss vineyard.”
But Crabb’s primary notoriety comes from having been the first true horticulturist involved in

Napa Valley wine. He is reported to have had more the 400 different varieties of grape under cultivation, and was always generous in sharing information as well as grape cultivars. He was also at the forefront of the research for developing rootstock resistant to phylloxera upon its first appearance in the New World.

As such, it was entirely appropriate that To Kalon’ s second owner, banker E. W. Churchill, deeded 15 acres for a Department of Agriculture research station in 1911 (today the U.C. Davis Experimental Station on Oakville Grade). Indeed, one of the reasons Beckstoffer is so pleased to have the site is for Beaulieu’s own clonal research plot for Cabernet, which was started in 1980.

Beckstoffer notes that Crabb owned To Kalon for 30 years, Churchill had it for a bit more than 40 years, and Beaulieu’s stewardship of their part extended to exactly 50 years (Mondavi’s Block Pisa sliver of the original To Kalon). So you might figure Beckstoffer to hold the parcel for 60 years! “Yeah, it’ll go into a trust for my kids,” he grins.

Though there are early indications of phylloxera at Beaulieu #4, Beckstoffer doesn’t anticipate the need to replant the majority for another five to ten years. (There is an open 12 acre parcel that will be planted this year.) “Our main immediate focus is on our Carneros holdings, which are older plantings that do need to be replanted.”

Beckstoffer, who says he anticipates expenditures of $20 million in vineyard development
over the next decade—How’s that for optimistic!? — is looking at replanting 300 acres at the Las Amigas and Cabral ranches. The largest part of those plantings (150 acres) will be to Merlot, with 100 acres of Chardonnay and 50 of Pinot noir.

“If you’re planting vines in Napa County, they ought to be red grapes,” asserts Beckstoffer. “Pinot noir can make a wonderful wine, but people still aren’t quite ready to pay for them. And, though some have criticized Carneros Merlot as being too harsh, I think Carneros can be perfect for the variety. It’s just cool enough that you extend the growing season long enough to achieve great flavor maturity.”

Beckstoffer is adamant that he will not fumigate his Carneros replants. “Nematodes are not a problem there, so there’s no good reason to be so heavy-handed on the earth. Yes, fumigation will kill some of the bad things, but it also kills too many of the good things that live in a healthy vineyard. Plus, it costs a lot to fumigate. We’ve deep ripped the land, and we put some cover crop in there to add some nutrients. We’ll plant dormant rootstock in 1995. We are convinced that planting a sound, healthy plant is far preferable to sterilizing the ground.”

He plans to work with five different rootstocks, none of which will be 5C. “We’ll focus on 101-14 as our primary rootstock, mainly because it pushes the earliest in the spring. We want the longest growing season for even flavor development. After that will be 3309, which viticultural consultant Lucie Morton says is the next earliest budding rootstock.

“We’re also looking to Lucie for a new, European process of cleaning up the scions. Heat- treating is just too heavy-handed a process. You seem to get vines that don’t produce fruit with any clear character. We’re also looking to plant a variety of clones, both in Cabernet and Chardonnay. I think that a good part of the complexity of those wines, by the year 2000, will come from blending that will happen in the vineyard through clonal diversity.”

Beckstoffer suggests that, as an independent grower—the largest in the North Coast—he might be held to a higher standard than a winery-owned viticulturist. “We have to have something different, something better to recommend our grapes. We have to have the best terroir, the best clones, the best trellising system. And that’s a wonderful challenge to meet.”

He obviously hasn’t been doing too badly at it. His more than two dozen clients include Beaulieu, Beringer, Simi, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Acacia, Rasmussen, Signorello, Newton, Fetzer and Kendall-Jackson. (A small amount of fruit is earmarked for Beckstoffer’ s own label, Fremont Creek.) “Simi gets all of its Chenin blanc from our Mendocino holdings, and Fetzer’s Barrel Select Chardonnay uses our fruit. As Mendocino fruit gets more recognition, it’ll be in the

running with Sonoma!”
Though his original degree was in engineering (“I wanted to build houses”), after an Army

stint in San Francisco he returned East to take a Master’s at Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business Administration. Recruited by Heublein, he became part of the team that investigated, then negotiated Heublein’s purchase of United Vintners (including Inglenook) and Beaulieu. He then slid into vineyard development, before opening his own company in 1973.

Having been in the business for more than a quarter century now, Beckstoffer doesn’t have much patience for the naysayers that always crop up when things get a touch tough. “Let’s remember 20 years ago, and 10 years ago, when the bottom fell out of the wine business and everybody was ready to quit,” he fires off. “In 1974 Cabernet prices dropped from $800 a ton to less than $400, and people were ready to write off vineyards and build tract houses. But how many of the great Napa Valley wineries were opened in the ’70s?

“Then again, in 1983, Cabernet and Chardonnay prices dropped 10% and the Cabernet crop was down 20%. And the Eutypa fungus was on its way here. Pull the vineyards, plant houses, everybody said. But don’t those days look pretty good right now?”

Beckstoffer’s message is quite clear: This, too, shall pass. Do your homework, be businesslike, and do a better job than the next guy and you’ll survive to tell tall tales. “The vineyard business is no longer high buckle boots and bib overalls,” counsel’s Beckstoffer, whose elegant office sits in a warm aerie on the third floor of a sturdy 1883 home that once stood on St. Helena’s Main Street, but was moved to Pope Street in 1954 amid pomp and circumstance. (“Oh yeah. They closed the schools, took down the telephone lines and set up lemonade stands along Main Street,” he laughs. “It must have taken them all day to do it.”)

Beckstoffer is convinced that it’s a whole new world for grape growers, especially those who pride themselves on producing distinctive grapes worthy of the “Reserve” designation. “Grape growers are no longer second-class citizens, and neither are farm workers third-class citizens. The quality that is demanded today is something that we never envisioned before, yet we are doing it by having a better understanding of what the wineries need to do their job at the highest level. If we deliver clean loads, on time, and communicate well with the winery personnel, we’ll have a vocation that we can be proud of and that will, with good business management, provide a good living for a long time.”

(Hinkle wrote the viticulture column for seven years for California-Arizona FARM PRESS and scripted the video “WINES OF A PLACE,” narrated by the late Raymond Burr. He also shared the Wine Literary Award with Dan Berger for their two BEYOND THE GRAPES books.)

Andy Beckstoffer is a Napa Valley grape grower on the move, and he has big ambitions. With his recent acquisition of the famed Beaulieu Vineyard No. 4, Beckstoffer has solidified his reputation as Napa’s newest land baron. The 54-year-old native Virginian now owns more than 1,000 acres of vineyard in the valley, which makes him its third largest grapegrower after Robert Mondavi Winery and Beaulieu’s parent company, Heublein.

Beckstoffer reportedly paid $3.9 million for the 89 acres that comprise BV No. 4, nearly $44,000 an acre. Grapes from that vineyard, which sits just across from Opus One on Highway 29 in Oakville, Calif., are used for BV Private Reserve. It was also part of the original To-Kalon Vineyard, and was first planted in 1859. Beaulieu purchased the vineyard in 1943. To-Kalon is now divided into two parcels; the other parcel belongs to Mondavi and is the source of its Reserve Cabernet.

“You can’t just own land here,” Beckstoffer explained. “You have to get into quality land.”

Beckstoffer has been doing just that since 1988. He bought Beaulieu Vineyard No. 3 that year, 250 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon, from Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance, which had bought it from Beaulieu years earlier. In 1992, Beckstoffer acquired Charles Krug’s

Cabral Ranch, 200 acres of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the Carneros District, for an estimated $3.8 million. And last year he purchased Louis Martini’s Las Amigas Vineyard, another 120 acres of Carneros Pinot and Chardonnay, for $2.5 million.

“Most of these kinds of properties never come on the market, or they come at a high price,” said Beckstoffer. “After we bought all that property in Carneros last year, I wasn’t even thinking about buying anything else. But when BV No. 4 came up, I had to do it.”

Beckstoffer will need to replant the BV vines due to infestation by the phylloxera root louse, which has killed thousands of acres of grapes in California. That replanting, to several clones of Cabernet Sauvignon, will begin in the fall.

Beckstoffer’s acquisition of the vineyard is part of a long relationship with Heublein. Beckstoffer came to Napa Valley in 1969 as a Heublein employee, and was part of the team that developed vineyards for Beaulieu and sister company Inglenook. He also ran a farm management company for Heublein, which he took over in 1973 after Heublein loaned him the money to buy it. In 1978, however, Beckstoffer had to return some of the vineyards he had acquired from BV as part of the deal to pay off the loan.

Beckstoffer was undeterred by the setback. “Every time we got a couple more nickels, we’d buy another vineyard,” he said. “Our strategy was that we’d always buy the best, even though we were always considered to he paying too much at the time.” Beckstoffer said he’s paid for his acquisitions solely through profits generated by his grape-growing business, which he owns outright. He also said he didn’t receive any preferential treatment when he bought BV No. 4.

Though the vineyard is located in Oakville, Beckstoffer has concentrated most of his purchases in the Rutherford and Carneros regions. His grapes have created some well-known wines, including Guenoc’s 1990 Beckstoffer Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and Warren Winiarski’s Beckstoffer Chardonnay at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars.

Beckstoffer’s philosophy for his prime vineyards, including BV No. 4, is to share the wealth. “Since Prohibition, that vineyard has only produced for two wineries and we’d like to see if we can spread that out a little bit.” Some of its grapes will still be sold to Beaulieu, but Beckstoffer is interested in selling more to smaller vintners such as Rasmussen and Signorello.

Beckstoffer has made some wines on his own, under the Fremont Creek label. However, with the exception of the 1986 vintage, the wines have only been of average quality. He said he has no interest in owning a winery.

“From a grower’s point of view, owning a winery and selling wine is not a logical extension of growing grapes,” said Beckstoffer. He said he learned a lot from producing Fremont Creek. “I found that I enjoy vintners much more than I enjoy distributors.”
-Robyn Bullard

With Sale of Historic Vineyard, BV President Looks to the Future

While Andy Beckstoffer is now in control of some of the prime acreage once owned by Beaulieu Vineyards, Beaulieu’s new president and general manager, Richard Walton, is claiming the
recent sale of the 89-acre BV No. 4 tract is actually good for the winery. BV No. 4 is one source for Beaulieu’s flagship Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.

“We expect to continue to receive the grapes from BV No. 4,” said Walton, 56,
although Beckstoffer said he’ll also sell to other wineries. “It is preferable for us to have a grape contract, as opposed to the capital investment of keeping up vineyards, especially with the phylloxera problem. We’re, better off investing that money into the winery, taking the money and putting it into things like new cooperage.”

Walton’s appointment in January follows the resignation of Anthony Bell, who had been with Beaulieu since 1979, and comes amid a prolonged restructuring of parent company Heublein’s assets in Napa Valley. Bell’s strength and contribution were mainly in the viticultural realm and running the winery’s day-to-day operations; Walton, a lawyer, has worked 22 years on the management and financial side of the wine business.

Since 1991, Heublein has concentrated more on brands than vineyards. It has sold the historic Christian Brothers Greystone wine cellars north of St. Helena and the production facility for both Inglenook and Christian Brothers. Late last year, Heublein purchased the fighting varietal Glen Ellen Winery brand for an estimated $40 million.

Still, Heublein remains Napa Valley’s largest vineyard owner, with more than 1,800 acres of grapes. According to spokesman Jack Shea, Heublein actually owns more acreage than it did five years ago and has bought vineyards over the past few years, including about 90 acres that surround the winery, as well as property in Carneros. Beaulieu has also completed an extensive renovation of its winery in Rutherford.

-Robyn Bullard

A 90 acre parcel of the historic To Kalon vineyards off Highway 29 by Oakville Cross Road has been bought by Andrew Beckstoffer, whose Napa Valley holdings now exceed 1000 acres and make him, according to the industry, the largest non-winery vineyard owner in the county.

Beckstoffer declined to say how much he paid Beaulieu Vineyard for the property.
“When we found that we could add this, we just made sure we did it,” he said at the property the other day. “It’s a jewel we just couldn’t pass up.'”
The parcel is part of the To Kalon vineyard started in the 1870s by Hamilton Crabb, a contemporary of the Beringer brothers, Charles Krug, Tibur cio Parrott, and Gustave Niebaum.
Press reports of the time. credit To-Kalon wines for star tling Europeans and bringing some of the first serious worldwide recognition of Napa grapes and wines.
Beckstoffer said he hopes to continue to supply Beaulieu. with grapes, but for- ward to selling somes to smaller wineries in the valley.
“Many of them have never had the opportunity to deal with fruit like this,” he said. “It will be interesting to see what sort of personal wines come out of it.”
Phylloxera is present in the vineyard, Beckstoffer said, and he expects to replant over the next ten years 100 percent to cabernet.
The historic parcel is on the west side of Highway 29 at Oakville, just south of Robert Mondavi.

Ensuring his place as third largest vineyard owner in the Napa Valley, St. Helena’s Andy Beckstoffer has purchased a renowned 89-acre vineyard that’s been a part of Beaulieu Vineyard’s holdings for half a century.

The owner of the family-owned Beckstoffer Vineyards reportedly paid $3.5 million for the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard known as “BV No. 4,” located just across High- way 29 from Opus One and the Oakville Grocery.

Beckstoffer said Friday the grapes from this vineyard will continue to go, in part, to Beau- lieu, for its Rutherford cabernet sauvignon and Georges de Latour private reserve cabernet sauvig- non.

Prior to Beaulieu’s purchase of the vineyardin 1943,BVNo.4was known as part of Hamilton Crabb’s acclaimed To-Kalon Vineyard.

Thrilled with the purchase of the property, Beckstoffer said, “I know of nof single vineyard which has made s’o significant a contri- bution to the Napa Valley both through the pre-Prohibition To- Kalon wines to the post-Prohibi- tion Beaulieu Vineyard caber- nets.”

The To-Kalonvineyard was first planted in 1859 by Hamilton W. Crabb, considered one of Califor- nia’s viticultural pioneers.

In the 1870s, Crabb replaced Agoston Haraszthy as the leading experimenter of grape varieties at his Oakvillenursery. In the 1880s, Crabb’s wines were ranked among the top in the Napa Valley, along with Inglenook, Charles Krug and Beringer.

Crabb held onto the vineyard for 40years. He told it to Edward S. Churchill in 1899, who in turn sold it Georges de Latour in 1943. Of his plans for the cabernet sauvignon grapes grown on BV No. 4, Beckstoffer said he’d also “like to get some smaller wine- makers a chance to buy some of this fruit as well.”
He said all but 12 acres are planted to cabernet. He expects to replant that section with new cabernet clones this coming spring.

It’s ironic that Beckstoffer is purchasing the vineyard from the firm he came to the valley to work for in 1969, Heublein. The Con- necticut-based Heublein owns both Beaulieu and Inglenook wi- nemaMng operations.

In fact, Beckstoffer formed a vineyard farming company for Heublein in 1970, a firm he wound up purchasing in 1973. For a time, Beckstoffer Vineyards was a vine- yard management firm. Now it concentrates on farming vine- yards the family company itself owns in both Napa Valley and Mendocino.

In 1992, Beckstoffer Vineyards sold grapes to 25wineriesinNapa, Mendocino, Sonoma and on the Peninsula.

While Beckstoffer declined to discuss the purchase price for BV

No. 4, he did say it was “not cheap.” Another source said Beckstoffer paid about $39,000 an acre for the prized vineyard.

“It’s a treasure,” the new owner admitted. “I’m pleased that a Napa Valley family got it rather than an outside investor. Proper- ty like this never comes up for sale except in difficult times.”

“This is a win/win situation for us,” said Heublein spokesman Jack Shea. “It’s a chance for us to continue to get grapes used in quality BV wines.. .(and) to get a fair price for the vineyard.”

Shea said Heublein did not put the property on the market be- cause it was having cash flow problems. He pointed out Heu- blein’s owner, Grand Metropoli- tan PLC, is experiencing in- creased sales and profits “despite an uneven improvement in the U.S. economy.

“BV is the crown jewel in our super-premium wine business,” Shea boasted.

Beckstoffer has been buying up prized vineyards for the past several years. Amonghis holdings are:

• Beaulieu’s vineyard N o . 3 , 250 acres of cabernet in Ruther- ford, purchased in 1988.

• Charles Krug’s Cabral vine- yard, 200 acres of pinot noir and chardonnay in the touted Carne- ros district, purchased in 1992.

• Louis M . Martini’s L a s Ami- gas vineyard, 120 acres of pinot and chardonnay in Carneros, purchased earlier this year.
The largest non-winery vine-yardist in the Napa Valley, Beck- stoffer ranks third in vineyard holdings here, after Robert Mon- davi and Heublein.

In addition to its Napa Valley holdings, the Beckstoffer family owns an additional 900 acres of vineyards in Mendocino county.

There is trouble in paradise in 1993. Crops are down, grape prices are falling, wine prices and winery profitability are sluggish, uncertain environmentalism and urbanization pressure continue…

But then again, the Napa Valley and our lifestyles here are as close to paradise as it gets in this life. Living in the outdoors in this beautiful place, working in your own vineyards and being part of a dynamic wine adventure is as much as we could ask. We have problems in the 1990s but they too will pass as they did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Can you remember 1974 when the per ton price of cabernet sauvignon dropped from $810 (1973) to $343? We hadn’t yet recovered from the spring frost of 1970 or 1972 or the harvest rain of 1972. Remember the Pierce’s Disease epidemic? People said the valley would be urbanized within ten years, so why fight it! Agriculture was on its
way out! Major double digit inflation was just beginning…

But do you know how many of the now great Napa valley wineries were first begun in the 1970s? There were quite a few!

Can you remember 1983 when the price of both cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay grapes dropped almost 10 percent as the cabernet crop decreased 20 percent? Remember the forecast of the effects of the Eutypa fungus or whatever it was? People said the valley would be urbanized within ten years, so why fight it! Agriculture was on its way out! Our country was just over a major economic recession…

But do you long for the glorious days of the 1980s wine business that followed? History is a great teacher! In the 1860s, Sonoma was the premier grape growing

county but it was hit with phylloxera first and hard. Napa took over the top spot with increased grape and wine quality and Napa Valley promotion. We have never relinquished that position. John Pachett and George Crane and others were the grape growers and Charles Krug and George Yount were the early winemakers and promoters. Superior grape quality and persistent Napa Valley winery and vineyard promotion got us here and it is the only thing that will keep us on top. Napa Valley quality and Napa Valley promotion! Out-of-county grapes and tourist or processing profits can’t be the primary focus. We must upgrade our grape quality and create national and international markets for our wine…not simply tourist trade.

Our 1993 mix of ills is different than in the past but no less or more serious. If you are of that mind, it is easy to breed “doom and gloom.” I am not! Our grapegrowers are stronger today. Our vineyards have tremendous potential. Our wineries have seen the light! We have just got to stick with it!

Our grapegrowers are stronger: the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association and

several growers on their own have worked hard, have become more knowledgeable in industry and community affairs and have been somewhat fearless and vocal in presenting their concerns for the agriculture community and its place and rights. In many agricultural communities there is an unspoken class system that deems the processor (vintner) first, the producer (grower) second, and the farmworker third. The social, economic and political status of the Napa grapegrower is much improved in 1993. It is now okay to be “just a grapegrower.” Our city and county governments now understand the part we play and the knowledge and experience we bring to Napa affairs. The vintners show increased interest and concern for the grower’s view. We have shown ourselves to be good businessmen, effective politicians and concerned citizens and the entire community has responded. The grapegrower community has truly become an important resource for the valley and the wine business and we are all stronger for it.

Our vineyards have tremendous potential: no one in the world seriously doubts that our valley and our vineyards are among the top five in the wine world. The vineyards are the family jewels. We growers and vintners are just passing through. The phylloxera infestation, while very serious, will not be fatal—as past epidemics have not been.
We still have away to go to dig out of this one, but overall the future is bright. Sustainable (organic) agriculture practices and new shade (canopy) management techniques offer the real, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for simultaneously improving the quality and quantity of winegrapes. Sustainable agriculture practices, not necessarily certified organic farming, can bring renewed life to our soils and our vineyards. Proper light intrusion through modern canopy management can bring increased quality and tonnage. The worldwide status of our entire wine effort has never been higher relative to the rest of the world’s producers. We have risen to those heights in major part on the back of new technologies in the vineyard and in the wineries. We are well into the next revolution of even greater wine quality that will come from the vineyards and we will be even stronger.

Our wineries have seen the light: there are more than 200 Napa county wineries and as a group they are the best in the world. They produce some of the finest wine in the world. They are the finest wine marketers in the world. The rule in many grape growing areas is that winery-owned vineyards are generally the most poorly maintained. There are many notable exceptions to that rule in Napa. There has been, however, too many non-Napa grapes coming into our valley. Further, in the past, not enough marketing emphasis has been given to the Napa Valley location of the vineyards. The Napa Winery Definition Ordinance of 1989 provides that winery expansions outside the existing “footprint” — and all new wineries —must crush at
least 75 percent Napa grapes. Frank Prial, noted wine writer for the New York Times, wrote at the time, “At the heart of the controversy is nothing less than the future of the Valley as the country’s most prestigious wine region.” He was right…but we passed the test.

In the 1970s and 1980s we needed rapid new winery development. In the 1990s we still welcome new wineries but, more importantly, we need greater emphasis on Napa Valley wines from Napa Valley grapes. Most wineries have joined the growers in this sentiment. Further, a major shift in wine marketing emphasis is occurring. The wineries have importantly increased their emphasis on the contribution of the grape and vineyard to the quality of the wine. History has shown that the more premium the wine, the more it is sold based on where the grapes are grown! The wineries are increasing their emphasis on Napa Valley grapes and vineyards now and our val

Half the wine-grape acreage in Napa County is owned by 25 wineries and growers, according to a survey by an industry newsletter.

The Wine Industry Insider said the concentration is the smallest since 1980. During the past 13 years, the publication said, about 40 companies controlled half of the valley’s acreage.

The Insider attributed the change to wineries expanding their plantings in order to control supply, grower partnerships widening their holdings and marginally profitable companies selling their vineyards.

Heublein owned the most vineyards, with 1,850 acres between its Beaulieu and Christian Brothers. Robert Mondavi followed with 1,400.

Independent grower Andy Beckstoffer followed as No. 3. He has collected 1,005 acres in total from just 350 acres in 1988.

Louis M. Martini dropped out of the top ranks due to the sale of two key vineyards to Beringer and Beckstoffer. In 1988, the winery was No. 8 among vineyard owners.

The Insider also pointed out that small vineyards continue to thrive in the area, however. It said about 65percent of the county’s vineyards are at most 40 acres in size.

Andy Beckstoffer, the courtly Virginian whose quiet purchases of prime vineyards has made him one of the Wine Country’s largest landholders, has done it again.

This time he’s bought the 89acre Beaulieu Vineyard No. 4, on Route 29 at Oakville, directly across from the Opus One winery and just south of the Robert Mondavi Winery. Because of its location along the highway where hundreds of thousands of tourists pass each year, the vineyard is probably one of the best known in the Napa. Valley,
It is famous for producing the famed Georges de Latour Caber nets for Beaulieu Vineyard.
Beckstoffer, who is vacationing in Hawaii, told The Examiner that some vines on the property have phylloxera, and that he plans to pull those vines out and replant over the next five to six years.
“Long range I have a lot of confidence in the grape industry,” he said. “Short range I don’t think anyone has ever made it in agriculture,”
Beckstoffer described phylloxera as the latest “bug of the month, saying experienced vineyardists now knew how to deal with it. He predicted that other problems would arise in growing grapes, but was generally optimistic that they too would be solved in time.
Beckstoffer’s recent purchases have made him one of the largest landholders in the grape country. In 1988 he bought 250 acres of Cabernet in the Rutherford Valley, also from Beaulieu, Next, in 1992, he purchased Charles Krug’s 200 acre Cabral vineyard, planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the Carneros District. He bought another 120 acres of Cameros land, the Las Amigas vineyard from Louis Martini earlier this year
In all, the Beckstoffer holdings now total more than 1,000 acres in the Napa Valley, and some 900 acres of grape land in Mendocino County
Beckstoffer said most of his acreage is of good quality while some is superior enough to be selected as of reserve quality, Grapes from the latter acreage are sold for vineyard-designated wines. One of
these wines, the 1990 Guenoc Win ery Beckstoffer Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, was selected in November by the Wine Spectator as one of the top 10 wines of the vintage.
Beckstoffer said the latest purchase was a result of a series of conversations with Hublein, the giant wine and spirits combine that has bought grapes from Beckstoffer for years.
Hublem and relations remained cordial
Beckstoffer said that although vineyard No. 4 was not formally for sale, he and Hublein executives A Virginia native who got his came to an understanding that his financial training at Dartmouth’s buying the vineyard fitted well with Beckstoffer came to the Napa Val-We are thrilled with this propcrack Tuck School of Business, both organizations objectives, ley in 1969 and at one time worked for Hublein. His farm management business had once cared for, among other properties, Beaulieu Vineyard No. 4. Since then, as he devel oped his extensive vineyard holdings, Beckstoffer has sold grapes to erty,” Beckstoffer said. “I know of no single vineyard that has made so significant a contribution to the Napa Valley.”
The vineyard was first planted in 1859 by Hamilton W. Crabb, a horticulturist who helped found the California wine industry. He called the place To-Kalon, and he used the property in his experiments with new grape varieties in California. In 1899, he sold the vineyard to Edward S. Churchill who kept it for 44 years.
bought the vineyard for Beaulieu
In 1943, Georges de Latour and now after 50 years the company has sold it to Beckstoffer.
In addition to his extensive vineyards, Beckstoffer has a win4ery, Fremont Creek, making wine, he says, “in a small way.”

A prime piece of Carneros real estate, planted to vines for well over two decades, has changed hands.

Developed by the Peter Mondavi family, owners of Charles Krug Winery, the former Cabral dairy pasture adjacent to San Pablo Bay has been purchased by Beckstoffer Vineyards for an undisclosed sum.

Andy Beckstoffer announced earlier in the week that his family-owned operation had purchased the 196-acre Cabral vineyard from the Charles Krug Winery.

“This purchase will make us a major player in the Carneros region and complement our substantial vineyard holdings in the Rutherford area,” Beckstoffer declared.

The Cabral purchase makes Beckstoffer the largest vineyard owner in the valley without a winery.

He says he was able to pick up the property because it needed to be replanted.

Charles Krug’s Marc Mondavi said that his family’s priorities at present are in replanting other holdings here. Mondavi said Krug has a number of older vineyards in need of replanting, replanting not prompted by phylloxera, he adds.

Save for 15 acres of chardonnay planted just a few years ago, the majority of the Cabral vineyard will be replanted to red varietals in the next year or two, Beckstoffer said. In addition to pinot noir, merlot and syrah are under consideration.

The vineyard is currently planted to chardonnay and pinot noir.

Fruit from this vineyard will continue to go to the Charles Krug Winery until the replanting occurs. Beckstoffer indicated he has had several inquiries from other winemaking ventures about future Cabral crops.

“I want to give credit to the Peter Mondavi family for selecting this site in 1970,” he added. “It has good soils and plenty of water. It’s right next door to Beaulieu vineyard number 5 – a property that Andre Tchelistcheff developed in the ’60s. It’s right on the Bay bordered by the railroad tracks and a state wildlife preserve.”

Beckstoffer said the existing vineyard is planted on St. George rootstock and has not been infected with phylloxera. “But the vines are old and just need to be replanted.

“We enjoyed working with Marc and Peter Mondavi. We are pleased to be doing business with one of the Napa Valley’s great families and particularly happy that this important vineyard stays in the hands of a Napa Valley family.”

Beckstoffer now owns a total of 700 acres of vineyard in Napa County, 450 of which are in the Rutherford area. Additionally, he owns 1,000 acres of vines in Mendocino County.

Only 5 percent of the grapes harvested from Beckstoffer’s vineyards are earmarked for the winemaking effort owned by his family, Fremont Creek. About 10,000 cases of cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc are produced at Heublein Fine Wines in St. Helena each year for Fremont Creek.
That leaves the bulk of the Beckstoffer fruit for 25 other winemaking operations in northern California. Beaulieu gets a substantial share of the Napa Valley fruit, while the Mendocino County grapes go to such operations are Simi, Fetzer and Kendall-Jackson, Beckstoffer said.

As Beckstoffer has acquired more and more vineyard property, his vineyard management business has been cut back.

Despite all the doom and gloom broadcast about the wine industry today, Beckstoffer believes “the current difficulties will pass.

“We continue to believe in and are committed to the long-term potential of premium North Coast wines which we feel will be substantial.

“I have great optimism and hope for our business. That’s why we wound up putting money where our mouth is.”

St. Helena, a couple of years ago, a Napa Valley winery owner was about to be seated at a table at the restaurant at Meadowood Country Club when she spied Andy Beckstoffer sitting at a nearby table. She shuddered and asked to be moved across the room. “I can’t sit near him,” she said, irritated.
Andy Beckstoffer is a grape and grower. And she is a winery owner. And never the twain, etc.
There always has been a dynamic tension between winery owners those who buy grapes grape growers those who sell them. But two years ago, Beckstoffer was considered by many winemakers to be the enemy.
He had proposed a county ordinance that 75 percent of all Napa Valley wineries’ output be made from Napa Valley-grown grapes.
To some wineries, this was a high-handed move intended to line the pockets of the growers. To the growers it was a move intended to protect the Napa Valley from being inundated with giant winery buildings that processed grapes grown in Mojave or Modesto.
Beckstoffer still is amused by the controversy that proposal generated. He points out that the Napa Valley still is an agricultural community and to keep it thaf way, residents must protect themselves from entrepreneurs who could build huge winemaking fa cilities.
In fact, said Beckstoffer at the time, his proposal should be accepted by all wineries because they would benefit. They could protect the image of Napa Valley wine by ensuring that a high percentage of top-quality grapes wound up in wine bottled here.
Mentioned during the controver sy was Sutter Home Winery, the world’s largest producer of white Zinfandel. It was making some 3 million cases of wine, little of it coming from Napa Valley grapes, but the winery and a huge satellite plant a couple of miles away were
here, using water and power and bringing in tourists.
The county eventually adopted the ordinance, but said that the 75 percent minimum applied only to future expansion; everyone exist ing at the time was grandfathered
in.
The controversy, which pitted the Mercedes-driving winery owners against the jeans-wearing, pickup-driving growers, was not the first or the last that Beck stoffer has been involved in, a fact he sort of likes.
Beckstoffer still has the drawl of his native Richmond, Va., but no one should underestimate him as a mere country boy. He’s one of the savviest businessmen around. The accent belies, for instance, the fact that he has a master’s in business
administration from Dartmouth
College.
“Just because you’re a grower doesn’t mean you can’t be a good businessman,” Beckstoffer said. “We’re not a high-button-shoes and-bib-overalls business any more. There are some bright people growing grapes.”
In an interview the other day in his office atop a converted Victorian home off Main Street, Beckstoffer explained why he decided about two years ago to become not
just a grower but a winemaker,
too.
“Developing the Fremont Creek. brand made sense in terms of our total business,” he said. “We are in the business of selling perishable fruit, and I needed another way to market that fruit.
“But also, as I spoke with wineries over the years, they told me of the trouble they had, troubles with marketing, and with regulation, and with taxation, and prohibitionists, and they encouraged me to see what it was like, from their point of view.
“They said, ‘We want you to understand the problems.’ So I did.” Beckstoffer said that his company’s emphasis on the Fremont Creek brand of wines is minimal. Little more than 20,000 cases a year are made (under contract at Mendocino Vineyards), and his 1,500 acres of prime vineyard land probably could produce a half million cases of wine. “We don’t make much money on Fremont Creek,” he said.
The line is reasonably priced, including a Chardonnay and Cabernet under $10 a bottle and a Sauvignon Blanc at $6.50. He said that the wines were made to be consumed young and aimed largely at wine-by-the-glass programs in restaurants, emphasizing fruit.
It is unusual for a full-time grower as large as Beckstoffer to become a winemaker so late in the game. He owns 500 acres in the Napa Valley and another 1,000 acres in Mendocino County, and all told he manages more than 3,500 acres of California vineyard land, about 2,000 of it under contract to others.
Beckstoffer just shakes his head when he mulls over the infighting that has split the industry so often.
“We’ve just got to be better businessmen and look past the petty bickering,” Beckstoffer said, point- ing to numerous proposals now on the drawing board that would sig nificantly raise taxes on all wine.
Incidentally, Beckstoffer isn’t disliked by many hereabouts any more. Now he’s seen as progressive and a defender of the soil. But there may be another political battle just around the bend.
“Wine watch” appears Wednes days in Food. Write to Dan Berger, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.

There is a prevailing notion in the wine industry — one held worldwide — that grape yield and wine quality are inversely related, i.e., when grape yield is increased above a certain ‘optimum’, quality begins to decline.

In France, legislation stipulates the exact tonnage of grapes and litres of wine allowed per hectare, based on variety and region.

The rationale behind this restriction on yield, which has existed for centuries, is based for the most part on commonly held opinion, rather than on documented evidence. It is thought that as a vine bears more fruit, the intensity of that fruit is diluted, varietal character is diminished, and wine character suffers.

The most common ways of increasing yield are:
1) leaving more buds on the vine at pruning;
2) fertilizing to correct nutrient deficiencies;
3) providing more water to the vine through irrigation; 4) changing pruning and trellis techniques.

These operations can affect a vine’s performance dramatically. One effect of each is to increase the vegetative capacity of the vine. This in turn can increase shade within the vine canopy and competition between fruit and vegetative growth, which may inhibit ripening.

Increased malic acid, potassium, and pH in grapes are also associated with shade, as are diminished color and Brix. Irrigation often increases berry size, which can have a negative effect on phenols and aromatic compounds. Many of these problems in grapes will be present in the resulting wines.2

A new attitude

Despite this evidence of an inverse yield/quality relation, there is a growing tendency within the wine industry to challenge the view that such viticultural practices of necessity decrease grape and wine quality.

Dr. Richard Smart of New Zealand suggests it is inadequate canopy management in high vigor vineyards that has led to increased shading.3 Smart recommends that where vigor-stimulating cultural practices are used, increased vigor should be matched to more appropriate trellis systems.

This approach suggests that what is most important to grape quality is the balance between vegetative growth and yield, not yield per se, and that such choices as rootstock and vine spacing are critical factors in this equation.

Andrew Beckstoffer, of Beckstoffer Vineyards, St. Helena, CA, believes that if vineyardists take advantage of current technology and ‘state of the art’ vine management techniques, small North Coast wineries, “need not look beyond the North Coast for growth potential. The grapes will be available to support growth, and the quality will be there as well.”

Beckstoffer, a Virginia native who came to Napa Valley in 1969 after earning degrees in engineering and business administration, is the north coast’s largest independent grape grower.
He owns over 1,500 acres and manages a total of 2,000 acres of prime vineyard acreage in Napa and Mendocino counties. In these vineyards, a variety of innovative viticultural practices have been implemented. For example, he was one of the first growers in California to install drip irrigation, close spacing, trellis experimentation, night hand harvesting, and the matching of
variety to site through soil and climate analysis. These techniques, Beckstoffer firmly believes,
can enable the grape grower to significantly increase yields while maintaining or enhancing
quality standards.

Beckstoffer’s grapes are sold to a large group of California wineries, including Acacia, Beaulieu, Beringer, Cakebread, Clos du Val, Domaine, Carneros, Fetzer, Guenoc, Parducci,

Raymond, Stonegate, Schug Cellars, Simi, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and Viansa.

Big numbers, high quality

In 1989, there were 31,781 acres planted to vines in Napa County — 29,243 bearing and 2,538 non-bearing.4 This acreage yielded a total of about 100,000 tons of grapes.

In recent years, much has been written about the scarcity of vineyard land in Napa Valley. The Napa Valley floor is probably planted to maximum capacity, and though there may be some additional plantable acres in the hills, these areas will be expensive to farm and generally low- yielding.

Does this mean grapes will have to be ‘imported’ from other winegrowing regions to support the current and future demands of Napa wineries? No, says Beckstoffer.

“Everything we’re learning about vineyard and canopy management should enable us to mature more fruit per land acre,” Beckstoffer contends. ‘With better management practices, we should be able to increase yields 50% with only a 10% increase in land use.

“Almost 32,000 acres now produce about 100,000 tons. We can probably increase to 35,000 acres (most remaining plantable land is in the Carneros district) while boosting our yield to 150,000 tons.

Beckstoffer predicts a similar growth potential for Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties, which if realized, would increase grape production in those areas by approximately 210,000 tons.

Beckstoffer’s projections are based on his grapegrowing experience between 1984 and 1987, when yields in his vineyards were 50% higher than Napa County averages. The largest increases were for Sauvignon blanc, Riesling, and Zinfandel. There were smaller increases with Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot noir, and Chardonnay.

What are the keys to increasing yield while maintaining or improving grape and wine quality?

The ABCs of ‘more and better’

“For me, farming is really quite simple” Beckstoffer says. “It’s about light, heat, and air. Then there is the plant, soil and water. But it’s very important to do the right things from the very beginning.

“First, we match the variety with the soil and the climate. This is one of the most important decisions; it directly affects yield and the ability to properly mature the fruit.

“Also, you must use absolutely clean stock — that is a given. Virus-infected stock can cause delayed grape maturity, poor color, and poor yields.5

“The correct scion/rootstock match is important. The rootstock itself affects vine performance. Most of our vineyards are on AXR-1. We used to think it was phylloxera-resistant. Now it appears that it isn’t — or at least not to a new type of phylloxera. We are experimenting with other rootstocks that show better resistance.

“We devote a lot of time to soil preparation. Ripping is important for good root development. Tile will be laid in areas where drainage is a problem. Soil amendments such as lime are added to improve soil structure. Deep soil preparation encourages a large root system and provides a better soil reservoir for storage of winter rains.”

In Beckstoffer vineyards, vine spacing, trellis system, and irrigation management are a function of site. “In 1970, we wanted to put in a vineyard spaced 6’xlO’,” Beckstoffer recalls. “I talked to A.J. Winkler [co-author of General Viticulture and former UC Davis professor] who recommended 12-foot spacing for North Coast vineyards.

“He didn’t think we could get enough plant material for closer spacing — there wasn’t much available back then — and said we’d never be able to get our equipment through. Finally he said to go ahead — he wanted to see what would happen.”

Many European viticulturists have long held the opinion that it is detrimental to grape quality to decrease planting density — as has been common practice in California since Winkler’s work — because this requires increasing the vigor of the less numerous vines to generate yield sufficient to realize a profit.
“We’d rather be too close,” Beckstoffer agrees. “We can always deal with it by pruning or

trellising modifications. The right spacing is very important to increasing yields. We have vines planted 6×10, 8×10, and 7×11. Some Sauvignon blanc on a Geneva Double Curtain trellis with 48-inch crossarms is planted 8×11.

“We have both sprinkler and drip irrigation systems. Everyone used to say irrigation was bad, that it hurt quality. Now we know we need it, that many vineyards can’t be farmed without it.

“There is one Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard that is practically on a rock bed. [Beckstoffer Vineyard #4, 20 acres of 20-year-old vines in the hills west of St. Helena.] We irrigate sparingly right up until two weeks before harvest. If we didn’t, those vines would fold up.

“I believe we put in one of the first drip systems in Napa County — in the Carneros in 1971 — when I was associated with Heublein and Beaulieu Vineyards. Drip is better for the vines, and proper balance is easier to achieve. Sprinklers, of course, are necessary in frost sensitive areas.” The choice of a trellis system depends on soil, climate, grape variety, and spacing decisions. “The old view was that more leaves and less fruit was better,” recalls Beckstoffer. “Leaves were thought to be little photosynthetic factories, and you needed lots of them. Also sunlight was thought to be bad for the fruit.

“Now we feel that balance is the key. We weren’t leaving enough vine above the ground — not enough wood — and we were leaving too many leaves. Now we want less leaves and more fruit. We want sunlight on the fruiting buds and on the clusters. This will lead to bigger yields and
better quality.”

Nelson Shaulis was one of the first researchers to show the importance of adequate light to bud burst and bud fruitfulness. His work led to the development of divided canopy trellis systems, beginning with the Geneva Double Curtain.8 This work, although now over 20 years old, has only recently begun to be put to practical advantage in California vineyards.

Most of Beckstoffer’s vineyards are cordon-pruned. This controls the fruit better and also minimizes labor costs. Vertical shoot positioning and leaf removal are also employed. Several of Beckstoffer’s vineyards are in various stages of conversion to more upright trellising systems.

Beckstoffer acknowledges that vertical training is not the ‘be all and end all’ of canopy management. “There is no perfect system,” he insists. “We are still experimenting. We know the basics — the need to get light, heat and air into the vine. Now we need to find the best way to do it, given the soil conditions and the varieties.”

Beckstoffer doesn’t believe that there is an absolute ‘optimum’ yield for a given variety. What is considered a desirable yield for a variety in a particular site will always be relative to the soil and the trellis system employed.

For example, in the Napa vineyards where Beckstoffer grows Sauvignon blanc, average yields between 1984 and 1987 were eight tons/acre, compared to a county average of 4.5 tons/acre.

“Seven years ago, with Sauvignon blanc, we went into the vineyard twice — to prune and to pick. Today, we prune, we shoot-thin, we cluster-thin, we pick basal leaves to reduce herbaceousness, and then we harvest. We’re doing it to improve wine quality, but at the same time these practices enable us to hang more fruit of higher quality on the vine.”

Theory in action

Beckstoffer’s vineyard holdings are distributed among 16 parcels in Napa and Mendocino counties and include eight vinifera varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Chenin blanc, Camay Beaujolais, Gewurztraminer, Pinot noir, Sauvignon blanc and Zinfandel.

John Crossland manages the Napa vineyards, which comprise 1,010 acres. Included in this acreage are two vineyards from which Schug Cellars and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars make Beckstoffer Vineyard-designated wines.

Crossland says, “Before planting, extensive soil analysis is done: soil structure, depth, fertility, drainage, and available water sources are all evaluated.”

Normally, the land is ripped before planting or redevelopment. Either straight shank or slip plow is used the latter mixes the existing soil strata and allows for better root and water penetration. Ripping is to five feet in the most restrictive situations, otherwise to at least 3.5 feet. Measurements of soil moisture indicate to Crossland the depth of root activity.

Bench grafts are preferred over field grafting. Beckstoffer Vineyards has had a cooperative rootstock trial with the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and UC Davis for ten years. AXR-1 is no longer used because of the current concern over phylloxera and fan leaf virus.

Experiments are being conducted with UCD 03916 and 04343. These look promising for both phylloxera and nematode resistance. Crossland disdains the so-called devigorating rootstocks, such as S04, that other Napa grapegrowers believe may enhance grape quality by restricting yields in the fertile valley floor soils. “They all grow like hell here,” Crossland maintains.

In most of the Beckstoffer Carneros vineyards, there are inadequate water resources to support both vines and a cover crop. “We’ve seen extreme drops in grape production due to competition,” says Crossland. “On hillside sites in Napa Valley, we either mow the natural vegetation or plant mixes with the advice of the Soil Conservation Service.”

Irrigation is provided to the vines early in the growing season to encourage initial growth and fruit set. In most sites, water is limited during the middle and latter stages of the season to insure fruit ripening.

Soil moisture is monitored by neutron probe or gypsum blocks, but Crossland has found that the best indication of soil moisture status often is achieved with a shovel or soil auger. “None of
these technological innovations precludes the necessity to be out there in the vineyard,” Crossland observes.

Morgan Ruddick is manager of Beckstoffer Vineyards’ 1,100 acres in Mendocino County. The primary customers for these grapes are Fetzer, Simi, Parducci, and Beringer along with several small wineries.

Ruddick has a management team of three people: one focuses on personnel, another on equipment and a third on chemical use and viticultural methods. Ruddick’s vineyard management philosophy echoes Crossland’s: “Spend a lot
of time in the vineyard.”

Ruddick’s experience has led him to some conclusions about the matching of variety with soil type and spacing configuration. “We’ve found that Chardonnay does well on deep loamy soil, and Cabernet Sauvignon and some of the other red varieties do best on gravelly soils. In general, our plantings have been along these lines.

“Most of our vineyards are spaced narrower than is common. We feel it improves the quality of the fruit. Also, some soils just won’t support the big vines you need on wider spacing. We have no problem getting equipment through — you can use a 50-inch wide tractor with plenty of horsepower.

In the vineyards Ruddick manages, most varieties are cordon-trained, although he is experimenting with cane pruning for Gewurztraminer and Sauvignon blanc to improve yields. Shoot positioning in the Mendocino vineyards is done in late May when the shoots are long

enough to be picked up with the catch wires. Leaf removal is done in early June and July, particularly on Sauvignon blanc and Chardonnay, to reduce the susceptibility of the young grape clusters to botrytis and also to minimize the use of chemicals. Some cluster thinning is done on Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer to encourage full maturation of the remaining clusters.

Working together for quality

Besides advances primarily attributable to technological developments, Beckstoffer, Crossland, and Ruddick all cite increased communication between growers and winemakers as a critical factor in improved grape and wine quality.

Winemakers purchasing Beckstoffer grapes have an open invitation to visit the vineyards. Both

Crossland and Ruddick have small laboratories where field samples are analyzed for Brix, pH and TA as harvest approaches. Many wineries also have their own personnel to monitor the fruit.

“The wineries have become much more quality conscious,” asserts Crossland. Ruddick agrees, “They are much more careful in choosing harvest dates now, they’re interested in true maturity. The traditional 22° Brix doesn’t mean much anymore.”

Crossland regularly tastes the wines made from the vineyards he manages, and he and the winemakers discuss how to achieve desired fruit characteristics.

“For example,” says Crossland, “we are doing three levels of de-leafing on Sauvignon blanc to achieve three different levels of vegetative character for the wineries. Some of them like grassiness in their Sauvignon blanc and want the lowest level of de-leafing. Some wineries don’t want any grassy character at all.”

“We are concentrating on several things now,” says Beckstoffer. “We have proved we can increase yields while maintaining quality. Now we want to find ways to enhance quality.

“We are looking for ways to increase the mechanization of our vineyard operations. We are becoming more sensitive to environmental concerns. And we are coordinating things much more closely with the wineries.

“The next revolution will come in the winery. There is actually more control there than we have in the vineyard — they have more opportunity to affect quality.

“This is the best industry to be a part of in California. The people eat well, drink well and tell good stories. And they really care what you’re doing. I always thought that the worst thing you could do was to be off in a corner somewhere with no one caring what you were doing. That doesn’t happen here. People really care.”

References
1. Smart, Richard. “Manipulation of Grapevine Canopy Microclimate with Implications for Yield and Quality”,

Journal of Amer. Society of Enology & Viticulture, 1985.
2. Taines, Carole H. “The Influence of Drip Irrigation, Trellis System and row Spacing on Fruit and Wine

Composition of Cabernet Sauvignon Grapevines”. Masters thesis 1987.
3. Smart, Richard. “Manipulation of Wine Quality Within the Vineyard”. Australian Society of Viticulture and

Oenology Proceedings, 1981.
4. Napa County Agricultural Crop Report, 1988.
5. Alley, C.J. et al. “The Effect of Virus Infections on Vines, Fruit and wines of Ruby Cabernet”. Journal of Amer.

Society of Enology & Viticulture, 1963.
6. Van Zyl, J.L. and H.W. Weber. “The Effect of Various Supplementary Irrigation Treatments on Plant and Soil

Moisture Relationships in a Vineyard.” S. Afr. Journal of Enology & Viticulture, 1961.
7. Winkler, A.J., “The Effect of Vine Spacing at Oakville on Yields, Fruit Composition and Wine Quality.” Journal

of Amer. Society Enology & Viticulture, 1961.
8. Shaulis, N.J., P. May. “Response of Sultana Vines to Training on a Divided Canopy and to Shoot Crowding.”

Journal of Amer. Society of Enology & Viticulture, 1971.
9. Champagnol, F. “Physiological State of the Vine and Quality of the Harvest.” International Symposium on the

Quality of the Vintage. Cape Town, S. Africa, 1977.

ST. HELENA – Andrew Beckstoffer, Northern California’s biggest independent wine grape grower, announced on Wednesday his purchase of one of Napa Valley’s most famous vineyards, part of a Mexican land grant more than 150 years ago.

Beckstoffer, who owns Fremont Creek wines and owns and controls some 2,000 first-rate vineyard acreage in Napa and Mendocino counties, said he bought the 225-acre vineyard known as “Beaulieu Vineyard No. 3” from Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co.

The vineyard is in one of the valley’s recognized top sites for Bordeaux varieties, which include cabernet sauvignon and merlot.

The price was not given, but producing vineyards in the neighborhood – between the Silverado Trail and Highway 29 in the heart of the Napa Valley’s acclaimed Rutherford district – are valued these days at an average $50,000 an acre.

“This is one of the vineyards that has been supplying the backbone of BV cabernets for the past 50 years,” Beckstoffer said today. “It’s some of the land that built the reputation of Rutherford and the Napa Valley.”

Beckstoffer said grapes harvested at the site – bounded on the west by Conn Creek Road, on the east by Silverado Trail, on the north by Caymus Vineyards and on the south by Skellenger Lane – will continue to go to Beaulieu, as well as to his own smaller winery, Fremont Creek.

“This does not cut off BV by any means,” he added. “With the planting of new cabernet sauvignon clones and some new merlot and cabernet franc vines – all planted to tighter spacing – the vintner/grower expects tonnage to increase. “There’ll be more for everybody,” he added.

Founder of Beaulieu Vineyards, Georges de Latour, purchased the five parcels that make up the 225- acre vineyard in the early ‘30s from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco.

Then planted to cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and aligote – a productive white wine grape of secondary quality – the resulting wines made by the legendary Andre Tchelistcheff proved beyond a doubt that this region was one of the world’s best sites for Bordeaux varieties.

Beckstoffer’s involvement with the vineyard began in 1969 when, as a Heublein vice president in charge of grape acquisitions, he negotiated its purchase. Beckstoffer then founded a Heublein subsidiary, Vinifera Development Corporation, to farm their vineyards.

Later, when Heublein began selling vineyard holdings, Beckstoffer negotiated a leveraged buyout, completed in 1978. Meanwhile, Beaulieu Vineyard No. 3 was sold to Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance and continued to be farmed by Beckstoffer’s company.

Late last year, when Connecticut Mutual decided to liquidate its farm assets, he was first in line.

Noting the purchase is ”a grower’s dream,” Beckstoffer revealed that BV did have right of first refusal to purchase the 225-acre site. “They decided not to buy it,” he added.

A spokesman for the Heublein Fine Wine Group – of which Beaulieu is part – said today he had no information on that decision.

Combined with another parcel owned by Beckstoffer, the 250-acre site will be known as “Beckstoffer II.”

Twenty years ago the county adopted the Agricultural Preserve Zoning Ordinance. The minimum parcel allowed in the AP Zone was 20 acres. In 1979, that minimum was increased to 40 acres. We had to walk before we ran.
The Draft Winery Definition Ordinance (DWDO) again suggests that we walk… albeit at a trot…. and watch and listen to its effect to see if and where we will need to run in the future. While providing useful information and comment, the EIR underestimates major positive impacts while it’s Environmentally Superior Alternative provides misinformed “textbook” suggestions which would have us overzealously run into the future without considering the delicate balances that keep our wine business viable while protecting Napa’s agriculture and environment.
Currently, a facility can be built in the Ag Preserve to produce wines from only non-Napa grapes. How does this protect our agriculture? The DWDO requires that new wineries and winery expansions use a minimum of 75 percent Napa County grapes for the new capacity. This is a major. new protection for our agriculture and our environment. The EIR says it will have no major impact.
Currently, any winery can apply for a public tours and tasting permit with the resulting traffic increases. The DWDO prohibits public tours and tastings at all new wineries… a major step in the right direction. The EIR says the effect would be minimal.
These two provisions, as well as the full language of the DWDO, usher a new environmental Age of Restraint into the Napa County wine business. It may seem remarkable that the industry itself made the suggestion but everyone should know that the committee that drafted the ordinance represented not only Napa’s major grower and vintner organizations but also over 100 man-years of living and working in Napa.
The DWDO restricts new wineries to legal parcels of at least 10 acres. Currently wineries are allowed on any legal parcel no matter how small. This 10-acre minimum would allow the further reasonable development of small estate wineries…a major contributor to Napa’s ultra premium wine image… while increasing environmental protections. The EIR suggests 40- acre minimums for winerles but not for other legal buldings in the Ag Preserve.
We should allow wineries on 10- acre parcels throughout the Ag Preserve and restrict all building to
40 acres in the area to be covered. by a 1990 Scenic Highway Ordinance.
The EIR suggests that we allow the marketing of wine but disallow existing “non-agricultural” uses such as public tours and tastings. Is allowing a patron to taste a slice of apple at a local farmer’s fruit stand and walk in the orchard marketing or a non-agricultural use? Is that different from wine tours and tasting?
The DWDO eliminates new public tours and tastings not because they are non-agricultural uses, but because they increase the traffic problems. It is not fair, however, to disallow existing legal and permitted marketing efforts by those who built our industry and preserve our agriculture.
Two years ago they said it couldn’t be done. Now the grower and vintner citizens of Napa have agreed to a delicate compromise DWDO which provides proper checks and balances and protects our agriculture
The consulting EIR experts provided useful information and a required review but their analysis and suggested responses miss the mark. County officials can now consider all the data and opinions as well as their source but they must act quickly or the Winery Moratorium will expire and their 1990 agenda and another portion of our agriculture will be lost in the chaos that results.
(Andrew Beckstoffer is a major Napa grapegrower and vineyard owner and a member of the committee that drafted the DWDO. He is a founding director of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Asso- ciation, a former Napa County Planning Commissioner, member of the Justin- Siena Board of Trustees and director of the Production Credit Association (PCA). He is a member of the Carneros Quality Alliance.)

Improve the winery ordinance

By FRANCINE DAVIS
You have to see this winery ordinance in the context of a long view.
Look at the increased pressures for growth from the Bay Area. Our neighboring counties and the State of California are taking belated steps to preserve agricultural land, but this will not help living conditions for the 97 percent of the population concentrated in urban areas. Tourists who pour into the valley on day trips from the Bay Area do come not only because they want to taste and buy wine, but also because they are hungry for the environment here: the acres of growing vineyards, the unspoiled hills, relatively clean air and less traffic than at home.
The remaining rural character of this county has been preserved by two things: the General Plan and the reinforcement of the Voters’ Slow Growth Initiative, Measure A. For over 20 years the intent of Napa County’s General Plan has been “to preserve agriculture and
concentrate urban uses in existing urban areas.” And for over 20 years, many of us supervisors, businesses, developers, and vintners and growers as well – have tried to have our cake and eat It too by allowing exceptions to the Plan.
In the past decade, there has been growing congestion in certain critical areas such as the Highway 29 corridor, and new urban areas have been recognized or expanded. There has been a growing public perception that, “This is not what I thought an agricultural preserve. would be like. The wine industry itself is partly responsible for the problems.
Three years ago, the county asked the industry to help draft a definition of a winery that would prevent non-agricultural abuses of agricultural lands, and the Winery Definition Ordinance is the result. The Environmental Impact Report on the ordinance concludes that the ordinance is necessary, but that it doesn’t go far enough. Without the suggested mitigations, the ordinance will not prevent significant adverse effects of industry growth projected by the year 2010.

What sense does it make to have the ordinance if we don’t take the key mitigations recommended by the consultant seriously? Granted that we need a healthy wine industry to keep agricultural land viable, the public is increasingly aware that non-agricultural uses on that land threaten its preservation. If the voters still want to preserve the rural character of this county, they will insist on the key mitigations recommended in the EIR, bringing the ordinance. into compliance with the General Plan.
Essential mitigations include: Require all wineries to have use permits.
Rigorously define and regulate all non-agricultural uses.
Eliminate the 18-month grandfathering period for existing wineries. It will result in a flood of applications for the kinds of non- agricultural uses the ordinance professes to regulate.

Some people would make the ordinance even weaker. Last Tuesday, Mr. Joseph Peatman, a local attorney representing four large wineries, proposed to the Board of Supervisors his own modified ordinance, which further eases restrictions on non- agricultural uses and gives wineries uses they don’t even have at present.

The lawyers and the industry have spoken. Now it’s the public’s. turn.

We’ve seen 20 years of compromise, of efforts to bypass or chip away at a plan that protects against urban sprawl. This is our chance to take the Environmentally Superior Alternative, and support that plan’s intent.

(Francine Davis is land use chairman of United Napa Valley Associates, a countywide organization dedicated to sound land-use planning. She co-pro duces the UNVA Newsletter, and has been a close observer of county politics for several years. A journalist and. teacher with a Ph.D. from U.C.LA., she and her husband, George, have lived on their ranch near Calistoga for 11 years.)

Paris, October 14, 1988. Black-tied Robert Mondavi, founder of Napa Valley’s Mondavi Winery, and his wife, Margrit, are greeted by photographers as they step from their limousine at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The occasion is a gala seventieth-birthday concert for conductor Leonard Bernstein, a benefit for Paris’s American Center. It is a celebration for Mondavi, too. Tonight, his $50-a- bottle cabernet, Opus One—the product of a historic joint venture between Mondavi and the late Baron Philippe de Rothschild—makes its French debut. Earlier that week, the wine had been introduced to the wine community and press at a dinner in the cellar at Mouton- Rothschild. Now society turns out to applaud. It seems that not just le tout Paris but le tout Napa Valley is here to celebrate. Emerging from accompanying limos are Mondavi’s sons, Tim and Michael, and their wives. Inside, the Mondavis wave to Napa friends Erica and Austin Hills of Grgich Hills, vineyardist Michael Marston and his wife, Sande, and Newton

Vineyard’s Peter Newton with his daughter, over from London. Crossing paths in Paris is almost routine for the globe-girdling Napa wine people. After the concert, they all move on to a supper for Bernstein at the Hotel Plaza Athène where, with the filets de loup and noisettes d’agneau, only Mondavi wines are served.

London, October 18 Mondavi is in black tie again, in the members’ dining room of the House of Commons. This time the occasion is the International Wine and Spirits Competition; Mondavi is presenting the Robert Mondavi Award for Winemaker of the Year. He shares the head table with Warren Winiarski, the Napa Valley vintner whose Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars cabernet beat Mouton Rothschild in the now-legendary 1976 Bicentennial tasting in Paris. Just back from an expedition to Pakistan in search of primordial grapevines, Winiarski is receiving the Harry Waugh Trophy for his ambitious 1986 Reserve chardonnay. Thousands of miles from their little valley, the two winemakers savor the moment of triumph: in less than two decades, they have helped create wines that rank, as Mondavi had dreamed, “in the company of the finest in the world.”

Napa, October 26 Mondavi and Winiarski have returned from Europe to a valley in tumult.

Two weeks before the general election, Mondavi is part of an extraordinary political meeting at the Clarion Inn. More than 600 winery workers from the valley’s 200 wineries—secretaries, cellar rats, viticulturalists, tour guides, winemakers and winery owners—overflow the chairs; Mondavi finds himself sitting cross-legged on the floor. There are balloons, hot dogs and a Dixieland band.

But the mood is hostile, not festive. The winemakers are bitterly divided over the positions of Board of Supervisors candidates seated on the podium. Two of the candidates, John Mikolajcik and Fred Negri, are running on platforms that would permit virtually untrammeled growth and development for the wineries. The other two, Kathleen McCullough and Jay Goetting, are moderates and slow- growthers.

What makes the meeting unprecedented is that the Napa Valley Vintners—the powerful body of winery owners that dominates the valley’s economy and culture—have broken with their tradition of political neutrality and endorsed the pro-growth candidates. This would be shocking in itself; adding insult to injury—at least according to some members of the Clarion Inn crowd—is that the endorsement has been made without approval of the Vintners’ board. (The Vintners’ president, Reverdy Johnson of Turnbull-Johnson Winery claims his mandate to recommend candidates did not require board approval.) In choosing Mikolajcik and Negri, Johnson had applied only one criterion: support for the laissez-faire policies proposed in a Vintners’ position paper on winery freedoms and restraints. This had alienated fellow winemakers such as Winiarski, Jay Corley of Monticello Winery and Michael Martini of Louis Martini Winery. “My worry is that this is pretty short-range thinking,” Martini told the Napa Register. “I know this is not unanimous.”

In fact, the reaction is so urgent and immediate that Johnson changed the agenda from an endorsement of Mikolajcik and Negri to an open forum for the four candidates. But the damage has been done. As the meeting makes clear, Napa Valley is caught in a crisis of its own success, in which the issues—freedom versus restraint, quality versus quantity, production versus marketing, elitism versus egalitarianism—are as complex and subtle as any of the valley’s premium vintages. But unlike the famous wine, this spirit is bitter and fractious. This time, the fertile valley is harvesting a civil war, a war whose outcome will determine the future of the world’s premier winegrowing region.

With 31,000 acres planted to grapes, the Napa Valley ranks only fifth among California’s winegrowing counties. (The Central Valley, where E&J Gallo headquarters its gigantic operation, is the statistical leader.) But in terms of quality—premium varietal wines named for grapes such as Cabernet and Chardonnay—Napa Valley’s stature far outstrips its size. Situated 50 miles north of San Francisco in the northern half of Napa County, the 30-mile-long valley is a lush and gentle Eden that has attracted not only such huge corporations as Seagram’s and Nestle, which are buying large wineries, but small wineries founded by families lured by the satisfactions of rural life. The valley is also a magnet for the Bay Area’s social trendsetters, who have taken to spending their weekends and celebrating their significant life events in its green and golden landscape.

Forty-five years ago, when the original Napa Valley Vintners formed the fellowship, neither civil war nor international acclaim would have seemed imaginable. Competitors united by their love of the land and of the good life that winemaking represented, the Vintners met in the little red schoolhouse on Lodi Lane in St. Helena for friendly monthly lunches where they traded advice, equipment and stories. Gradually, as their fame and numbers swelled, they outgrew the schoolhouse. In 1983 they moved their meetings to St. Helena’s stylish Meadowood Country Club and Resort, where the casual get-togethers were replaced by formal meetings in the plush auditorium, followed by catered meals in the Vintners Room overlooking the golf course. More and more often, the winery owners themselves could not even attend in person, so busy were they with travels in the global marketplace. The valley’s success meant profits, but it also brought division.

The first battles were fought in 1968, over the creation of the nation’s first Agricultural Preserve. The accord established a 40-acre zoning minimum, embedded in the county’s General Plan, to protect the ag land on the valley floor from subdivision. But the arrangement was tenuous and reversible, no more secure than next Tuesday’s vote of the Board of Supervisors.

The late sixties also saw the rise of the “boutique” wineries and the beginnings of Napa Valley chic. By 1978 there were 60 wineries in the valley; over the next decade, an average of one new winery a month was approved by the county. Today there are 204 wineries in all, 110 of them members of the Napa Valley Vintners, still the valley’s most influential fraternity. The Vintners control two-thirds of the county’s vineyards and 30 percent of the valley’s total employment; in 1987 their wines generated $669 million in “gross economic output.”

But with the boom has come dissension and controversy. Napa Valley is an agricultural anomaly situated at the outskirts of the expanding San Francisco Bay Area. The critical year will be 1991, when the Napa Valley will be prodded by the state and the Association of Bay Area Governments to raise its controlled 1 percent yearly growth to the state average of 2 1⁄2 percent. As land values increase, the “highest and best use of the land is subdivision,” says a worried Volker Eisele, the conservationist president of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers Association. “In economic terms, agriculture will lose if it has to compete with houses.”

Napa Valley agriculture, however, is not Iowa agriculture; there is more to winemaking than growing grapes and processing them. Indeed, “there’s been a shift in emphasis from the production of wine to the marketing of it,” says Barbara Winiarski, co-owner of Stag’s Leap Cellars. She deplores the proliferation of souvenir stores, museums, shopping and entertainment centers and other nonwine uses that diminish the precious agricultural land and threaten to turn the valley into Disneyland north. “There is the recognition that the wineries themselves are a threat to agriculture—that we don’t have any principles of limitations,” says June Foote, who, through the Land Trust, has saved “5,000 acres of Napa Valley land nobody can screw up.”

Meanwhile, a growing “neo-prohibitionist” movement threatens the wine community from without. The World Health Organization has set a goal of reducing all alcohol consumption by 25 percent by the year 2000, and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving have picked up the banner in the strongest temperance movement since the 1930s. Signs at the entrances to winery tasting rooms now warn pregnant women of the risk of birth defects from drinking. The new mood is reflected in sales figures: wine sales and per capita consumption that had climbed steadily since World War II have plateaued, and even declined by 1.6 percent over the last two years.

An angry Bob Mondavi has taken up the defense; he is spending half a million dollars to mount a public relations campaign called the Mission Program that gathers sociologists, physicians and historians to celebrate wine’s ancient social role. Ever since he broke from his family’s winery, Charles Krug, in 1966, he has messianically and single-mindedly pursued his goals of promoting table wine as a healthy, daily part of the American lifestyle and achieving the quality that has gained world recognition for the valley’s wines. Now, at an age when most men would be resting on their laurels, he feels compelled to lead the counterattack on the neoprohibitionists.

The most heated clash, however, is an internecine one, between the vintners and the independent growers, who control 15 percent of the grape acreage. The opening salvo was fired in 1985, when outgoing Planning Commission chairman Jay Corley mandated the commission to answer the question, “What is a winery?” Until then, the county had relied on wineries to use “reasonable restraint and common sense” in conforming to the county’s official vision of its future, the General Plan, which
names preservation of agricultural land as its highest obligation. The county had already gone much further than Webster’s definition—”a winemaking establishment”—but it has not dealt with all the wineries’ new marketing activities. The current county definition, last refined in 1981, “says nothing about cooking schools or concerts,” says James Hickey director of Napa County’s planning department. An Agricultural Advisory Council was formed and later disbanded for lack of consensus. At a public hearing in Yountville in mid-1987, Hickey made a forceful plea: “If we do nothing we are jeopardizing the future of the valley.”

“But the vintners didn’t hear,” says Barbara Winiarski, who was at the meeting. “We failed to express our thoughts,” says Corley. “We’re not sure what those thoughts are.” Besides, the big wineries may have felt themselves superior to such petty dilemmas. “They feel they already control the valley,” he adds. The county’s planning staff was preparing to insert its own ordinance into the vacuum. But then, on November 18, 1987, grower Andrew Beckstoffer dropped a bombshell. Beckstoffer, who arrived in the valley in 1969 as vice president of planning for the United Vintners-owned vineyards that supplied the Inglenook and Beaulieu wineries, now owns or manages nearly 1,500 acres of the valley’s vineyards making him the county’s largest independent grower.

No stranger to corporate politics, he is a member of Northern California’s Young Presidents, a former Napa County Planning Commissioner and a former president of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers Association. Beckstoffer’s proposal was a radical one: a requirement that 75 percent of the wine produced in the Agricultural Preserve be from local Napa grapes. Vintners’ president Johnson branded it an “extreme” measure that ignored the complexities of the wine industry. As he would later explain, “Our needs are in excess of what’s grown here.” Big wineries such as Louis Martini, Hans Kornell and Sutter Home have “imported” grapes from the Central and Sonoma valleys for years. But Beckstoffer would not be deterred. On February 8, 1988, his independent Napa Valley Grapegrowers submitted a full-draft definition of “What Is a Winery?” that included the controversial “75 percent solution.”

Beckstoffer had touched on an issue that was both economic and emotional. The independent growers have seen their vineyards preempted by the wineries, which now tell growers how to farm and when to pick the grapes; vineyard management is the hot new tool for improving wine quality. Beckstoffer has fought back by demanding long-term contracts from wineries that guarantee “$1,500 a ton if that’s what we need to make money” as land and development costs climb. But he faces formidable opposition. As one vintner scoffs, “He doesn’t represent the growers. We control two-thirds of the valley’s grapes; the independents control just 15 percent.” Adds Corley: “Suddenly, the minority opinion of growers was becoming the majority voice of agriculture.” When Beckstoffer turned up at a county hearing last

August and stood to argue for a moratorium on new winery permits until “What Is a Winery?” is resolved, he inspired a whispered aside: “Here comes the bullshit.”

Yet the moratorium passed, and new winery permits are now on hold until a Master Environmental Assessment (MEA) can be completed. Last fall the growers’ definition of a winery became the working draft for the Planning Commission. Just one month before the November election, as both the Farm Bureau and the Napa Valley Grapegrowers Association endorsed the slow-growth incumbents in the Supervisors’ race, the Vintners finally issued a two-page position statement on “What Is a Winery?” It accepted certain limits on growth and promotional activities, but it punched back at the growers’ proposals. “We object to the attempt to graft on extraneous issues relating to where grapes come from, parcel size, limits on winery growth and the like,” the statement argued. Position statement in hand, the Vintners went hunting for candidates to support. They found them in Negri and Mikolajcik.

What is a winery? To Lebanese publisher Jan Shrem, it is a cathedral, “a temple to wine.” His Etruscan-style monument to Pegasus, the winged horse said in myth to be the founder of the first vineyard, is the result of an international design competition sponsored by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Postmodernist architect Michael Graves first envisioned a ziggurat topped by a statue of Pegasus, a sculpture garden and a museum for Shrem’s remarkable art collection. Shrem’s Calistoga neighbors, who didn’t want a winery in the first place and especially objected to the plans, threatened lawsuits. Shrem dropped the ziggurat and sculpture garden and brought the art inside his home.

But the spectacular terra-cotta winery, completed in 1987, is itself a work of art. Shrem is so obsessed with the purity of its aesthetic that, as soon as the harvest is over, he whisks away the modular stainless- steel crushing equipment: necessary it may be, but discordant. Indeed, Clos Pegase is so dazzling even the vineyards surrounding it seem somehow irrelevant. More to the point are the lavish benefit parties Shrem hosts at the winery. “He’s going for it right now,” says a Napa society caterer. “He’s trying to build the image.” In the new Napa Valley, image is king and marketing is its handmaiden. It is said that Napa bottles no bad wine; quality is a given. “Our job is to sell wine,” says Monticello Winery’s Corley. “And to do that, you’ve got to find a way to stand out from the crowd.” For him, the “point-of- difference” marketing angle comes from his own Colonial American roots; his label and his promotion are built around Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and Jefferson’s credo, “Good wine is a necessity of life.”
Marketing is no newcomer in the valley. Hospitality has been Napa’s secret marketing weapon for a century, and no one has exploited it more fruitfully than Bob Mondavi. The mission-style Mondavi winery in Oakville is the valley’s social and cultural center, home of summer jazz concerts, art shows and the Great Chefs cooking schools. “Some men build a label,” says Wine Spectator senior writer James Laube. “Mondavi built a valley.”

And therein lies the rub. “In terms of attracting tourists, Mondavi’s the worst,” says one critic. The 500,000-case
Mondavi winery—fifth in the valley—wields enormous influence. If the Mondavis wanted to temper the valley’s mounting crisis, says one observer, “All it would take would be Bob Mondavi standing and saying, I’m cutting my concerts.”

But marketing pressures are so strong that no winery, big or small, is immune. They all must seek a marketing edge. To Warren Winiarski, whose winery is one-tenth the size of Mondavi’s, the point of difference is quality. At Stag’s Leap Cellars off Silverado Trail, Winiarski pursues a daring experiment that will set his wines definitively apart from the pack. His crew is withholding sulphur from the crushed Chardonnay grapes at harvest, the long-accepted way of protecting them from oxidation. He is allowing the wine to oxidize and turn brown during fermentation—the color of destroyed wine. If the experiment works, he will have a wine that is finer, with fewer sulfites—another marketing edge. If it fails, he will have ruined his entire chardonnay vintage. The technique, with its genesis in Germany, is still in its infancy in the Napa Valley. Winiarski first tried it for three years with a small part of his vintage; it resulted in the 1986 Reserve chardonnay that earned him the Harry Waugh Trophy in London as well as a coveted gold medal at the Orange County Fair. This year, he has committed his entire harvest.

As the grapes are crushed, the juice is already turning brown. Winiarski goes to the white Formica office of John Gibson, in charge of production, to examine tiny bottles Gibson has drained off the fermenting chardonnay. The wine is the color of apple cider, murky with oxidized particles.

But within the fermentation tanks, a miracle is occurring: the wine is healing itself. “The oxygen scavenges the oxidized impurities,” explains Winiarski, elated. The particles precipitate to the bottom of the tank as sediment. Just before shifting the wine to French oak barrels for secondary fermentation, Gibson taps more samples from the tanks, pours them into glasses, holds them against the white counter. The chardonnay is still cloudy. But it has returned to the classic pale straw gold.

It is a triumph of science and art. But Winiarski has other motives as well. He believes quality and prestige will force the U.S. government to designate Napa’s grapes as a national treasure, giving them the permanent protection the Agricultural Preserve does not.

Meanwhile, Winiarski is caught in a classic double bind. His Reserve chardonnays, at $26 a bottle, have a limited market. To finance his experiments, he must produce a secondary label. Hawk Crest, a $6.50-$7 wine made with non-Napa Valley grapes that contends in the battle of the “fighting varietals,” where the bulk of the market is. He sells tractor caps and T-shirts in his retail room. And he wrestles with the implications. “We’ve all been free-enterprisers,” he says of himself and his fellow vintners.
“It’s what brought us our prosperity. Now we have to rethink all that.”

But marketing fever has a momentum of its own, one that may prove hard to reverse. In 1981 the Vintners devised the ultimate promotional tool: the annual Napa Valley Wine Auction, a weeklong celebration of the valley’s wines and hospitality. In 1982 the first case of Mondavi/Rothschild Opus One sold for $23,000. Last June a single outsize, hand-etched bottle of Far Niente 1985 cabernet sold for $12,000.

The auction has been wildly successful in its seven years, pouring $1.6 million into valley hospitals and spreading Napa Valley’s fame around the world. But in the eyes of writer Laube, among others, the incredible prices and the fancy packages “give off an image of wine as something for the elite.” The valley’s famed master winemaker, Andre Tchelistcheff, laments, “The joy, the simple joy of drinking wine is being lost.” And grower Eisele, whose wife is landscaping the grand chateau being built by the French champagne house Taittinger, comments cynically, “We don’t have nobility. So how do you distinguish yourself? With a château. With a name on a label!” It is an ironic fate for the valley’s old egalitarian goal of a bottle of well-made wine on every table, no matter how humble.

As the valley took on polish, the cachet became irresistible for socially prominent residents of other parts of the Bay Area. Many of them now make Napa Valley their second, third or fourth home, and have put their elegant stamp on the once rural lifestyle. Their parties have become the stuff of legend. Writer Danielle Steel and John Traina were married in 1981 at society decorator Richard Tam’s Napa Valley home. He hosted a “Teahouse of the August Moon” party for several hundred guests, “with women in wigs and gorgeous kimonos, white Japanese paper lanterns, a 120- foot-long pergola. . . .” Last summer Tam helped San Francisco plastic surgeon Bruno Ristow and his wife, Urania, stage a debutante ball for their daughter in the weekend home whose interior Tam had transformed into an Italian villa. A formally dressed crowd of 250 danced to a twenty-piece orchestra, with Peter Minton at one of the twin pianos.

Longtime residents have also climbed aboard the social bandwagon. After Evalyn and Bob Trinchero, both age nineteen, were married in 1956, Evalyn kept the books for the family’s Sutter Home winery. Today, thanks to the phenomenal success of Sutter Home’s white zinfandel, they are richer than they’d ever dreamed. When they travel around the world to promote their winery, marketing advisers counsel Evalyn on the proper wardrobe. “We used to furnish from Sears,” she recalls, somewhat bemused. “Then we moved up to Macy’s.” Now, in her contemporary hilltop home off the Silverado Trail in the north valley, Evalyn has miles of custom-woven carpet from Thailand. The family dog has a custom-designed run to protect his paws from the shards of obsidian glass that still cover the mountain, an old Wappo Indian arrowhead quarry.

The blush-colored picnic wine that paid for all this luxury is the wine sensation of the late 1980s. Bob Trinchero started making the white zinfandel in 1972, while the rest of the valley concentrated on classier cabernet and chardonnay; since then, its sales have doubled each year to a current volume of five million gallons. The small old winery just south of St. Helena has been transformed into a

Victorian extravaganza with a tasting room, bed-and-breakfast, corporate headquarters and hospitality center. Recently, the Trincheros have been seeking approval for an expansion that would make Sutter Home a nine-million-gallon winery requiring 35 trucks a day to bring in grapes, wine and glass on the winding, two-lane Silverado Trail.

Although the Trincheros are considered heroes for their bootstrap success and their revival of a languishing grape variety, the glory has not been unmixed. Some see the semitrailers, emblazoned with the stars and stripes and banners reading AMERICA’S FAVORITE, that turn into little Zinfandel Lane as Trojan horses bringing in “foreign” grapes from outside the valley to produce the popular wine. And many critics are horrified by the blatant commercialization of the winery,
charging that it’s responsible for turning Highway 29 into “Winery Row.” Evalyn turns defensive when she’s reminded of the criticism. “Bob saved zinfandel,” she says proudly. “How can they tell us what to do? We’ve been here 40 years.”

But the valley’s real venom is reserved for Beringer, which scored a much more dramatic marketing coup with the creation of its Napa Ridge label. Beringer is regarded as a symbol of the new, aggressive, market-driven valley, while Sutter Home is still a family-owned winery. Napa Ridge is a wine made
with 60 percent non-Napa grapes, yet it exploits the magic aura of Napa on its label. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had sole approval powers; the name had never been claimed, so it was free to use. “It’s legal, but it’s a hoax,” says Eisele, expressing the anger among growers
and some vintners that the label exploits and dilutes the Napa Valley’s hard-won image of quality.

So, what is a •winery? Is it a tourist destination? Thirty-seven thousand cars drive up highway 29 through the valley each day, and one St. Helenan complains, “We can no longer cross the highway on Saturday mornings.” Yet an informal Vintners’ study showed that 70 percent of the traffic was local, not tourist. Indeed, some wineries claim the flow of tourists has fallen 10 to 15 percent since a $2 tasting fee was imposed.

That may change dramatically with the advent of the Wine Train. Scheduled lo begin regular wine
and food trips through the valley this March, the train was conceived by Napa physician Alvin Lee Block in 1981 as an elegant, romantic notion: leisurely tours of the valley in vintage railway cars.
Today, the meticulously restored train is 76.5 percent owned by Vincent DeDomenico, heir to the Rice- a-Roni fortune, and it is shadowed by rancor as much as romance. The train has already overcome major obstacles; the federal Interstate Commerce Commission overruled California’s Public Utilities Commission for jurisdiction in matters such as environmental impact. The Friends of Napa Valley, a consortium of wineries and St. Helena townsfolk, oppose the train on grounds it will bring 422,000 passengers each year to St. Helena, a town of 5,000. And vintner Winiarski joined a committee trying to force the Wine Train to submit an Environmental Impact Report, “like any winery or other commercial enterprise.”

A shakedown run November 1 vividly illustrates the controversy. As the train pulls out of the Napa train yard, the townsfolk wave and gawk. But in Yountville—long the Mason-Dixon line between the winey “upvalley” and the more working-class county seat—a huge sign confronts the train: PRESERVE OUR VALLEY. DEMAND AN EIR FOR WINE. The red surveyor’s tape flying from grapestakes, trees and smudge pots along the tracks is, for this conservative valley, violent protest. Another opponent has converted his cattle trailer into the “Swine Train,” painted the sides with pigs sipping wine in train windows and is driving up and down the highway, honking his horn at every Wine Train crossing. The local radio station plays “The Wino Train Blues.”

Yet, insists Napa resident and writer Laube, “The Wine Train didn’t bring the tourists. The wineries must shoulder the burden of overpromoting. Even if the press didn’t say another word about Napa Valley, you couldn’t stop the flow of people for ten or fifteen years.” The Wine Train, says Laube, “will succeed or fail on its own merits.”

“Napa Valley wanted to be famous,” says best-selling author Arthur Hailey, who lived in the valley in the mid-l960s and visits there with his family every summer. “Now it is. And, as usual, the last one in wants to pull up the drawbridge and keep people out.” He defends the Wine Train from a conservationist point of view. “Many communities in North America regret having let their right-of-
way become abandoned. Somewhere in the future, there might even be a commuter line from Napa Valley to San Francisco. And 50 years from now, there will probably be a bronze plaque commemorating the person who saved the rail line for posterity, while the people who opposed the train will be long forgotten.”

The candidates’ meeting October 26 leaves the valley’s wine community shaken and sobered. Mikolajcik and Negri have appealed to the winery workers’ self-interest by assuring them jobs. Mikolajcik, a nurseryman from the blue-collar American Canyon district at the valley’s south end, proclaims, “I believe in free enterprise. We’re all here to make a living.” About winery-based promotional events, he tosses off, “You’ve got to wine ’em and dine ’em.” As for traffic, “I love my truck,” he tells a cheering crowd. “People love their cars. The wine industry has to treat the public right.” And when Silver Oaks’s Justin Meyer whose suberb cabernets are made mostly from non-Napa grapes, asks about whether existing wineries would be “grand fathered” as exempt from the 75 percent solution, Mikolajcik’s reply is swift. “Grandfather clauses are great!” he says. “If Mother Nature turns
a mean hand and there’s a freeze, and we had the 75 percent rule, what would happen to the
small wineries?”

By contrast, slow-growthers Kathleen McCullough and Jay Goetting, with their measured and thoughtful responses, come across as indecisive wimps. The meeting is a triumph for Negri and Mikolajcik. Rutherford Hill managing partner Bill Jaeger huddles with Mikolajcik and fellow vintner Bill Harlan afterward. “This whole meeting is a referendum on Beckstoffer,” he confides. “He’s a real snake. Protect the grapes, hell! He’s trying to control grape prices. There’s not much land left to plant. He’s trying to force the prices by supply and demand. With the 75 percent thing, there’s a real question of monopoly.” But Warren Winiarski worries aloud: “They’d never attack the Ag Preserve directly. It would be done at the fringes, letting urban uses leather into it, rezoning it, bleeding the watershed lands to developers.”

The following Monday, the Vintners hold a board meeting at the Meadowood. All week, there have been private discussions about compromise—about backing down from the endorsement. “It’s more important to bring us together than to worry about reputation,” insists Winiarski. And at the general meeting the following day, alter a prolonged struggle over wording, the Vintners vote to withdraw the endorsement and allow each member to vote for his or her preferred candidate.

The relief is short-lived. By dawn November 9, local radio station KVON reports the closely fought Negri-McCullough race will go to Negri by 172 votes. Mikolajcik has swept Goetting off the hoard by a 56 percent mandate. When the new board meets in January, it will be dominated by pro-growth supervisors, 5 to 2.

A disheartened Barbara Winiarski tries to make sense of it the morning after. “Negri’s from an old valley family,” she reflects. “Maybe older voters thought they were voting for the Napa Valley they used to know. Ironically, they’ve elected the man most likely to let it change and grow.”

Last November’s election leaves the valley’s future cloudy. Last August’s moratorium still has new winery permits pending until the MEA is completed. The assessment will he followed by more public hearings in the spring. By summer, the Planning Commission will probably have its definition of a winery. The definition will then go to the Board of Supervisors, which will accept, reject or change it. Whatever emerges will be the clearest available vision of Napa Valley in the year 2000.

One thing is certain: there will be growth. Increasingly, the upvalley folks are looking south, to the city of Napa and beyond, where the room is. The county’s southern flank may be where new tasting rooms, tourist hotels, warehouses—even crushing facilities for out-of-valley grapes—are established. Mondavi is thinking of setting up a cultural center for food and wine in Napa; Trinchero has joined the board of the Napa Opera House. “The upper valley is at gridlock,” observes vineyardist and urban economist Michael Marston, who is helping to develop a downtown Napa shopping mall. “There is an important role for downtown Napa and the Napa River. If we fail,” he warns, “the Napa Valley may become a second-rate Lake Tahoe.” James Hickey, for one, harbors mixed hopes. Looking back at two decades of the valley’s struggle—the landmark achievement of the Ag Preserve, the infighting of the
last three years—he says: “It is definitely an engaged valley concerned with its future. My concern would be when nobody cares.” But switching his gaze to the future, he says with the shrug of a realist, “It’s a T-shirt world we live in.”

When Andy Beckstoffer was a kid he was told jokingly that It’s rude to ask where someone is from: If he’s from Virginia you’ll know it, and if he’s from anywhere else, well, you’ll only embarrass the man.

Andy Beckstoffer, who this year is introducing a wine with the distinctly California name of Fremont Creek, is from Virginia by way of an MBA from Dartmouth. Like his hero John Fremont, he’s a Southerner who has ventured to California and prospered. His Beckstoffer Vineyards acquired more than 1,200 prime grape acres, a condition he says makes him simultaneously rich In land and poor in cash.
“When people ask me if I know anything about cash, I say yeah, I love his songs.”
Although Beckstoffer is partially kidding, It is true that for years he has indulged a habit of putting any extra money into grape land.

During that time he learned to deal with the fundamental equation of California wine farming:
“In 1970 people would say, ‘Oh you just can’t afford to pay $4,000 an acre.’ Then In 1975 people would say, ‘Oh you just can’t afford to pay $10,000 an acre but those folks who paid $4,000 In 1970 just stole it.’ Then In 1960 people would say, ‘You Just can’t afford to pay $15,000 an acre, but those folks who paid $10,000 in 1975 Just stole it'” Since Beckstoffer was on the winning side of that equation all along, he can allow himself a wry grin.

A native of Richmond, Beckstoffer was graduated in four years from Virginia Tech, went to work briefly for the telephone company, joined the Army and as a young lieutenant ran the motor pool at the Presidio. He was the kind of Virginian whose wife went home without him so their daughter could be born in the Old Dominion. But then he went over to Berkeley one afternoon and heard President John F.Kennedy twang out a speech about excellence. Soon Andy had joined most of his friends who were deter.

Amos Tuck, the crack Dartmouth business school, and in 1966 was recruited by Heubleln, which was getting into the wine business, (It gives you some idea of the horizons painted by a place like Tuck that Andy refers to Heublein of that day as a small $200 to $300 million company.) He was assigned to corporate acquisitions along with the duties of executive vice president and the corporate counsel.

In 1968 the team negotiated the purchase of United Vintners, a California wine company that included, at that time, Inglenook and Italian Swiss. A year later, he negotiated the purchase of Beaulieu Vineyards and remained as vice president of planning for United Vintners. An important part of his job was responsibility for grape purchases for Beaulieu and Inglenook.

The year 1965 was the first in which premium dry wines sold more than sweet wines in California. As a result, good grapes for dry wines were at a premium. Beaulieu could not expand because it did not have enough grapes. To guarantee ample grapes for Beaulieu and Inglenook, Beckstoffer founded a Heublein subsidiary, Vinifera Development Corporation, to farm and manage vineyards. Vinifera followed an aggressive land purchasing program, often learning* about available good land and wrapping it up before the real estate brokers knew it was for sale.

ly crisis eased, Heublein decided to sell Vinifera. The buyer was Beckstoffer. Asked where he got the money, he looks at you In this relaxed Southern way and says, why, from the company. Heublein provided 100 percent of the financing in installments, Beckstoffer came up with some security plus this considerable managment skills. It was a good deal for both sides.

From Beckstof fer’s own land he has supplied top California wineries such as Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, .Sum. Schug, Cakebread. Parducci, Raymond Vineyards, Silverado Vineyards, Beaulieu Vineyards, Fetzer Vineyards and Samuel 1. Sebastian! Wines. In December 1966, Beckstoffer began work on a new phase. He had been selling 80 percent of his grapes to prestige wineries but 10 percent was going to negotiants, which he thought hlstoriy, cally’wa^n6t the best way for him to dp. business^’

The gap between grape growers and vintners over regulating Napa County’s wine industry became a chasm Wednesday.

After spending nearly two years trying to hammer out a definition of a winery, county grapegrowers changed directions and said the whole issue could be resolved if the county would require all wine produced in Napa County to contain 75 percent Napa County grapes.

“Our proposal would do more to preserve agriculture than all the other words,” grapegrower Andy Beckstoffer said after the meeting.

Napa County will only remain agricultural as long as the growers have a market for their grapes, he said. The proposal caught commissioners and vintners by surprise.

The commission isn’t scheduled to discuss the new proposal again until Dec.16.

If the commission accepts the grapegrowers proposal, it could end months of debate over the legal meaning of words and the structure of sentences defining what business activies are permitted at wineries.

Beckstoffer, a former county planning commissioner, suggested the county should use the same standard as the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms uses when it defines Napa County wine: 75 percent of the grapes must be grown in the county.

Visibly upset at the grapegrowers proposal, Reverdy Johnson of Johnson Turnbull Vineyards called it elitist and unworkable.

For nearly two years, vintners, grapegrowers and commissioners have been wrangling over language to define what kinds of activities should be permitted at a winery besides wine production.

Beckstoffer likened the grapegrowers’ idea to the controversial agricultural preserve zoning, a county law adopted in 1968 that prohibited agricultural parcels less than 40 acres.

“Hopefully we won’t have that controversy. But it was worth it in 1968 and it’s worth it now,” he said.

Some of the issues that have been discussed include whether wineries should be allowed to have kitchens, sell art and what kinds of public events they can hold.

Growers and vintners are dependent on each other, but over the months that the commission has been dealing with the definition, they have proposed different ways to ensure their survival.

The continuing success of grapegrowing is jeopardized by allowing such commercial activities as food service and art sales in agricultural areas, representatives of the Napa County Farm Bureau and the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association have said.

Conversely, the vintners argue that being able to offer food to their customers on occasion and sell art is equally important to their success.

After the grapegrowers dropped their bomb, or exposed their “hidden agenda” as Johnson called it, representatives from Louis Martini, Inglenook, Robert Mondavi and others told the commission that the limitation would hurt their operations.

Many said they buy grapes from other counties and wouldn’t always be able to meet the 75 percent requirement.

It’s that simple. You want good wine, start with good grapes. Most winemakers in California (and elsewhere) realize that. Experts say that the major developments in winemaking over the next decade will begin in the vineyard, not in the winery. More than ever, winemakers and grape growers are beginning to work together.

The growers who care
about what they are growing are determined to produce better grapes for better wine. And the winery owners who care about their product will work with the growers.

Such joint efforts can be seen at the upcoming Napa Valley Wine Auction (June 18 through 20) in a contribution by Warren Winiarski from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Three large etched bottles of Chardonnay will be offered to bidders. They are the first in a series of Stag’s Leap Chardonnay from vineyards in the Carneros district of Napa. But not just any vineyards: In the wine description in the auction catalog it is pointed out that these wines are Beckstoffer Vineyard-designated.

Those vineyards are part of over 3,000 acres of grapes owned or managed by Andy Beckstoffer in Napa and Mendocino counties. Beckstoffer is a Napa farmer who has an MBA from Dartmouth, and the way he runs vineyards is good enough to have his grapes bought by a virtual who’s who of California wineries: Beaulieu, Stag’s Leap, Schug Cellars, Cakebread, Beringer, Sam Sebastiani, William Hill, Domaine Mumm, Simi, Parducci, Fetzer, Obester and Scharffenberger, among many others.

A Growing Trend

Vineyard-designated wines are not new, but they are becoming more and more important. Belvedere Winery in Sonoma County was a pioneer in the concept with wines from Winery Lake vineyards, from Robert Young Vineyards, from Bacigalupi Vineyards, all released over the past decade.

Chateau St. Jean has also been instrumental in establishing the vineyard-designated concept with its series of outstanding Chardonnays and Sauvignons Blanc.

“I believe the vineyard-designed concept is as important as estate-bottled,” Beckstoffer said. What is it about Beckstoffer grapes that make them so much in demand?
Again, the answer is pretty simple. Beckstoffer works to deliver the best quality grapes he

can, beginning with the basics of agricultural techniques through the more sophisticated measures that winemakers are demanding.

Among other things, Beckstoffer Vineyards pioneered close spacing programs for vines, breaking away from traditional spacing. Beckstoffer made spacing decisions based on the variety of the grape, soil, micro-climate and other factors affecting the final grape quality.

Traditional California spacing is 8×12, which allows 454 vines per acre. This was established 25 to 30 years ago, largely as a convenience for the movement of tractors, etc., through the vineyards.

Beckstoffer has experimented with spacings of 6×10, 8×10 and 7×11, allowing more vines per acre. Others – Robert Mondavi among them – have put vines on such put vines on such close spacing that more than 2,000 vines per acre are planted.

The purpose of such dense spacing is not to produce more grapes, because it doesn’t. There are more vines, but in such crowded conditions, each vine produces a smaller yield, so there may be very little difference in harvest between an acre of grapes with 454 vines and an acre of grapes with 2,000 vines. And it is much more expensive to plant, cultivate, prune and otherwise take care of 2,000 vines to an acre. Why do it? Winemakers believe it makes better wine, wine with more intensity of flavor, richer fruit flavors.
Controlling Sunshine

Beckstoffer (and others) are also experimenting with different systems of trellising the vines in an attempt to control the amount of sunlight reaching the grapes, the amount of moisture and air circulation. Different trellising systems affect different grape varieties in different ways. All of these systems require additional labor, which makes the grapes more expensive. But winemakers want it, so growers who care are doing it.

One example of an experiment by Beckstoffer just getting underway is harvesting by hand at night. Harvesting at night is nothing new. The grapes are cooler and don’t tend to build up sugars or rot so quickly after harvest. But it has always been done with machines. Beckstoffer feels that certain grapes, especially Chardonnay, should not be harvested by machine because of damage to the grapes. Instead, beginning this fall in selected vineyards, he will bring in specially trained crews of pickers, working under batteries of high intensity lights.

“Sure it’s going to cost more,” he said. “In fact, it will cost about $200 an acre more, but people who take a long-term view of things will be willing to pay that cost.”

Many of these changes in the vineyard are more costly, at least in the development period – more costly both to the winery buying the grapes and, of course, to the consumer buying the wine. On the evidence at hand, consumers seem willing to pay more, if they are convinced the quality is there.

Beckstoffer, perhaps with the consumer’s checkbook as well as his own in mind, sees not only the production of wine as a joint venture but also the sale of the end product. “If you buy grapes from us, we’ll help you sell the wine,” he said.

And that could be the bottom line that would convince a lot of winery owners to do business with growers like Andy Beckstoffer. As the designed vineyard label becomes more prominent, more consumers are going to recognize that the source of the grapes is perhaps as important as who made the wine. It is perfectly reasonable that at a public tasting, the winemaker and the grape grower should be pouring side by side. After all, it took both of them to make the wine.

Most successful wine grape growers got into the business because they knew farming and they could coax a recalcitrant vine to yield a great wine.

Yet over the last decade, there have been untold stories of family vineyards under financial seige, of crops being left on the vine for lack of a buyer, of prices so unstable that growers made only a modest return on investment, if any at all.

In some cases, these tales of woe are irrespective of the quality of the wine the grower produced.

Then there is the case of the engineer who earned a master’s in business administration at Dartmouth, moved to the Napa Valley to put together a business deal, did some analysis, discovered that growers didn’t know the first thing about marketing
their products, and leaped into the premium side of the business based on research that showed a grand future for those who did things right. That sounds like a fairy tale, but in fact it’s the story,

briefly, of Andy Beckstoffer, one of the North Coast’s most successful wine grape growers — and one of its most innovative.
Among the properties that have bought and continue to buy Beckstoffer vineyard grapes are Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Sam Sebastiani, Acacia, Mondavi, Simi, Parducci, Raymond and at least a dozen others. But the Beckstoffer name isn’t as well known as that of Robert Young in the Alexander Valley or Rene di Rosa of the

Winery Lake Vineyard in the Carneros. That’s because Beckstoffer thinks of himself first as a businessman, and selling quality grapes across a broad spectrum of fronts(21⁄2 dozendifferentvarietiesfrommanydifferentgrowingregions)ismoreimportant than acquiring a famous name.

Also, Beckstoffer is an engineer by training and a marketing expert by feel, and as such the quality of the fruit, he feels,
is more important than such considerations as name on wine labels (although that is about to change).

Beckstoffer has been low-key about his background, and thus never trumpeted the fact that he is as much an agronomist as
wine grape grower. Nor has he revealed that he was among the pioneers in wine industry drip irrigation, closer vine spacing, trellising, pest control and other scientific developments.

Today, Beckstoffer farms more acreage in the North Coast than any other farmer. His own Napa Valley vineyards total 2,355
acres, and he farms 3,366 more. In Mendocino county, he owns 1,035 acres of vineyard land. His own vineyards sold more
than 10,000 tons of grapes last year.

Success, he said, is part luck and part homework.

“I did try to buy the best vineyard land; I tried not to buy any ‘deals.’ But I also saw that the premium end of the business was
going to be successful, and I gambled that I could make it in the premium market.”

One factor that persuaded him was that, in 1973 when he acquired his first vineyard, “you didn’t have to worry about selling it
(grapes) all to one guy (who could control the market). There were a whole lot of small buyers, who would compete with one another.” Nor did he gamble that one or two varieties would flourish, and try to outguess the public.

“I planted many different varieties. I may not ever have sold a lot of grapes for the most money (in a region), but I don’t
think I ever sold a lot of grapes for the smallest amount, either.” He said that for every lot of grapes a grower sells for $1,500

a ton there will be lots that sell for $300. “I’d rather get a good price for everything I sell,” he said. “I’d rather get above the North Coast average for everything.” Someone who tends more than 6,700 acres of vineyard land clearly can assess the state of premium vineyard land in California, and in a wide-ranging interview, Beckstoffer gave his candid evaluation of the current state of wine grapes, variety by variety.

Chardonnay: “Our most successful white variety, when it’s grown in the proper locations, but cheap Chardonnay is going to go away.” He said the pop-premium Chardonnays we have seen selling for $4 to $5 a bottle soon will be $6 to $7.

Johannisberg Riesling: “The vintners killed it. They made it too sweet and it didn’t go with food and the consumer rejected it.” He said he didn’t feel Riesling would ever again be an important variety in California, which is sad because it makes such a delightful lighter-styled wine.

Sauvignon Blanc: “It has been made unpalatably grassy.” He said it needs to have a moderating influence, even if blended with Chenin Blanc or some other variety to reduce the grassiness.

Zinfandel: “It has been made too inky. But it makes a wonderful red wine,” and he anticipated a resurgence for it as a red wine when the White Zinfandel craze wanes.

Cabernet Sauvignon: “It’s in short supply because nobody has planted Cabernet for a while. That means that the lower-end of the market, the inexpensive Cabernets we have seen, won’t be that cheap any more.”

Gewurztraminer: “It makes a wonderful wine, but nobody buys it except in tasting rooms. With most people (winemakers), it gets lost in the blends.”

Pinot Noir: “Here you have a double bet. It’s a good plant for lighter-styled red wines in some areas — because people still want something drinkable when it’s young and fresh. But it’s also a good grape for champagne.” He said when grown in the right microclimates, such as Sebastopol, it can make an excellent red wine.

Of the other varieties, Beckstoffer still sees a definite need, for those wineries who need Petite Sirah to blend into other wines to make them better, for wineries who need Semillon to improve their Sauvignon Blancs.

Beckstoffer came to the Napa Valley in 1966 as director of long-range planning and manager of acquisition analysis with United Vintners and was president of Vinifera Development Corp., a Heublein subsidiary, from 1970 to 1973.

He bought Vinifera from Heublein in 1973 as well as its subsidiaries, Napa Valley Vineyard Co. and Mendocino Vineyard Co.

“It seemed to me that California could produce premium wine and that the wine market would grow,” he said. “But I viewed the industry as moving toward segmentation, the way the beer market is.”

He said the only innovation in the beer industry in the last 50 years is in packaging, but wine makers are constantly improving and upgrading various wine types, and he noted that segmentation is finally moving into the wine industry “as new products become more acceptable.”

He pointed out that wine coolers, generic jug wines, White Zinfandel, sparkling wine products, and other such “niche” products are the rudiments of wine industry segmentation.

Soon, the Beckstoffer name will begin appearing on wine labels — in an upscale segment. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa has agreed to label one of its 1986 Chardonnays “Carneros District, Beckstoffer Vineyard.”

But Andy points out that, unlike other vineyard designations, the Beckstoffer name does not refer to a specific delineated plot of ground, as does the Winery Lake name.

In his case, the name denotes only the name of the grower and a general area in which the grapes grow. In time, he said, the name may be seen on a Mendocino County Gewurztraminer and a Rutherford Cabernet as well as Chardonnay from the Carneros.

Matanzas Creek Winery’s William Maclver thinks grape growers should stay in their vineyards and let vintners peddle wine.

“Wineries are the ones selling the wine and therefore should be making the decisions,” said Maclver, vice president of the Bennett Valley winery he operates with his wife Sandra Maclver, winery president.

Maclver is opposed to the joint marketing agreement between vintners and growers. He said most vintnersin Napa and Sonoma counties will join with him in voting against the joint agreement, known as the Winegrowers of California, and supporting a vintner commission.

See Con, Page E7

ByDANBERGEB

Staff Writer

Early next month wineries and grape growers will I vote on whether to establish a Winegrowers of California Commission to promote California wine.

This commission, jointly operated by wineries and growers, would continue the work of the similarly structured Winegrowers of California Marketing Order established in mid-1984. That marketing order has been funded by assessments on members, with a limit of a 1 percent tax of the value of grapes purchased by wineries and sold by growers.

The joint commission would perform most of the tasks now being performed by the Winegrowers, including the work done by its market development program, which represents more than 40 percent of its budget expendi- tures in the 1986-87 fiscal year.

The commission of 36 members would be equally split between vintners and growers.

For the joint commission to pass, separate referendums taken by the growers and vintners must both pass. The voting is based on both individual votes cast and on the tonnage represented by each voter.

For passage of the measure, 40 percent of those eligible must vote. Approvalputs the joint commission in place for a five-year term.

If the joint commission fails, two more referendums will take place in April or May, one asking the vintners if they want a California Wine Commission and another asking growers if they want a California Winegrape Growers Commission.

If neither of those commissions is approved, another vote will take place in June asking vintners and growers if they want to renew the present WinegrowersofCalifornia Marketing Order.

Pros ‘Cooperative spirit’ must continue

ByTIMTESCONI
Sttff Writer

Andy Beckstoffer said when he came to the Napa Valley wine country 15 years- ago there were two classes of citizens: vintners and grape growers. And growers were decidely second class.

As a grower, Beckstoffer considered this vinous class system rather silly because — no matter what side of the grape you are on — the common goal is wine.

Fortunately, Beckstoffer said, in recent years the class distinctions have narrowed in the Napa Valley and other North Coast grape regions, largely becauseof the mutual appreciation for the delicate relationship between those who grow the grapes and those who

See Pro, Page E7

Charging the greatest surplus in the wine industry is ignorance, a North Coast grower suggests a detailed crush report as a step to relieve the industry’s financial depression.
W. Andrew Backstoffer of St. Helena sketched a plan for a bulk wine report, issued quarterly if not monthly, to include the following: year of harvest, district, type of grape, color, and whether the owner is licensed to sell bulk wine.
“This is basic data, but it would tell us a lot,” he said at the recent Wine Grape Day. “The program, if passed by the legislature, could be financed by the Winegrowers of California
“Here is an opportunity for the Winegrowers of California to show those who voted for the marketing order some real results.’
A paradox
The former Heublein executive, who now owns and manages vineyards in Napa and Mendocino counties, said the California wine surplus is paradoxical. There are shortages or balances in some cases despite depressed prices to growers in the Fresno and Madera areas.
He noted the Thompson Seedless situation in the Central Valley cannot be overlooked, particularly in view of the use of that variety in the popular “cooler” products.
Even with inroads by imported wines the industry is growing slowly, but the overall picture is clouded by erratic crushes since 1980, most notably the large 1982 crush followed by two relatively short years.
Comparing supply statistics with wine sales growth would indicate a balance and no real surpluses, he said. “But let’s look at what it has taken price-wise to sell the California wine.
Not in pace
“Prices of table and dessert wines in relation to the producers price index and the consumers price index have not kept pace. Bottled wine prices are not even keeping up with inflation.”
Using 1967 as a base of 100, the producer price index for all products had risen to 303 by 1983, while the wine price index was 259. In the same period the consumer price index rose to 297, while wine went to 244.
“We have been selling wine, but only after we have taken a lower price. A surplus of bottled California wine, given current
marketing efforts, is clearly indicated.
“We’ve got too much wine when we can’t sell it at a fair price, or we are not doing a good enough selling job. normal reaction would be to reduce the supply, but Californians can’t do that in a world economy. Any void created by reducing our supply will surely be filled by imported wine.”
New products Beckstoffer said the California industry has I come up with more new products, such as the coolers, to meet the public’s taste and market them at better prices to counter import competition.
“If vintners can’t market their wines and at least keep up with inflation, how can we expect them to pay grape prices that keep up with inflation?”
Turning to bulk wines, he said the California surplus is estimated at 50 million gallons, although published reports by the Wine Institute suggests that supply and demand “are not that far off.”
Why, he asked, are bulk prices the lowest in years? San Joaquin Valley dry whites are going for as little as 40 cents a gallon and Central South Coast wines selling at $1.25 to $3.
Price effect
He cited industry estimates that a one percent excess of bulk wine supply will cause a 5 to 10 percent decrease in the market price.
“And there is a real question in the minds of growers as to how much of the excess is of good quality. It is said that even poor bulk wine is being used as security for bank loans.
“So long as the wine exists, the bank doesn’t call the loan. If the wine were dumped, the loan, which the grower-owner can’t pay, would be due. The wine sits, overhanging the market, with no hope for sale.”
Of the 50 million gallon excess, it is further estimated, he said, that 30 million is 1982 dry white, up to ten million is 1983 wine, and over ten million is 1984 wine.
Bids low
“Ten million gallons of 1984 wine is said to be for sale at 65 cents a gallon, with purchase bids at 40 cents. Most of the surplus seems to be white, but nobody really knows.
“The bulk wine segment of the industry is certainly the one most lacking in information. The lack of information has the greatest negative impact on the grower of white varieties in the San Joaquin Valley and South Central Coast.” It would seem that growers in this group would be better off not harvesting surplus grapes in any given year, he said, considering not only higher harvesting and processing prices, but the effect on the market the following year.
“Does it make sense to take additional risks in order to dispose of these grapes as bulk wine -to recover $90 a ton in one year’s costs when the predictable effect is to deny the following year’s grape sale at $125 a ton.
“Can you really afford to grow central and southern grapes that sell as wine at $2 a gallon?”
Situation insights Beckstoffer credited the Berryhill Bill, which established the annual crush report, with supplying information on grape prices for the various districts in the state. Extrapolation of the statistics is revealing about the situation of bottled and bulk wine.
“If the vintner is paying more per ton for increased tonnage in a particular district, you can bet there is little bulk wine around, and bottled wines are strong at an equitable price,” he said.
In his analysis of prices to growers from the high of 1981 to 1984, Beckstoffer said there is no surplus of either white or black grapes in the Napa Valley district.
In the other four North Coast districts both blacks and whites
are in balance with demand or at least emerging from surplus.
Among the Central South Coast counties, 1984 prices were lower than in the past five years, except for whites in District Six (Santa Clara north).
Beyond boom
“An especially critical white surplus situation exists in the Monterey-San Benito area and the San Luis-Santa Barbara-Ventura area. Growers in these areas have simply out-produced the white wine boom.
Other small districts in the state have varied price situations, some up and some down.
There is no denying the surplus in the Fresno and Madera areas, he said. “This must be the area where the import situation and poor bulk wine information take their greatest toll. In all areas where there is a surplus in wine grapes and bulk wine, it is whites.”
In the case of Thompson Seedless, all are surplus, with the lowest prices in five years. “Prices in 1984 were roughly one-half what they were in 1981 and 20 to 25 percent lower than 1983. Volume is twice the 1980 level.”
Huge excess
With 276,000 bearing acres of Thompson Seedless producing 2,350,000 tons, he said, “If raisins take 1,150,000, fresh grapes 250,000, and 500,000 is crushed, there is still 450,000 tons excess.” The 540,000 tons crushed in 1984 yielded 92 million gallons of dry wine. “The white wine boom started on the back of this grape, but now wineries are off to better wines from wine varieties. “Can it not be important that the hottest new product, coolers, now requires Thompsons?” Coolers, he said, used 10 million
to 14 million gallons of Thompson wine in 1984 and have a 350 percent annual sales growth rate.
Financial analyst
“Pray for the cooler, and don’t make bulk wines,” he advised. “And before you make any more bulk whites, consult a financial analyst, not just an accountant.
“A good farmer can go broke in these times, but a good business man shouldn’t. The white wine boom is turning into a bust for most of its grape growers.”
He said a classification system to define surpluses and a major information gathering and dissemination on bulk wines, refined by authorities, would help the industry return to a four to five percent growth in table wines.

The philosophy of an organization often reveals a lot about how it operates. The philosophy of Beckstoffer Vineyards, as explained by President and majority owner Andrew Beckstoffer, shows why this fruit growing concern goes about its business in an atypical way.

“We are clearly in the fanning business,” related Beckstoffer, “but we like to think of ourselves as being in the technology business. We are in the technology of applying all the new viticultural methods and procedures that have been developed. We analyze these operations from a business point of view, using the latest techniques.”

Beckstoffer Vineyards is involved in the production of nearly 4000 acres of wine grapes in Napa, Mendocino, and Sonoma counties in California. The company owns 1000 of those acres

and provides custom farm management services for the remainder through two subsidiary companies – Napa Valley Vineyard Company and Mendocino Vineyard Company. Over 30 farms are included in the operation. This year the operation will handle 8000 tons of grapes, which translates to 8% to 9% of the Napa Valley total.

The operation also reflects the background and education of Andrew Beckstoffer. Beckstoffer, who has degrees in engineering and business, was an executive in Heublein, Inc. for many years. When Heublein decided to sell its subsidiary, the Vinifera Development Corporation in 1973, Beckstoffer purchased it and Beckstoffer Vineyards was born.

Sound financial management is a part of good over-all management, and Beckstoffer pointed out that tight control is an essential part of good management in his operation. “We have a business – let’s say it’s less than $10 million in total sales – but it comes in $9.95 slugs. The control aspects of that are great.”

According to Beckstoffer, a computer plays a big part in supplying information that helps track finances efficiently. “We have a system that we call our cost and budget reporting system, which is a detailed computerized system that allows us to do zero-based budgeting every year,” he explained. “In other words, we look at every operation by the hours that are needed for that particular parcel of ground, then we put labor rates on that and work it up. We report against that monthly. All the operators have this kind of monthly report to look at and use.”

He further pointed out that a clear idea of what is going on in the field and how uncontrollable forces like weather can change things is necessary. “Most viticulturists and even businessmen are trained to handle good grapes and clear weather. It’s only in the field where you learn to handle the bad grapes and to handle the cash flow projections that don’t come true.”

Thequicklychangingconditionsinagriculturealsoinfluencethetypeofplanningused. “What we do,” said Beckstoffer, “Is called strategic planning, which is planning the over-all goals for the corporation, setting a framework in which they can be accomplished, and also establishing some alternative actions that will not be totally reactive but will be planned responses as we go through life with this corporate plan.”

The computer is also used to help plan for the future. “With our computer, we take all of our properties and enterprise and model them out for 10 years,” he said. Included in the model are grape revenues, farming costs, interest rates, and much more. “The bottom line is cash flow – free cash that we have to spend and build the business with.

“With this model, we can do our tax planning and plan several years out for developing the vineyards. Tax planning comes off it, tax strategy comes off it, and the cash available in the company for emergencies, for building the business, and for profitability comes off it.”

All the planning and analyzing have led to several cultural changes that increased profit. Beckstoffer vineyards have pioneered closer vine spacing and increasing the number of vines
per acre. This has led to increased production per acre, as has drip irrigation, which the company introduced to the Napa Valley about 10 years ago. Extensive soil and plant analyses to identify nutrient deficiencies have also paid off, as has adapting certain vineyards for mechanical harvesting.

Beckstoffer listed a number of areas or concepts that demand close attention for good money management.

“The first thing,” he related, “is that you must control your operation on dollars, and not on the sun. Everything that is being done should have a dollar number on it.

“Secondly, this business runs on cash, not on profitability. We look at cash flow on a weekly basis in great detail.

“Thirdly, we have established a credit relationship with the bank that is bigger than farming costs. In other words, we have a line of credit rather than a relationship that says you get this much by operation. That relationship is built on trust and a lot of communication so the bank knows exactly what we are doing.

“We also pay attention to our equipment on a daily basis. We probably have less breakdowns per unit than anyone around. Mechanical downtime is very expensive, and we are very conscious of it.”

Beckstoffer is “cautiously bullish” on the future of farming in his area, but noted that the growers who succeed must change with the times. “You are not going to do it (succeed) with high buckle boots and bib overalls, and you’re not going to do it by being a speculator. But,” he concluded, “the real farmer, if he’s tight on his money management and relates risks to potential rewards, can succeed.”

County planning comrrtissioners Wednesday postponed action on general plan re-zonings in order to enlarge areas to be set aside for large lot agricultural tracts.

The Napa County Conservation, Development and Planning Commission has conducted a series of public hearings on proposed re-zonings affecting nearly 5,500 acres of land in northeast Napa.

The rezonings are part of the county’s plan to bring zoning into conformance with the general plan.

The current proposal affects a total of1,049 parcels, rezoning the majority to 10 acre minimum residential country (RC) or 20 acre minimum agriculture-watershed (AW) lots.

Commissioner Andy Beckstoffer said the commission must examine the viabilityof agriculture in the area. He said commis- sioners had to consider not only those lands in agricultural production today but also those which have future agricultural potential.

“If we surround these areas with homes, then agriculture eventually loses out to urban pressure,” Beckstoffer continued. “We may be forced today to zone many lands not now suitable for agriculture to AW to protect against the loss to urbanization.

“What we’re doing is defining the new boun- daries of the City of Napa,” the county com- missioner pointed out. He recommended that all lands north of Hardman Avenue be zoned to AW.

Other commissioners agreed that they had to address the incompatibility of agricultural spraying and the like when considering if parcels should be rezoned RC.

Beckstoffer and Commissioner Vic Fershko agreed that placement of RC zoning on certain fringe areas might lead to the spread of ur- banization.

In particular, the commission indicated some 60parcels would be renoticed for rezon- ing to AW. Those include lands around the in- tersection of Soda Canyon Road and Silverado Trail, lands north of Hardman Avenue and east of Silverado Trail and lands surrounding the intersection of Old Soda Canyon Road and Atlas Peak Road.

The commission asked staff to mail notices

of the proposed new zoning to all affected parcel owners.

The entire matter was continued to the com- mission meeting Nov. 7at 9 a.m.

In other business, commissioners approved a request of Kaiser Steel to expand its fabricating bay and enlarge its administration building at the plant site south of Napa.

Sitting as the Airport Land Use Commis- sion, the planning body responded to the Local Agency Formation Commission’s request for comments on the proposed incorporation of American Canyon. The substance of the response was that the commission felt the air- port and primary impact area of the county airport master plan should be excluded from the incorporation proposal.

More than 50 witnesses from industry, state and federal government, and the wine consuming public spent about 17 hours stating their views on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ wine labeling and advertising proposals for American wines and counter-proposals offered by Wine Institute. San Francisco hearings in November followed Septem- ber sessions held in Washington, D.C.

Additional briefs could be submitted in writing until Dec. 3 after which the bu-. reau takes the matter under submission, including testimony at earlier hearings. It is expected to be at least March before any new regulations could be published.
The ATF panel, headed by Director Rex. D. Davis, heard testimony from Cal- ifornia’s Secretary of State March Fong Eu and from representatives of Congress- man Donald Clausen and California Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally. A host of Califor- nia industry spokesmen supported the Wine Institute position. Two familiar la- beling law critics, Robert W. Benson and R. Frederic Fisher again appeared. Both are attorneys and the former is professor of administrative law at Loyola University Law School. Imported wine executives Henry J. van der Voort and Peter M. F. Sichel were among those supporting the view of the National Association of Al- coholic Beverage Importers (NAABI).
Grape growers were represented by W. Andrew Beckstoffer, Napa Valley Grape Growers Association, and by the Califor- nia Farm Bureau Federation.
The industry theme was that you can’t legislate wine quality, and that the in- dustry has made great strides with the present legislation since Repeal. Most. however, acceded to the Bureau’s proposal that varietals contain 75% of the named variety, with some exceptions. The pres- ent rule requires 51% for varietal label- ing.
One question left unanswered for the most part is “why challenge or change the laws in effect since 1936?” An answer in part, however, was given by WI’s John DeLuca, He cited pressure on regulatory bodies from activist groups and said “the national pastime is not baseball or foot- ball, but finger-pointing.” Likely an earlier attempt by the Food and Drug Administration to regulate licensed bev- erage labeling practices also was a factor. The FDA move was rejected in court.
The hearings were initiated in June of
1975.
32
ATF had proposed the following: 1)
At top, California Secretary of State March Fong Eu testifies at San Francisco hearing. Lower left, BATF Director Rex Davis is interviewed by radio reporter as interest runs high. Lower right, United Vintners Board Chairman Jack Powers makes a varietal point.
the earlier BATF “seal” wine concept to be abandoned; 2) the term, “estate bottled” to be discontinued as meaning- less; 3) varietal content to be raised from 51 to 75% if a wine is so labeled, with the exception of some labrusca and other varieties deemed unpalatable by ATF at the higher percentage; 4) viticultural areas and vineyards to be termed “con- trolled appellations” and subject to more stringent requirements. For example, while 75% of the grapes would still be required from the area for appellations consisting of political subdivisions, 85% would be required for viticultural appel- lations and 95% for vineyard-named wines; 5) the only terms to be allowed to describe winery/bottler functions would be produced, prepared, blended, manufactured and, for imports, imported. “Produced” would require 95% of the wine to be produced by fermentation, up from the present 75%. “Made” would no longer be permitted. Bottlers wishing to show who performed a function would list the place the function was performed on labels. Also, bottler registry numbers would be included on labels; 6) foreign terms, such as “auslese,” would not be al- lowed on American wines although English translations would be permitted; 7) wineries using brand names of geo- graphical significance or using the word “vineyard” could qualify such names with the word “brand” or the use of “TM” or “R” for registered trademarks; 8) bottle fill dates would not be required; 9) vin- tage wine would continue to be 95% from the area named.
ATF proposed a three-year transition period so that new regulations would ap- ply after Jan. 1, 1981.
ATF said imported wines would have to match U.S. standards if marketed as varietals or as controlled appellation wines, and the use of such terms as “pro-
duced by” would follow U.S. definitions.
Further, for varietals made of less than 100% of the named grape, the exact per- centage would have to be shown on labels “in direct conjunction with and as con- spicuous as the varietal name.” ATF also proposed that the word “county” follow county designations and that the word be in the same size and style of type as the name of the county.
Wines designated by a vineyard name would have to have a description of the named vineyard on the label. ATF peri- odically would make a compilation of registered, acknowledged vineyards avail- able to consumers.
To use “vineyard” or “vineyards” for brands also having geographical signific- ance 95% of the wine would have to be from such an area or the brand would have to be qualified by the word “brand” or “TM” or “R”. Such a move would eliminate the need to restrict the use of “vineyard” or “vineyards” in brands ap- proved prior to Nov. 12, 1976.
For its part, the 245-member Wine In- stitute agreed with several ATF propos- als, disagreed with others and proposed some compromises. WI agreed with elim- inating “Estate Bottled,” for example, but recommended “Estate Grown and Bottled” instead. The Institute had sug- gested raising the varietal content from 51% to 75% and so concurred with that proposal.
WI rejected the “controlled appella- tion” term on grounds such a designation implied the quality level suggested by the BATF “Seal wine.” Institute further op- posed BATF on emphasizing varietal per- centages on labels and opposed the move to describe vineyards on wines so desig- nated.
On other fronts, the Institute:
Disagreed that “the 95% require- ment for vintage wines should also apply
WINES & VINES

The Napa Valley Grape Growers Association (NVGGA) has taken an historic first step towards stabilizing prices for wine grapes by setting up a bottle price formula to link grape growers’ prices to retail prices for wines made from their grapes. The NVGGA, a spin-off from the Napa County Farm Bureau, has reached an agreement to use bottle price formulas in contract sales of grapes to Robert Mondavi, Chappellet, Schramsberg, Joseph Phelps and Spring Mountain wineries. Other small wineries have shown an interest in using the formula.

The NVGGA said contracts are generally for an indefinite period of time, with a cancellation clause by either party on one- to five-harvest rundown at the grower’s option. The NyGGA formula is basically a way to get a percentage figure that can be applied to the bottle price to develop an annual tonnage price. Chappellet, Schramsberg, Joseph Phelps and Spring Mountain use this formula in their contracts. Using the NVGGA figure of $2350 as the necessary per acre gross return, the formula looks like this:

A $2350
Variety Average Yield PRICE OBJECTIVE PER TON
Per Acre
B. Retail Price Per Bottle X Number of Bottles Per Ton = WINERY GROSS INCOME
PER TON
C. Price Objective Per Ton = PRICE OBJECTIVE PER TON AS A PERCENTAGE OF
Winery Gross Income Per Ton WINERY GROSS INCOME PER TON

To use an example, if a grower estimates an average yield of 3.5 tons per acre of
Cabernet, and the grapes yield 700 bottles of wine per ton selling for $5 per bottle,
then:
A. $2350
3.5
B. $5X700 = $3500 (WINERY GROSS INCOME PER TON)
/PRICE OBJECTIVE PER TON)
(ANNUAL TONNAGE PRICE
OBJECTIVE)
C. $671 = 19.17%, and 19.17% X $3500 = $671
$3500
If the bottle price goes up to $5.50, then the grower can use the percentage figure to
compute the price objective per ton of grapes, as follows:
$5.50X700= $3850X19.17% = $738 Per Ton.
Robert Mondavi Winery offers growers a bottle price formula based on a grape
price factor chosen by the winery. An example of their formula is as follows:
Cabernet Sauvignon @ $7.00 Per Bottle X 82 (Grape Price Factor) =
$574 Per Ton.
The $574 would be the base price for this variety at 22 ° Brix. The winery has a system
of bonuses or penalties for sugar content over or under base. The bonus is computed
by adding 15% of the base price for the first point above base sugar and 20% of base
price for the second point above base sugar. Depending on the acid/sugar ratio,
another 20% might be added for the third point above base sugar, amounting to a
total of 55% above base price for such grapes. The penalty system works in a similar
way, with the percentages of base price subtracted for first and second points below
base sugar.
Mondavi’s price for each grape variety varies with the annual bottle price and assumed average annual yields per acre. On their
contracts, the winery or the grower may cancel either on a two- or five-harvest contract rundown period. The grower may choose
either term.
Bob Dwyer, secretary to the NVGGA, said that the bottle price formula is best suited for premium, appellation of origin areas
like Napa County. However, he noted that growers in other areas might be able to use the concept by making adjustments to fit
their particular situation.
Sources: NVGGA Harvest Report #3 and Ag Alert

While the connoisseur’s palate may be the only true judge of whether this valley’s grape is the best California has to offer, it remains the most expensive, both to buy and produce.

The 1977 harvest will be no exception and though neither wants low prices, growers and winemakers are talking about ways to put controls on what may be a dangerously, fluctuating market.
In recent years some of the more profit-minded growers have taken a page out of the farm worker’s book and started to organize, request what they think are better contract terms and negotiate prices as close to harvest time as possible.
Each of the county’s 50-odd win- eries has its own style of paying for the grapes it crushes and the traditional practice of the major wineries has been to pay their growers sometimes as late as six months after harvest.
The price they pay then is based on an average of other area wineries.
That is still the case, to some ex- tent, although a new state-mandated reporting system calls for prices to be published three months after harvest and the averages are now known earlier.
The only indication that growers have of the year’s income when they pour their harvest into the crusher is a preliminary prices list. Wineries tradi- tionally have paid prices higher than. the list but they are not bound to those figures.
A system that calls for a crop to be sold before the farmer knows its value may seem a bit strange, but that’s the way things have been done as long as most growers and winemakers can remember.
One reason the system never changed is that no one ever got hurt.
Robert Mondavi has been making wine in the Napa Valley since Prohibi tion when his father purchased the Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena
Several years ago the younger Mondavi began his own facility in Oak- ville, just down the road..
“Prices have always gone up,” he said. We’ve given the growers a price list and they say, ‘We have faith in Bob. We’ll just let the thing ride.”
“But eight or nine years ago, the properties changed hands. People came here from the Midwest and from other areas. Things changed and for awhile. we had quite an unhappy situation.” Mondavi was describing the influx of new growers that developed with the so-called “wine boom.”
That boom is levelling off now and last year more vines were pulled out than planted. But the makeup of the county’s agricultural community has changed. Joining the families who had held vineyards a century or more were Investment groups and Southern Cali fornia businessmen.
Slightly more than a year ago growers, many new arrivals, began to worry about their investments. The state had entered a severe drought and a short harvest was inevitable.
The local Farm Bureau, made up of not only growers but cattlemen and others, spawned the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association. The two groups share an executive secretary and the fatter took over the job of organizing growers to demand negotiations with their buyers, something that had never been done on a group basis before,
President of the NVGGA this year is Andrew Beckstoffer who heads up his own growing and management compa- ny, Vinifera Development. His concern manages 2,500 acres for absentee own- ers and owns its own 700 acres, former- ly a part of Beaulieu Vineyards.
“We got started late last year,” he admits, describing the formation of ggrowers’ committees.
However, he believes that the asso- ciation was successful in winning prices higher than those originally set by the wineries.

This year a lot of growers want committees at their wineries based on the experience of last year,” he said.
He added, that although the prac- tice is limited, some growers are mov ing their grapes from wineries that don’t have committee representation to those that do
Beckstoffer is quick to explain that. the association’s main goal is more communication with wineries rather than haggling over prices.
“Basically what we’re saying is let’s stabilize this thing. There’s no point in putting the wineries out of busi, ness,” he said.
While he admits that growers aren’t happy about recent prices, espe- cially with harvests cut short by the drought, they’re more interested in cementing their relationships with win- eries and improving the value of their grapes.
“Our main focus is to get a long- term contract. If a grower has to choose between a five-year contract with a decent return and selling his grapes for one year at $1,000 a ton, I’d say take the contract.
The association, he said, also hopes to set new base sugar standards and recommends that its members first sell to wineries that use a “Napa Valley” appellation.
Hwever, each committee will go its own way, Beckstoffer said, “we’ve set them up to be independent.”
The members themselves will re- tain their independence,too.
Last year, committees were formed at Mondavi’s Christian Broth- ers, Beaulieu Vineyards and Louis Martini wineries:
The Martini group dissolved with little success and the committee at Beaulieu has retained an attorney to negotiate with an attorney from Heub- lein, Beaulieu’s parent company
Talks did begin at Mondavi’s and at Christian, Brothers with both wineries raising prices. Whether that was due to the committees or high statewide prices is debatable, winery officials say.
Ren Harris: a grower, vineyard manager and president this year of the Napa County Farm Bureau, is chair-. man of the Mondavi committee..
It’s the largest so far, mainly be- cause Robert Mondavi has given the group a list of his growers, something the other wineries have declined to do.
Harris believes his group has made the most progress of any and said that talks are now underway on a proposal that could revolutionize the way grapes are paid for throughout the valley and maybe even the state.

While the connoisseur’s palate may be the only true judge of whether this valley’s grape is the best California has to offer, it remains the most expensive, both to buy and produce.

The 1977 harvest will be no exception and though neither wants low prices, growers and winemakers are talking about ways to put controls on what may be a dangerously fluctuating market.

In recent years some of the more profit- minded growers have taken a page out of the farm worker’s book and started to organize, request what they think are better contract terms and negotiate prices as close to harvest time as possible.

Each of the county’s 50-odd wineries,
has its own style of paying for the grapes it crushes and the traditional practice of the major wineries has been to pay their growers sometimes as late as six months after harvest.

The price they pay then is based on an average of other area wineries.
That is still the case, to some extent, although a new state-mandated reporting system calls for

prices to be published three months after harvest and the averages are now known earlier. The only indication that growers have of the year’s income when they pour their harvest into the crusher is a preliminary price list. Wineries traditionally have paid prices higher than the list

but they are not bound to those figures.
A system that calls for a crop to be sold before the farmer knows its value may seem a bit

strange, but that’s the way things have been done as long as most growers and winemakers can remember.

One reason the system never changed is that no one ever got hurt. Robert Mondavi has been making wine in the Napa Valley since Prohibition when his father purchased the Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena.

Several years ago the younger Mondavi began his own facility in Oakville, just down the road.

“Prices have always gone up,” he explains. “We’ve given the growers a price list and they say,

‘We have faith in Bob. We’ll just let the thing ride.’
“But eight or nine years ago the properties changed hands. People came here from the

Midwest and from other areas. Things changed and for awhile we had quite an unhappy situation.”

Mondavi was describing the influx of new growers that developed with the so-called “wine boom.”

Consumers were finding that wine didn’t come in “red, white and rose” and began demanding premium varietals.

Wine grapes had been grown in the Napa Valley since it was under Spanish rule but suddenly prune orchards and hayfields gave way to more vineyards and new plantings were as high as 4,900 acres a year.

That boom is levelling off now and last year more vines were pulled out than planted. But the makeup of the county’s agricultural community has changed. Joining the families who had held vineyards a century or more were investment groups and southern California businessmen.

Slightly more than a year ago growers, many new arrivals, began to worry about their investments. The state had entered a severe drought and a short harvest was inevitable.

The local Farm Bureau, made up of not only growers but cattlemen and others, spawned the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association. The two groups share an executive secretary and the latter took over the job of organizing growers to demand negotiations with their buyers, something that had never been done on a group basis before.

President of the NVGGA this year is Andrew Beckstoffer who heads up his own growing and management company, Vinifera Development. His concern manages 2,500 acres for absentee owners and owns its own 700 acres, formerly a part of Beaulieu Vineyards.

Like much of the Napa Valley’s wine industry, Beckstoffer’s operation is a complex one dealing with a simple subject, the grape. His office is located in a modest frame farmhouse in St. Helena whose humble exterior belies the interior where art work, antiques and a computer system adorn the walls.

“We got started late last year,” he admits, describing the formation of growers’ committees.

However, he believes that the association was successful in winning prices higher than those originally set by the wineries.

“This year a lot of growers want committees at their wineries based on the experience of last year,” he said.

He added, that although the practice is limited, some growers are moving their grapes from

wineries that don’t have committee representation to those that do.
Beckstoffer is quick to explain that the association’s main goal is more communication with

wineries rather than haggling over prices.
“Basically what we’re saying is let’s stabilize this thing. There’s no point in putting the

wineries out of business,” he said.
While he admits that growers aren’t happy about recent prices, especially with harvests cut

short by the drought, they’re more interested in cementing their relationships with wineries and improving the value of their grapes.

“Our main focus is to get a long-term contract. If a grower has to choose between a five-year contract with a decent return and selling his grapes for one year at $1,000 a ton, I’d say take the contract.”

The association, he said, also hopes to set new base sugar standards, and recommends that its members first sell to wineries that use a “Napa Valley” appellation.

However, each committee will go its own way, Beckstoffer said, “we’ve set them up to be independent.”

The members themselves will retain their independence, too.

“I don’t see a pooling of grapes, I see wineries and growers continuing to be independent businessmen. Growers are fairly independent people.”

Last year, committees were formed at Mondavi’s, Christian Brothers, Beaulieu Vineyards and Louis Martini wineries.

The Martini group dissolved with little success and the committee at Beaulieu has retained an attorney to negotiate with an attorney from Heublein, Beaulieu’s parent company.

Talks did begin at Mondavi’s and at Christian Brothers with both wineries raising prices. Whether that was due to the committees or high statewide prices is debatable, winery officials say.

Ren Harris, a grower, vineyard manager and president this year of the Napa County Farm Bureau, is chairman of the Mondavi committee.

It’s the largest so far, mainly because Robert Mondavi has given the group a list of his growers, something the other wineries have declined to do.

Harris believes his group has made the most progress of any and said that talks are now underway on a proposal that could revolutionize the way grapes are paid for throughout the valley and maybe even the state.

What’s being discussed is a plan that Mondavi says seems to work in the Champagne region of France, tying the price of grapes to the price of wine and eliminating to some extent the influence of supply and demand.

Harris said that what he would like to see is a breakdown of what portion of the selling price of a bottle of wine represents the grapes that went into it.

That percentage would then set the annual price of grapes so that if the price of wine goes up, so will the price of grapes.

Also, if growers’ costs go up, so will the price of a bottle of wine, something Mondavi said could be inevitable if agriculture is to remain a sound industry in the Napa Valley.

Mondavi says he understands the growers’ problems. “There have been low years and the grower wasn’t making enough to pay his bills,” he said.

Bob Dwyer, the NVGGA’s executive secretary, wonders how many more low years the growers can take.

According to figures from the University of California, the Napa County assessor’s office and a survey of 32 ranches, Dwyer said that it costs $687 a ton to produce grapes.

According to the county’s agricultural crop report, the average price paid in 1876 was $390 a ton. While grape prices ranged from $200 to more than $1,000, most growers still lost money, he said.

Last year’s crop was just short of 36,000 tons and this year, in spite of the drought, some growers are predicting 45,000, about 5,000 tons short of a “normal” harvest.

Prices will be higher, too, they say, but as they look to the City of Napa where even small three-bedroom homes sell for as much as $50,000, they wonder how much longer their very expensive grape can compete.

W. Andrew Beckstoffer represents a new breed in vineyard management. He has taken the principle of business and finance and applied them to farming, both in hjs Vinifera Vineyards management company and in his role as president of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association.

For a long time, farmers have been considered second class citizens businesswise,” said Beckstoffer. “One reason that has been so is that the farmer has not been analyzing his costs, like wineries and other industries do. This is extremely important, as the farmer cannot be expected to receive less than his costs so long as anyone in the wine system—grower, winery, wholesale distributor, or retailer—is making a profit.”

Beckstoffer believes that farmers must apply the principles of finance to the business of farming. He cites four basic cost of farming—land, labor, materials and money.

“Although some overlook the cost of their own labor, most growers know about the first three. The last is the most often overlooked,” con- tends Beckstoffer.” The most ob- vious are the annual finance charges; the interest cost to borrow money for cultural expenses, harvest, tcetera, and the depreciation cost of vines as they go through their life cycle. Another part of the money cost involves the pre-production, or non- bearing years, and the vineyard investment itself. These can be called the “holding costs” and the “opportunity costs.”

Beckstoffer described as costs the interest charges of invested monies during a period of three or four years before holding grapes produce a crop when growers have not return on their investment. “This is in addi- tion to the actual investment dollars!,” emphasized Beckstoffer.

“‘Opportunity cost’ is the cost of investing opportunity fore- gone by putting the money into the vineyard,”he added. “This refers to the money you could have made had you decided to invest vineyard monies elsewhere or, if the vine- yards already are owned or inherited, to sell the vineyard and invest the proceeds elsewhere. If you are not being paid atleastthatcost,aswellas the others, you’re an economic fool to keep the land!

“Some farmers take pride in the fact that they and their land work for very little,” he said. “The American system shouldn’t require it of the farmer. This may be commendable for the moral character of the individual, but it’s economic suicide and may deny the farmer’s children the opportunity to enjoy the farming way of life.”

A native of Richmond, Va., Beckstoffer rode a football scholar- ship to Virginia Tech, where he obtained a degree in engineering. “I was looking to build houses,” he said. His grandfather had emigrated from Germany before the turn of the century and started a mill and lumber business. Beckstoffer’s father does custom milling and helped prepare Williamsburg for the Bicentennial.

“Vineyard developers are really in the construction business,’explained Beckstoffer. “We use energy and its by-products in our fuels, fertilizers and pesticides. We require real estate, extensive labor, wood, metals and borrowed money. That’ con- struction! Growers wonder why they’re not making a profit. High development and operating costs are part of the reason. Everybody knows what construction costs have done in recent years. They have gone up almost 30 per cent a year for several years. Why are we surprised when our costs are high, severely distorted upwards by recent double digit inflation?”

After a stint in the Army (he was stationed in San Fransico and lived in Mill Valley),he returned East to take his Master’s degree at Dartmouth’s Amos Truck School of Business Administration. During that time he worked for Bell Telephone.

Upon graduation in 1966, he was recruited by Heublein. After working in finance, he was a member of the

team that investigated and later negotiated the purchase of United Vintners and Beaulieu Vineyard. Beckstoffer was then transferred to San Francisco as vice president of planning for United Vintners.Ayear later, when it became evident that more Napa Valley grapes were needed for the Heublin-owned wineries, he was asked to form Vinifera Development Corp.

By 1972 the goals of the new company had been met and Heublein was then forced to decide whether or not it wanted to retain an operation that was becoming increasingly involved in the management, ownership and farming of vineyards. The answer was negative, so the company was sold to Beckstoffer.

Today,Vinifera Vineyards does manage, own and farm vineyards. And, though most of the grapes un- der Vinifera’s care still go to Heublein wineries, Beckstoffer points out that this company will farm for anybody, regardless of where they choose to sell their grapes. In fact, some of Beckstoffer’s newest plantings in Mendocino County are destined for Parducci and other Mendocino and Sonoma county wineries.

Vinifera Vineyards owns, or has long term leases with options to buy, nearly 1,650 acres of vineyards. It manages, over 3,000 acres.including all of the Beaulieu Vineyards properties (which itself includes the Madame de Pins vineyard).

“When we first started the company (under Heublein),” said Beckstoffer, “our chief viticulturist was Andre T chelistcheff. More than anything else, he taught us to think in microclimates, a practice that we’ve followed since day one. It is so important to match the variety to the soil and to match the vineyard systems to the variteties, soils and microclimates.

“You know, no one has ever had disease-free, heat-treated vines on deep, rich soils. People had historically used crappy ground for grapes. We don’t even know what our yields should be with regard to quality.”

One thing that Beckstoffer is doing to temper high Napa Valley land costs is to use closer vine spacing. Instead of the more common eight x 12 foot (450 vines per acre),Beckstoffer istryingsixx10foot(or726vinesper acre) in some areas. Assuming each vine produces a similar crop level, one would see a 60 per cent increase in tonnage.

“Eight by 12 vine spacing was the result of a 1953 Winkler study that was done without water. We have water and, after talking with Winkler, he said that he didn’t know any reason why our spacing wouldn’t work viticulturally. The worst part of such a decision was that we had to make it (in 1970) when we knew the least. But, we feel that we were able to hedge our bet somewhat. If we’re wrong (by having too many vines per acre), we may be able to correct it with trellising and pruning. It’s still too early to oay whether we are right or wrong. But we are trying to bring some basic business principles to agriculture,” he said.

Beckstoffer does not restrict his business training to his own operation. He has been a prominent figure in the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association. Extending its extensive vineyard cost studies, the association recently has released to its members comprehensive guildlines for determining a fair return for their fruit this year and a detailed outline of what prices were paid in the county last year (from the Berryhill Report). The latter shows the high and the low base prices for each of 26 varieties at given sugar contents and the average price paid in the county for each variety.

Programs like this one are designed to raise the awarenessof farmers so that they can obtain more than just personal satisfaction from their chosen livelihood. At this year’s North Coast Viticulture Exposition in Santa Rosa, Napa County farm advisor Keith Bowers recalled the story of two men who were asked what they would do with a $1 million. “The first said that he would buy new clothes for his wife, take a trip to Europe and live off the remainder. The other pondered for a moment, then declared, ‘I’ll just keep on farming until it’s gone!'” But,if people like Beckstoffer have any influence at all, such stories will become a caricature of the past rather than a prophecy of the future.

Should Napa Valley be considered in the same wine region as Santa Barbara County?

That question was raised at a hearing on wine labeling, held by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) here Tuesday.

Napa vintners and winegrape growers urged that the world-renowned “Napa Valley” appellation be retained for local wines, and criticized a California Wine Institute plan to include 14 counties, ranging from Mendocino to Santa Barbara, in the “North Coast Counties” wine designation.

“It is inconceivable to us that this area (North Coast Counties) could extend south of the San Francisco Bay or east of Solano County,” remarked Andrew Beckstoffer, a Rutherford grower representing the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association (NBGGA).

He called the Wine Institute plan a case of “flagrant consumer deception.”

ATF announced earlier this year that “appellations of origin” like Napa Valley would no longer be allowed on wine labels, unless the industry devised a method for determining wine sources.

Yesterday’s hearing at the Hyatt Regency Hotel here was called to hear comments on the ATF plan for turning wine appellation standards over to the states. Testifying before the panel of ATF directors from Washington were wine company executives, trade organization representatives, grower association officials, and wine consumers. Wine industry spokesmen seemed unanimous in their feeling that

ATF should not give appellation control to the states.
“We believe the ATF must retain ultimate control in wine labeling,” said Jack Davies, president of the

Napa Valley Vintners Association and head of Schramsberg Vineyards in Calistoga. “They are the most qualified by experience and authority to achieve the policy goals.”

Other spokesmen said state authority would result in confusion, and hinted that a state appellation agency could be subject to political pressure from “big wine” interests. The Napa vintners group outlined a proposal for determining wine appellations for grape-growing regions other than a state or county. Davies said the area should be determined based on a vote of vineyard and winery owners.

In addition, the appellation area would be judged on its historic association with winemaking, the similarity of topography and growing conditions in the region, and its significance as a wine-producing district.

A nine-member advisory committee of four vintners, two growers, an independent wine expert and ATF official and county farm advisor would evaluate requests for appellation and make recommendations to BATF, under the Napa vintners’ plan.

The local grape growers’ organization offered a similar proposal, although the advisory committee suggested by NVGGA would contain an equal number of growers and winemakers.

Both organizations asked that existing designations like “Napa Valley” be automatically approved. Currently, only nine non-county appellations are used in California, including Napa Valley, Alexander Valley, Central Coast Counties, North Coast Counties, Livermore
Valley, Napa-Sonoma-Mendocino, Russian River Valley, Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains.

The Napa Valley vintners also rapped the Wine Institute plan for an expanded “North Coast Counties” definition. “Some California counties, sometimes referred to under such grouping, could not stand the test of logic or meaningfulness in labeling,” said Davies.

SAN FRANCISCO – Should Napa Valley be considered in the same wine region as Santa Barbara County?

That question was raised at a hearing on wine labeling, held by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) here Tuesday.

Napa vintners and winegrape growers urged that the world-renowned “Napa Valley” appellation be retained for local wines, and criticized a California Wine Institute plan to

Rennick Harris, a Yountville grape grower, testified on behalf of the California Farm Bureau Federation, which has endorsed the NVGGA proposal.

John Wright, president of M & H Vineyards in Yountville, the California subsidiary of French Champagne-maker Moet & Hennessey, said the strict appellations are based on historical and geographical factors, and are “tailored” by local industry.

Edmund Mirassou, president of Mirassou winery in Santa Clara County, defended the 14-county definition for a “North Coast” appellation. “Who are we to determine what is the North Coast,” he said. “The Spaniards said that everything north of Tijuana is Alta California.”

The hearings continued today, and will be followed next month by further hearings in Washington D.C. ATF director Rex Davis said a decision on the matter should be made in about six months.

Supervisors indicated Tuesday they gladly will unite with valley vintners and grape growers to head off an effort by federal authorities to change wine bottle label appellations that could effectively erase “Napa Valley” from all local viticultural products.

Andrew Beckstoffer, vice president of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association, told supervisors Tuesday morning the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has proposed to limit appellations to counties and states. He said if geographic appellations are to be applied, such would be the province of some new state agency.

The local grape growers group opposes state interven- tion in appellation, with Beckstoffer stating Tuesday he
does not believe either agricultural of alcoholic beverage control officials in Sacramento relish taking on new duties.

BATF has complained that a number of applications for wine bottle appellation overlap and are confusing. Therefore, the federal agency says it plans to wash its hands of specific appellation and stick to broad geographic ones. This, BATF said it would do, unless local in- put aids in the definition of appellation areas.

Beckstoffer said that the Napa Valley is one of the four greatest wine producing areas in the world – the others being Bordeaux, Burdundy and the Rhineland.

“We are the appellation area in the United States and as such we should take the lead in
this,” he added. “We feel it is a popular issue. We’re also afraid if the state gets involved the labels could read only California.”

He said he believes the Napa Valley Vintners Association supports his association’s stand, “but they’ll have to speak for themselves.”

“It’s important to have early input,” Supervisor Dowell Martz noted.

“I suggest we take an active role,” Chairman John Tuteur said, “including appearing in the hearings (BATF will hold on this issue, either here, in San Francisco or Washington, D.C.).

“I believe it would be im- pressive to the Washington bureaucrats to see the politicians and the public love their industry and want some protection.”

“The Napa Valley Grape Growers Association proposes and urges that the people of Napa County be allowed to define Napa Valley and advise the federal government (BATF) directly,” Beckstoffer Isaid. We see no need for in- creasing the state bureaucracy … (and urge) the federal government retain its control of appellation of origin matters by means of a precise set of criteria which insures un- filtered advice from the local industry.”

Supervisors agreed to take an active part in the fight to re- tain the Napa Valley appellation.
“It’s protection for the con- sumers of wine as well,” Supervisor Ginny Simms pointed out.

Vinifera of San Francisco has acquired the former Mendocino State Hospital for $2,500,000, it was announced late this morning from the Sacramento office of Paul Savoni, chief land agent for the Department of General Services.

Vinifera is also the owner of a 60-acre parcel off Low Gap Road adjoining the Ukiah cemetery on the west. The San Francisco firm is currently negotiating with the Ukiah Unified school district for sale of the acreage to provide a site for a new Ukiah high school with partial funding for the school approved by the voters in the June 4 primary.

Acquisition of the former state hospital is now subject to review by the state public works board. The sale must receive the approval of the state agency.

Vinifera was the sole bidder for the hospital and its sprawling grounds when the facility was extensively advertised for sale in in April of this year. Their bid of $2,500,000 at that time was was rejected for the reason that Vinifera, according to the Department of General Services, imposed conditions not acceptable to the state. Savoni chose not to comment on what these conditions were.

W. Andrew Beckstoffer, president of available for comment Vinifera, was not before press time. He did divulge to Savoni that his company was considering the former state hospital for a number of possible uses, but that it was Beckstoffer’s intent to work with the community toward finding some compatible usage.

Savoni said the mothball crew of 16 employes that has been maintaining the hospital since it was phased out would be off the grounds by June 30, and respon- sibility for the facility would be tran- sferred from the Department of Health to the Department of General Services.

The sale includes 490 acres of rich agricultural land plus the 247 acres decoted to the 27 major structures, for a total of 737 acres.

The rich agricultural land had been eyed by local and other agriculturists but the state held to a policy of the hospital being sold as a package. One 10-acre parcel was sold to the Ukiah Valley Association for the Retarded. UVAR is presently using one of the outbuildings for its program but will be forced to vacate by July 31.

In the event that the sale now in escrow, is approved, Vinifera may take occupancy by July 5.
One of the oldest structures of its kind in California, the hospital opened in 1910. The ward buildings were added in 1932 and the R&T, administration and commissary buildings in the early 1950’s.

The county was unable to secure a tenant for the structure after the hospital was phased out. A number of educational institutions evidenced some interest, in- cluding Mendocino College, which could not meet an annual rental in excess of $400,000 which the state was asking.

“MICROCOSM,” explains the dictionary, is “a little world; a world in miniature.” Just as the Golden State is a microcosm of the nation, so Napa Valley’s rolling vineyard region is a little world surrounded by California’s many other worlds in miniature – each with distinct ecological and climatic characteristics.

And while this may smack of esoteric discussion, Andrew

Beckstoffer will tell you the concept can spell economic success or failure to grape growers.

Head of the Napa Valley
Vineyard Company, a firm which
manages and farms 2,000 acres of local vineyards, Beckstoffer is a proponent of the microcosm approach to agriculture.

“In the grape business today, we don’t know what will grow effectively until we plant it,” said Beckstofter, explaining that modern vineyard technology is young. “It requires a knowledge of the growing pattern of the area…It’s not enough just to know — for example — that it’s cooler in Carneros than Calistoga.”

Specific knowledge of climatic and soil conditions, coupled with Napa Valley know-how is the basis for the technical side of the company’s contract farming vineyard management program.

To provide that important “custom” touch, the firm boasts a staff of professionals, each with expertise in a particular Napa Valley microcosm. For example, there’s Roy Harris of Calistoga, vice president for vineyard operations and general manager: vineyard manager Bob Steinhaur of St. Helena and Joaquin Villanueva of Rutherford.

Moving south down the valley, the firm turns to Steve Yates for advice on Yountville and looks toward Ronald Lopolo when it comes to quirks of the country around Napa itself. In the Carneros region, expertise is provided by Kirby Quaschnick and Frank Villanueva.

I believe that vineyard management decisions must be based on first-hand knowledge of local conditions together with a personal understanding growers needs,” said Beckstoffer, who

late last year purchased the assets of Vinifera Development Corporation and established the Napa Valley Vineyard Company.

But Beckstoffer is quick to point out that while field work and technical aspects of grape growing cannot be overemphasized there is yet another necessary ingredient for a successful operation — sound, cost-conscious management.

Among the management tools he uses in business planning are annual operating budgets, month-by-month activity reports and up-to-date cash expenditure information.

Beckstoffer warns that it takes a balanced mix of good business methods and grower expertise to make any modern farming operation profitable, and says he is skeptical when these come from outside the region.

“We actually believe you can’t run Napa County farms from the outside,” he explained. “In the long run, corporate farming is inefficient. “I’m talking about large farming — not the family operation.”

He contends one major problem of small farmers — and probably a contributing factor to their lack of success —is an inability to combine modern technology with sound business practices.

“We might come up with an idea that looks good economically, but it never goes unless it works out at the farm lever,” he said. Conversely, many ideas that look good in the field, when later studied prove to be unworkable economically.

“The business you see today is going to be different than the business you see 10 years from now,” says Beckstoffer. “We’re at the top (in Napa Valley). The character of our product carries right on to the consumer….it requires involvement. We can’t afford to produce bad fruit or allow anyone else to produce bad fruit.”

Roy Harris, chief of vineyard operations for the firm agrees. He sees many changes on the horizon for grape growners, and says Napa Valley growers and winemakers must stay on the top of the technology revolution if they are to maintain the current image of premium wine excellence.

“Half of the plantings today will probably be redeveloped over the next five-10 years as the new grapes come in,” said Harris as he explained the shift from standard to premium grapes which many major wineries in the valley are now demanding.

“It’s a business where a man can still express himself…,” said Harris “In Napa Valley the winemaker takes the grape and helps it become what it was supposed to be.”

Forecasting increased interaction between growers and winemakers to insure that the needs of both are met, Harris said new technology will help growers produce the quality and quantity of grape required for premium wines. “We do practical technical research in areas such as vine spacing, drip irrigation and frost protection in the field — not in the laboratory,” Harris added.

Asked about the future of Napa Valley wines and their ability to successfully compete with European vintners, Beckstoffer stressed the need to maintain high standards. “It’s easy to get somebody to buy a bum product once, but all the marketing in the world won’t get him to buy it twice.”

“I’ll make you a bet,” said Beckstoffer, “that by 1980 there will be more Napa Valley wine consumed in central France than Bordeaux (wines) in Napa Valley.”

“We’re not interested in making money,” says W. Andrew Beckstoffer, president of Vinifera Development Corp., “Just grapes.”

Beckstoffer’s remark may not be as unprofitable as it sounds. As a subsidiary of Heublein Inc., Vinifera Development’s goal is securing a steady supply of top-quality, varietal grapes for the parent firm’s wine-making unit, United Vintners Inc.

The boom in the wine business has meant that quality wine production in California has been less than could be marketed. It is limited by the availability of good grape varieties.

In a study by its economics department, Bank of America predicts that “the strongest growth in wine markets ever recorded will occur during the next 10 years.” Annual U.S. consumption will hit 400 million gallons
by 1980, a 60% increase over the 250 million gallons consumed in 1970, the bank said.

The expected upsurge in wine drinking by U.S. citizens, especially the younger set, has not gone unnoticed by the industry and those who watch for growth situations. The value of wine-producing land (chiefly in Napa, Sonoma and Mendicino counties) has risen sharply in the last two years, and private individuals and big corporations have rushed in to secure a place in the industry.

Heublein, a multi-million outfit based in Hartford, Conn. Got into the act by acquiring United Vintners-a co-op of growers – 1969. Heublein has run into some problems, however, particularly in the area of supply.

United Vintners produces such brands as Inglenook, Italian, Swiss Colony, Petri, Lejon and Beaulieu, and the 82% – owned unit of Heublein feels it will have some difficulty in the next decade acquiring a sufficient amount of high-quality grapes. That’s where Vinifera and Beckstoffer come into the picture.

Vinifera is trying to bring small, individual investors into the wine business by offering
agricultural know-how and management techniques to small grape growers. All Vinifera wants is a long- term contract to buy their grapes.

“The wine business costs a lot of money to get into,” Beckstoffer said in an interview, “but besides that, it requires a great deal of knowledge and financial support. If the investor puts up the money, we can provide the rest.

As an example, Beckstoffer outlines a possible plan concerning a 30-acre parcel in the Napa Valley, probably California’s best wine grape-growing region.

“The land might cost $100,000,” says Beckstoffer, “but it might not be worth the price. An inexperienced person might look at the property in the spring, when it looked nice. We could come in for him, though, and find out that it floods in the fall.”

Besides selecting the land, Vinifera will prepare a projection of the land’s possible output per acre and help the investor select the right variety of grapes.

In return, Vinifera asks the investor to sign two contracts: a long-term pact which promises the land’s output to United Vintners; and an agreement that Vinifera will farm the land at cost.

“If a man wants to farm his own land, we can work that out too,” says Beckstoffer.

Because of the contract with Vinifera, Beckstoffer says institutional lenders are easily persuaded to lend large amounts of cash to the investor for development and farming purposes, and sometimes part of the initial cost of the land.

From there, the San Francisco-based subsidiary of Heublein draws up annual budgets, cash outlay schedules and other financial planning materials. If Vinifera has been contracted to work the land, the company will obtain the right vines and other materials at cost, in addition to procuring labor.

“Premium wineries have always owned their own land,” says Beckstoffer, “enabling them to maintain quality. Through Vinifera and outside investors, Heublein feels it can do the same thing without much capital.”

For the investor, Beckstoffer says the arrangement with Vinifera has an added kicker; land in Napa Valley is only about 60 miles from San Francisco, and therefore offers the investor a substantial amount of security, even if the crops fail, he says.

To date, Vinifera has set up such agreements with investors owning about 2,000 acres in the Napa Valley, but Beckstoffer says it has just begun.

“We think we can offer doctors, lawyers and other businessmen as easy way to get involved in the romance of the wine industry,” says Vinifera’s president.

W. Andrew Beckstoffer has been promoted to manager of acquisition analysis in the corporate development group of Heublein Inc.

Beckstoffer had been manager of long-range planning in the finance division. He joined Heublein in 1966 as a management trainee, later worked the Arrow marketing division.

He had been a field engineer with Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. and had served two years as an Army officer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in business administration from Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth.