Verticals (2019) s01e02 Episode Script
Schramsberg
(cork popping)
- This is an interesting business to be in
for anybody who sells a product.
Imagine if you had to age
things three, four years
before you could actually
sell them, right?
It's a longterm proposition.
(slow peaceful music)
(slow orchestral music)
(bottles rattling)
- [Jay] Schramsberg is a
sparkling wine-centric winery
that is located in an unusual place
for sparkling wine
wineries in Napa Valley.
It's close to Calistoga.
- Schramsberg created
American sparkling wine
as far as high quality goes.
And I think American
sparkling wine now can compete
with the French champagnes
and it was because of Schramsberg.
They set the stage for
American sparkling wine.
- I'll take you back to 1862.
There was a guy and a gal.
German immigrants.
Jacob and Anna Schram.
They came from Pfeddersheim, Germany.
Suffice to say, 20 years later,
they would start this winery
which they would call
Schramsberg, or Schramsberg.
And so, if you think of the 1860s,
Civil War was going on on the
other side of the country.
Simultaneous to that, there were a couple
of German immigrants who
stared planting Riesling.
So the Schram family had a
good run of success, frankly.
They were here for about 50 years,
up until the time of Prohibition.
- In the late 19th
century, pre-Prohibiion was
certainly a heyday in Napa Valley.
There were a great number
of wineries that were here,
Charles Krug, Schramsberg,
and the wines were becoming famous.
The brakes were put on that hard in 1919
when Prohibition passed, so you wound up
with a lot of ghost wineries.
Schramsberg became one of those.
And it was really remarkable to see
the Davies family resurrect that
some years after Prohibition was ended.
The Davies family acquired
Schramsberg in the 1960s.
And Jamie and Jack Davies were some of
the early Napa pioneers that came here
to sort of forge their
dream and start a winery
and they chose Schramsberg
as the place to do it.
And sparkling wine became
their thing and their love.
- Thinking back to my parents,
what business did they have
coming here to make wine?
Were their parents farmers?
No, did their parents like wine?
No.
My parents who were novices
relative to winemaking,
but youthful, spirited,
enthusiastic, gutsy,
and they came up from Southern California
with this idea that they could make
world-class sparkling wines.
What got my parents here
frankly were these caves.
They were looking to do
bottle-fermented sparkling wine,
traditional method.
They had been to Champagne.
They had a sense for what it
should look like and feel like.
And as they were expressing
that to some realtors,
the realtor took my parents up
to the old Schramsberg caves.
You gotta see this place, and boom.
They fell in love with it.
For them, the notion of reviving
an older historic winery
was awesome.
- I think it was genius
and at the same time,
just really audacious to have this family
move up from LA, know nothing about wine,
and then make the most
difficult wine in the world.
Sparkling wine methode
champenoise, it's crazy.
Hugh Davies is second
generation winemaker.
He was born in the same vintage
that his parents bought Schramsberg.
- I was born in '65.
Born just after that first harvest.
(peaceful piano music)
Well hey, this is a jewel, right?
You can actually see the little decal.
It's old enough for that
little decal that came off.
That might've said Reserve
or something like that
at one time.
This is unusual.
I know that we have a few bottles
of each one of these vintages
remaining in our cellar.
Yeah, there might be 10 or 12 or some.
I wish that we had more,
but this particular bottle,
bought at the Duck Blind Liquors, $9.25,
which would've been a
pretty expensive bottle
back in the day.
But this bottle was recovered
by the guys at Augustine
Wine Bar in Los Angeles
here in 2019.
This bottle would've
been the fifth vintage
that we produced of the Blanc de Blancs
here at Schramsberg.
The '69 was the wine that really helped
make us a little more famous
from those paying attention.
I don't know if we'll ever know exactly
what happened, but there
was a day in January of '72
when the phone rang and my
parents were asked to deliver
13 cases of Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs
to the Travis Air Force Base,
which is near Sacramento.
No reason was given for why
they would need 13 cases.
A state department, that's
pretty, pretty interesting.
And so they delivered it
and they wouldn't find out for three weeks
what the wine was to be used for.
In February of '69, or
February of '72, I should say,
then-president Richard
Nixon was the first to ever,
first American president
to ever visit China
while being president at the same time.
And it was the beginning
of the end of the Cold War
where we had obviously
a difficult relationship
with the Chinese, but Nixon
met with Mao and Zhou Enlai.
Henry Kissinger, our
Secretary of State at the time
was onboard and at the
end of the week-long
series of meetings, there
was a historic toast to peace
in the People's Republic
Hall off of Tiananmen Square
in Beijing, and this very wine
was actually served that night.
And it wasn't until some
friends were watching
The Today Show and they
called up my parents
early one morning and said,
"Turn on the television."
They just said Schramsberg
had been served.
And so it was Barbara
Walters who had a bottle
of this very wine on
Tiananmen Square in Beijing
and she explained to the national audience
that a little known sparkling wine,
the Schramsberg Blanc de
Blancs had been served
at this toast to peace the night before.
So, exciting.
Here we are 50 years
later, and we have a chance
to crack open one of the bottles
that would've spent a couple
years here in these caves
all those years ago.
All right.
So a little wire here.
And so, usually, I mean
you can get these things.
Sometimes the corks are a little fragile.
With patience, we'll get it.
This part of the cellar
that we're in right now
was dug in about 1990.
So as you look all the
way down to the other end
of the caves, that's where
this bottle would've hung out
when it went through
its bottle fermentation
and then, subsequent aging.
We've added onto the caves
a little bit over the years.
So in 1969, I turned four years old.
Most people weren't alive
who are alive today in 1969.
And the Blanc de Blancs, of
course, is made from chardonnay.
So it's still today, the
first wine that we would make,
Blanc de Blancs, remains our top seller.
Most popular style.
Sometimes the old wires will break.
We'll see if I can get this
one off without snapping it.
Yeah, that worked, all right.
So, you hold the cork and turn the bottle.
Let's see how that works.
Okay, there are those little,
little disks that are under it.
So we wanna grab our corkscrew.
(popping)
We got it.
Okay.
Now, the taste, the degustation.
The golden amber.
Now this one
does not have a lot of effervescence.
(chuckling)
Maybe a little white port.
Little honey.
Brown sugar.
Lots of toast and caramel.
Madeira.
It's got the, it's definitely got some,
ooh, butterscotch perhaps.
Maderised character, pretty cool.
'69, there was a moment when this industry
in Napa was born again.
And it wasn't that people
were just making wine.
What was interesting, compelling,
and what propels the industry to this day
was that the people who came together
to work hard to make wine at that time
wanted to make world class wine.
They wanted to make wines that would rival
the best of Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux,
and they were committed,
they were dedicated.
There were a lot of
people who didn't believe
that it could happen.
This is the new world.
You don't have the terroir.
There's still people who may believe that.
And so this was the stand
out sparkling wine produced
in the decade of the '60s.
The first in the States to use chardonnay
in making a traditional method,
bottle-fermented sparkling wine.
And exciting to be able
to present it today
as we consider a moment 50 years ago.
(vibrant violin music)
- Champagne is certainly the luxury model
for sparkling wine.
And at the time that they were starting,
everyone wanted to compare what
they were doing to champagne
and the belief in the wine world was that
great sparkling wine couldn't be made
anywhere outside of Champagne.
And the Schramsberg operation
and the Davies family
were a part of the modern
winemaking movement.
Through their eyes and their efforts,
we started to find out that you could make
really great sparkling
wine somewhere else.
- If you visit Champagne, one
of the most incredible things
is to see the caves that
are dug underground.
And if you visit Schramsberg,
you would never know that
you were not in Champagne.
(peaceful music)
- [Jay] One of the magical
things about Schramsberg is
it's an old historical winery
with caves that were
dug in the 19th century.
Those caves and those
aging cellars are just
absolutely stunning works
of human physical labor
and architecture.
They're beautiful.
- [Laura] They're an
incredible, really old carvings
in the volcanic soils.
- You get a sense that you're,
you have a better sense that
you're under the ground, right?
You're under the ground.
It's a living and breathing space.
There are some pockets here,
we've actually got a little
bit coming off the ceiling.
My mom used to call it lichen,
which is a combination of a
mold and an algae as well.
But you know, it's a
very simple organisms,
single cell that kind of grow together
and gradually absorb the moisture
that might weep out of the hills here.
So this is the 1990 J. Schram.
Actually the bottle has the old label,
we call it the old label,
with the architectural motif
from the veranda of the house.
Jacob Schram, of course,
the original founder at Schramsberg.
My parents would revive this
winery, Schramsberg, in 1965.
I think that my parents,
they had a very special bond
like, between them.
They had a lot of
confidence in each other.
And while there was no
one that had succeeded
to the extent that they
would attempt to succeed
in the sparkling wine category in the US,
at the time, like nobody
was really even drinking it.
I mean, and Napa Valley had
20 active wineries in 1965.
That's it, and no one was
making the bottle-fermented
sparkling using the
chardonnay and pinot noir,
let alone anywhere else
in the United States.
So there really wasn't a category.
But they just believed
that there would be,
like that it was coming,
that it would evolve
and that it would change.
My dad went to Stanford and
Harvard Business School.
He was a smart guy.
He was the CEO of a
company called Ducommun
down in Southern California
that made plane and rocket parts
and this was in the early '60s.
That was a good business to be in.
He had a good salary.
Lived in rolling hills and had a new home.
Starting a family.
And then they would come to my mom's dad
and tell him about they're
pulling up the stakes
and they're going to Calistoga
up in the Napa Valley
and they were gonna make sparkling wine
in this traditional method
with chardonnay and pinot noir.
But nobody drinks it.
Why would you do?
Don't, terrible idea.
And it was, it frankly was, I mean,
it wasn't a such good idea.
But they did it more,
they did it less because
they thought they were
gonna get rich doing this.
They did it because they
just loved the idea.
And in that first year,
they needed to make
the Blanc de Blancs.
That's what we were gonna do.
We're gonna make a Blanc de Blancs.
It has to be made from chardonnay.
And my dad, unfortunately for him,
was not able to find a grower
who would sell him chardonnay.
And he started maybe a
little late in this process,
but in the spring of '65,
he started banging on
doors and calling people
looking for chardonnay.
Mind you there was only 200
acres of chardonnay planted
in the whole state of California in 1965.
Today, well more than 100.000, right?
So there's been a sea change there.
But he was able, his own suggested
talk to Mondavi 'cause
he's pretty well connected.
And so he was at Charles Krug at the time.
And Robert said that he would allow him
to have some of their chardonnay wine
and he would trade, my dad
located some Riesling grapes
and my dad was gonna
trade the Riesling grapes
for a little bit of the chardonnay wine.
500 gallons of chardonnay.
A tank that's probably six feet tall
and three feet by three feet in dimension.
Just that much.
So sure enough, a deal was made
and that's how we ended up
making that first Blanc de Blancs.
It came from Charles Krug
winery and that one tank.
But Mondavi would tell my dad,
"This is kind of a crazy idea you have,
"but if you succeed, we'll all succeed."
And I think the California
category has evolved nicely.
It's still relatively small
and young as a category
compared to, say, what
they're doing in Champagne.
My dad would love to tell
the story of the knock
on the door from the nice
French people from Moet
who came in '72 shortly
after Nixon had gone to China
with our wine and they were
interested in buying the winery.
But we weren't for sale, and my parents
invited them to come.
Hey, you should come here
too, make sparkling wine.
Chardonnay, pinot noir,
it's gonna be good.
And so they did come shortly thereafter.
Piper-Heidsieck started Piper Sonoma.
So not too far from here.
And before you know it, there was a Mumm,
there was a Roederer,
there was a Taittinger
with Domaine Carneros, there was Deutz,
and so, we'll see where
it all goes from here.
But there was a little
bit of a crowded field
of French-California sparkling producers
by the time you reached actually,
going back to this wine, 1990.
There was a bit of a bump in demand
for sparkling wine in the mid '80s.
And then this was a category
that lost a little popularity
as you went to 1990 and that
recession in '90, '91, '92.
George Bush the first lost his
second run for the presidency
in part because the
economy was not strong.
And it got a little
bit complicated for us.
The sparkling category historically,
and to some degree still is,
definitely attached to
the notion of celebration.
It has a luxury tax.
The government taxes sparkling wine
at a higher level than other wines.
It shouldn't, but it does.
And the thinking is that
it's kind of a product
that we don't necessarily need,
and so it should have like, a higher tax
associated with it.
The so-called sin tax or luxury tax.
That said, as our category has grown
over the last 15, even more
so over the last 10 years,
what's happened is that
people aren't necessarily
just celebrating more.
There's a growing population of people
that really love to drink sparkling wines.
It's kind of a regular thing that they do
as opposed to something they
only do on special occasions.
And so I'm hopeful that when
we get to the next recession,
there won't be as much of a direct impact.
But it certainly has, there's a curve
in terms of sparkling wine demand
that definitely has followed
the growth in the economy.
Going back to the 1990 vintage,
really a special year.
Our fourth vintage of the J. Schram.
And now as we'll pop this
cork, this is 29 years old.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
Pooh, so a little bit of a
gentle pop with the 1990.
29 years old.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
Beautiful gold color, look at that.
This one was about 90
chardonnay, 10% pinot noir.
Always a little bit of
pinot in the J. Schram
to give some additional richness and depth
to otherwise what would be
really crisp, tart chardonnay.
Even this far from my nose,
I'm getting some beautiful
baked apple characters.
It's chardonnay, but
remember, it's chardonnay
that was initially about 11% alcohol.
That's a whole lot
different than 14 or 15%.
It's not that ripe.
And again, as we've talked about,
these sparklings and wines in general,
if you start a little bit
on the crisp, tart side,
they will ripen inside of the bottle.
So, interesting notes of graham cracker,
baked breads, whole range of
nuts that are pretty cool,
and seasoning, seasoning
that comes from age.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
Older sparkling always
has that creaminess,
the sensation that is filling.
And then long, long on the palate.
Pretty wine, pretty wine.
Fun to have a chance to taste it today.
The reality is that when you work
kind of with a business
that your parents did,
you live on the properly
where you grew up as a kid,
the place that your parents chose,
I'm kind of living and thinking about
my parents and the Schrams
a little bit every day.
It's a little bit every day.
Now when I taste this wine,
does it kind of trigger even
more thinking in that way?
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
This was kind of the
pinnacle of our effort
in that moment.
And as I think my
parents would want us to,
we have continued to push that envelope,
and I'm excited, I'm excited to taste
our 2018 vintage in 2047.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
- Schramsberg is in Calistoga
and one of the things
you would expect them
to have grown from the
beginning is cabernet sauvignon
in Napa Valley, and it's only since 2001
that they've been releasing
cabernet sauvignon.
(leaves rustling)
(peaceful piano music)
- The 2001 J. Davies
Diamond Mountain Cabernet
is the first that we've
produced actually, this vintage.
My dad was Jack Davies and with my mom,
they established this
Schramsberg sparkling wine brand
here in these hills.
And then it was in the early
'90s that we came to realize
that we might be able to make
really delicious cabernet
from this site.
And so here we have 46
acres of planted vineyards
in the Diamond Mountain district of Napa.
And we've been producing our
own estate cabernet since 2001.
I think from a marketing standpoint,
it might have seemed a little
bit confusing to some people.
For us, I think I've
been asked that question
a thousand times.
How can you be taken seriously
if you're a sparkling wine producer
and now you're making a cabernet?
But I think the person who
would ask that question
is not thinking about the fact that
we own 46 acres of vineyard
on Diamond Mountain in Napa.
I mean, what would you grow
if you had that vineyard?
And there, I think the
answer nine times out of 10
would be cabernet, right?
This is what you do.
It's these volcanic soils.
It's mountain, hillside farming.
Napa Valley, Diamond Mountain.
It's successful, it's working.
We weren't the first to do it.
The good news is that the
market for Napa cabernet
is bigger than the market
for Napa anything else,
so you do have that going
for you, so there's that.
People like Napa cabernet.
People like cabernet.
People drink cabernet.
It's the number one red
wine grape in California.
So in '94, we started replanting
vineyard on this property
for the first time, pulling
out chardonnay initially
and planting cabernet.
And it's actually literally
about eight rows down this way
where there's some '94.
My dad would pass away in '98.
My mom was still alive at the time.
And we liked the idea of honoring my dad
who had recently passed
away with a bottle.
And even though it wasn't
necessarily his idea
to do cabernet here, we
thought what the heck,
we're gonna honor him by
naming this wine after him.
So 2001 was the first vintage.
2004, we launched this wine.
It was an interesting time to some degree,
challenging for me personally.
My role transitioned
from being more involved
just with winemaking to
really being the member
of the next generation
to manage the winery
and the business.
Once the 9/11 episode happened,
our business, we lost 30%
of our sales in that year.
And so that was devastating.
Concurrent to that, we were hey,
we're gonna sell a cabernet.
Diamond Mountain cabernet, it's good.
Plenty of people were, what,
you guys do sparkling wine.
Why would you do cabernet?
You shouldn't do cabernet.
I mean, I definitely heard
that from many people.
You shouldn't do that.
It's a mistake.
You're making a mistake.
We're like no, we're not making a mistake.
We definitely should grow
cabernet on our property.
And so, we definitely were
convinced that we could do it.
And we worked hard at it.
And it was cool 'cause my mom was here.
And she fully believed
that it was gonna work.
But it took all of the year to
sell the 500 cases, for sure.
It wasn't like we released
it and the pff, gone.
And now we make a little bit more
and we've added some
pinot noir to the mix.
We have a separate tasting facility.
I mean, so we've grown up a little bit,
but heck, we've been selling
the cabernet now for 15 years.
Now I've got more gray
hair and I'm older, too.
When we launched this, I would've been 38.
Now I'm 53, so.
I have three sons actually.
14, 12, and 10 currently.
We live here on the property.
They're living and breathing our winery,
the vineyards, the program, the industry
more than they know.
And I really, I do hope
that they'll be inspired
to continue on with
this thing that started
long before I was here, right?
For many people, this isn't necessarily
the sole means for the family's survival.
But this is what we do.
And we've had some tougher moments.
But knock on wood, on
this barrel, it'll work
and another generation,
several generations,
hey what the heck, will
continue on with this thing
that was started all those years ago.
18 year old bottle.
But it's exciting to
taste the first vintage
of our J. Davies cab here.
(bright piano music)
There's always been a
beautiful dark berry,
dark kinda plum essence to the aroma.
I find it still quite pronounced,
quite pleasing, quite.
There's a ripeness to it.
With berries, they can range
from being a little redder
and a little bit more tart,
and then they can be really
jammy on the more extreme range
of the ripeness spectrum.
I would put our, our cabernet
is on the redder side
of that ripeness spectrum.
And I think part of that
gives us some longevity too,
some age worthiness.
(bright piano music)
Look at that color.
It's still bright, man.
Nothing like cabernet in the morning, huh?
Where's the brie, my friend?
("Fur Elise" by Beethoven)
- This is an interesting business to be in
for anybody who sells a product.
Imagine if you had to age
things three, four years
before you could actually
sell them, right?
It's a longterm proposition.
(slow peaceful music)
(slow orchestral music)
(bottles rattling)
- [Jay] Schramsberg is a
sparkling wine-centric winery
that is located in an unusual place
for sparkling wine
wineries in Napa Valley.
It's close to Calistoga.
- Schramsberg created
American sparkling wine
as far as high quality goes.
And I think American
sparkling wine now can compete
with the French champagnes
and it was because of Schramsberg.
They set the stage for
American sparkling wine.
- I'll take you back to 1862.
There was a guy and a gal.
German immigrants.
Jacob and Anna Schram.
They came from Pfeddersheim, Germany.
Suffice to say, 20 years later,
they would start this winery
which they would call
Schramsberg, or Schramsberg.
And so, if you think of the 1860s,
Civil War was going on on the
other side of the country.
Simultaneous to that, there were a couple
of German immigrants who
stared planting Riesling.
So the Schram family had a
good run of success, frankly.
They were here for about 50 years,
up until the time of Prohibition.
- In the late 19th
century, pre-Prohibiion was
certainly a heyday in Napa Valley.
There were a great number
of wineries that were here,
Charles Krug, Schramsberg,
and the wines were becoming famous.
The brakes were put on that hard in 1919
when Prohibition passed, so you wound up
with a lot of ghost wineries.
Schramsberg became one of those.
And it was really remarkable to see
the Davies family resurrect that
some years after Prohibition was ended.
The Davies family acquired
Schramsberg in the 1960s.
And Jamie and Jack Davies were some of
the early Napa pioneers that came here
to sort of forge their
dream and start a winery
and they chose Schramsberg
as the place to do it.
And sparkling wine became
their thing and their love.
- Thinking back to my parents,
what business did they have
coming here to make wine?
Were their parents farmers?
No, did their parents like wine?
No.
My parents who were novices
relative to winemaking,
but youthful, spirited,
enthusiastic, gutsy,
and they came up from Southern California
with this idea that they could make
world-class sparkling wines.
What got my parents here
frankly were these caves.
They were looking to do
bottle-fermented sparkling wine,
traditional method.
They had been to Champagne.
They had a sense for what it
should look like and feel like.
And as they were expressing
that to some realtors,
the realtor took my parents up
to the old Schramsberg caves.
You gotta see this place, and boom.
They fell in love with it.
For them, the notion of reviving
an older historic winery
was awesome.
- I think it was genius
and at the same time,
just really audacious to have this family
move up from LA, know nothing about wine,
and then make the most
difficult wine in the world.
Sparkling wine methode
champenoise, it's crazy.
Hugh Davies is second
generation winemaker.
He was born in the same vintage
that his parents bought Schramsberg.
- I was born in '65.
Born just after that first harvest.
(peaceful piano music)
Well hey, this is a jewel, right?
You can actually see the little decal.
It's old enough for that
little decal that came off.
That might've said Reserve
or something like that
at one time.
This is unusual.
I know that we have a few bottles
of each one of these vintages
remaining in our cellar.
Yeah, there might be 10 or 12 or some.
I wish that we had more,
but this particular bottle,
bought at the Duck Blind Liquors, $9.25,
which would've been a
pretty expensive bottle
back in the day.
But this bottle was recovered
by the guys at Augustine
Wine Bar in Los Angeles
here in 2019.
This bottle would've
been the fifth vintage
that we produced of the Blanc de Blancs
here at Schramsberg.
The '69 was the wine that really helped
make us a little more famous
from those paying attention.
I don't know if we'll ever know exactly
what happened, but there
was a day in January of '72
when the phone rang and my
parents were asked to deliver
13 cases of Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs
to the Travis Air Force Base,
which is near Sacramento.
No reason was given for why
they would need 13 cases.
A state department, that's
pretty, pretty interesting.
And so they delivered it
and they wouldn't find out for three weeks
what the wine was to be used for.
In February of '69, or
February of '72, I should say,
then-president Richard
Nixon was the first to ever,
first American president
to ever visit China
while being president at the same time.
And it was the beginning
of the end of the Cold War
where we had obviously
a difficult relationship
with the Chinese, but Nixon
met with Mao and Zhou Enlai.
Henry Kissinger, our
Secretary of State at the time
was onboard and at the
end of the week-long
series of meetings, there
was a historic toast to peace
in the People's Republic
Hall off of Tiananmen Square
in Beijing, and this very wine
was actually served that night.
And it wasn't until some
friends were watching
The Today Show and they
called up my parents
early one morning and said,
"Turn on the television."
They just said Schramsberg
had been served.
And so it was Barbara
Walters who had a bottle
of this very wine on
Tiananmen Square in Beijing
and she explained to the national audience
that a little known sparkling wine,
the Schramsberg Blanc de
Blancs had been served
at this toast to peace the night before.
So, exciting.
Here we are 50 years
later, and we have a chance
to crack open one of the bottles
that would've spent a couple
years here in these caves
all those years ago.
All right.
So a little wire here.
And so, usually, I mean
you can get these things.
Sometimes the corks are a little fragile.
With patience, we'll get it.
This part of the cellar
that we're in right now
was dug in about 1990.
So as you look all the
way down to the other end
of the caves, that's where
this bottle would've hung out
when it went through
its bottle fermentation
and then, subsequent aging.
We've added onto the caves
a little bit over the years.
So in 1969, I turned four years old.
Most people weren't alive
who are alive today in 1969.
And the Blanc de Blancs, of
course, is made from chardonnay.
So it's still today, the
first wine that we would make,
Blanc de Blancs, remains our top seller.
Most popular style.
Sometimes the old wires will break.
We'll see if I can get this
one off without snapping it.
Yeah, that worked, all right.
So, you hold the cork and turn the bottle.
Let's see how that works.
Okay, there are those little,
little disks that are under it.
So we wanna grab our corkscrew.
(popping)
We got it.
Okay.
Now, the taste, the degustation.
The golden amber.
Now this one
does not have a lot of effervescence.
(chuckling)
Maybe a little white port.
Little honey.
Brown sugar.
Lots of toast and caramel.
Madeira.
It's got the, it's definitely got some,
ooh, butterscotch perhaps.
Maderised character, pretty cool.
'69, there was a moment when this industry
in Napa was born again.
And it wasn't that people
were just making wine.
What was interesting, compelling,
and what propels the industry to this day
was that the people who came together
to work hard to make wine at that time
wanted to make world class wine.
They wanted to make wines that would rival
the best of Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux,
and they were committed,
they were dedicated.
There were a lot of
people who didn't believe
that it could happen.
This is the new world.
You don't have the terroir.
There's still people who may believe that.
And so this was the stand
out sparkling wine produced
in the decade of the '60s.
The first in the States to use chardonnay
in making a traditional method,
bottle-fermented sparkling wine.
And exciting to be able
to present it today
as we consider a moment 50 years ago.
(vibrant violin music)
- Champagne is certainly the luxury model
for sparkling wine.
And at the time that they were starting,
everyone wanted to compare what
they were doing to champagne
and the belief in the wine world was that
great sparkling wine couldn't be made
anywhere outside of Champagne.
And the Schramsberg operation
and the Davies family
were a part of the modern
winemaking movement.
Through their eyes and their efforts,
we started to find out that you could make
really great sparkling
wine somewhere else.
- If you visit Champagne, one
of the most incredible things
is to see the caves that
are dug underground.
And if you visit Schramsberg,
you would never know that
you were not in Champagne.
(peaceful music)
- [Jay] One of the magical
things about Schramsberg is
it's an old historical winery
with caves that were
dug in the 19th century.
Those caves and those
aging cellars are just
absolutely stunning works
of human physical labor
and architecture.
They're beautiful.
- [Laura] They're an
incredible, really old carvings
in the volcanic soils.
- You get a sense that you're,
you have a better sense that
you're under the ground, right?
You're under the ground.
It's a living and breathing space.
There are some pockets here,
we've actually got a little
bit coming off the ceiling.
My mom used to call it lichen,
which is a combination of a
mold and an algae as well.
But you know, it's a
very simple organisms,
single cell that kind of grow together
and gradually absorb the moisture
that might weep out of the hills here.
So this is the 1990 J. Schram.
Actually the bottle has the old label,
we call it the old label,
with the architectural motif
from the veranda of the house.
Jacob Schram, of course,
the original founder at Schramsberg.
My parents would revive this
winery, Schramsberg, in 1965.
I think that my parents,
they had a very special bond
like, between them.
They had a lot of
confidence in each other.
And while there was no
one that had succeeded
to the extent that they
would attempt to succeed
in the sparkling wine category in the US,
at the time, like nobody
was really even drinking it.
I mean, and Napa Valley had
20 active wineries in 1965.
That's it, and no one was
making the bottle-fermented
sparkling using the
chardonnay and pinot noir,
let alone anywhere else
in the United States.
So there really wasn't a category.
But they just believed
that there would be,
like that it was coming,
that it would evolve
and that it would change.
My dad went to Stanford and
Harvard Business School.
He was a smart guy.
He was the CEO of a
company called Ducommun
down in Southern California
that made plane and rocket parts
and this was in the early '60s.
That was a good business to be in.
He had a good salary.
Lived in rolling hills and had a new home.
Starting a family.
And then they would come to my mom's dad
and tell him about they're
pulling up the stakes
and they're going to Calistoga
up in the Napa Valley
and they were gonna make sparkling wine
in this traditional method
with chardonnay and pinot noir.
But nobody drinks it.
Why would you do?
Don't, terrible idea.
And it was, it frankly was, I mean,
it wasn't a such good idea.
But they did it more,
they did it less because
they thought they were
gonna get rich doing this.
They did it because they
just loved the idea.
And in that first year,
they needed to make
the Blanc de Blancs.
That's what we were gonna do.
We're gonna make a Blanc de Blancs.
It has to be made from chardonnay.
And my dad, unfortunately for him,
was not able to find a grower
who would sell him chardonnay.
And he started maybe a
little late in this process,
but in the spring of '65,
he started banging on
doors and calling people
looking for chardonnay.
Mind you there was only 200
acres of chardonnay planted
in the whole state of California in 1965.
Today, well more than 100.000, right?
So there's been a sea change there.
But he was able, his own suggested
talk to Mondavi 'cause
he's pretty well connected.
And so he was at Charles Krug at the time.
And Robert said that he would allow him
to have some of their chardonnay wine
and he would trade, my dad
located some Riesling grapes
and my dad was gonna
trade the Riesling grapes
for a little bit of the chardonnay wine.
500 gallons of chardonnay.
A tank that's probably six feet tall
and three feet by three feet in dimension.
Just that much.
So sure enough, a deal was made
and that's how we ended up
making that first Blanc de Blancs.
It came from Charles Krug
winery and that one tank.
But Mondavi would tell my dad,
"This is kind of a crazy idea you have,
"but if you succeed, we'll all succeed."
And I think the California
category has evolved nicely.
It's still relatively small
and young as a category
compared to, say, what
they're doing in Champagne.
My dad would love to tell
the story of the knock
on the door from the nice
French people from Moet
who came in '72 shortly
after Nixon had gone to China
with our wine and they were
interested in buying the winery.
But we weren't for sale, and my parents
invited them to come.
Hey, you should come here
too, make sparkling wine.
Chardonnay, pinot noir,
it's gonna be good.
And so they did come shortly thereafter.
Piper-Heidsieck started Piper Sonoma.
So not too far from here.
And before you know it, there was a Mumm,
there was a Roederer,
there was a Taittinger
with Domaine Carneros, there was Deutz,
and so, we'll see where
it all goes from here.
But there was a little
bit of a crowded field
of French-California sparkling producers
by the time you reached actually,
going back to this wine, 1990.
There was a bit of a bump in demand
for sparkling wine in the mid '80s.
And then this was a category
that lost a little popularity
as you went to 1990 and that
recession in '90, '91, '92.
George Bush the first lost his
second run for the presidency
in part because the
economy was not strong.
And it got a little
bit complicated for us.
The sparkling category historically,
and to some degree still is,
definitely attached to
the notion of celebration.
It has a luxury tax.
The government taxes sparkling wine
at a higher level than other wines.
It shouldn't, but it does.
And the thinking is that
it's kind of a product
that we don't necessarily need,
and so it should have like, a higher tax
associated with it.
The so-called sin tax or luxury tax.
That said, as our category has grown
over the last 15, even more
so over the last 10 years,
what's happened is that
people aren't necessarily
just celebrating more.
There's a growing population of people
that really love to drink sparkling wines.
It's kind of a regular thing that they do
as opposed to something they
only do on special occasions.
And so I'm hopeful that when
we get to the next recession,
there won't be as much of a direct impact.
But it certainly has, there's a curve
in terms of sparkling wine demand
that definitely has followed
the growth in the economy.
Going back to the 1990 vintage,
really a special year.
Our fourth vintage of the J. Schram.
And now as we'll pop this
cork, this is 29 years old.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
Pooh, so a little bit of a
gentle pop with the 1990.
29 years old.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
Beautiful gold color, look at that.
This one was about 90
chardonnay, 10% pinot noir.
Always a little bit of
pinot in the J. Schram
to give some additional richness and depth
to otherwise what would be
really crisp, tart chardonnay.
Even this far from my nose,
I'm getting some beautiful
baked apple characters.
It's chardonnay, but
remember, it's chardonnay
that was initially about 11% alcohol.
That's a whole lot
different than 14 or 15%.
It's not that ripe.
And again, as we've talked about,
these sparklings and wines in general,
if you start a little bit
on the crisp, tart side,
they will ripen inside of the bottle.
So, interesting notes of graham cracker,
baked breads, whole range of
nuts that are pretty cool,
and seasoning, seasoning
that comes from age.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
Older sparkling always
has that creaminess,
the sensation that is filling.
And then long, long on the palate.
Pretty wine, pretty wine.
Fun to have a chance to taste it today.
The reality is that when you work
kind of with a business
that your parents did,
you live on the properly
where you grew up as a kid,
the place that your parents chose,
I'm kind of living and thinking about
my parents and the Schrams
a little bit every day.
It's a little bit every day.
Now when I taste this wine,
does it kind of trigger even
more thinking in that way?
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
This was kind of the
pinnacle of our effort
in that moment.
And as I think my
parents would want us to,
we have continued to push that envelope,
and I'm excited, I'm excited to taste
our 2018 vintage in 2047.
("Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy)
- Schramsberg is in Calistoga
and one of the things
you would expect them
to have grown from the
beginning is cabernet sauvignon
in Napa Valley, and it's only since 2001
that they've been releasing
cabernet sauvignon.
(leaves rustling)
(peaceful piano music)
- The 2001 J. Davies
Diamond Mountain Cabernet
is the first that we've
produced actually, this vintage.
My dad was Jack Davies and with my mom,
they established this
Schramsberg sparkling wine brand
here in these hills.
And then it was in the early
'90s that we came to realize
that we might be able to make
really delicious cabernet
from this site.
And so here we have 46
acres of planted vineyards
in the Diamond Mountain district of Napa.
And we've been producing our
own estate cabernet since 2001.
I think from a marketing standpoint,
it might have seemed a little
bit confusing to some people.
For us, I think I've
been asked that question
a thousand times.
How can you be taken seriously
if you're a sparkling wine producer
and now you're making a cabernet?
But I think the person who
would ask that question
is not thinking about the fact that
we own 46 acres of vineyard
on Diamond Mountain in Napa.
I mean, what would you grow
if you had that vineyard?
And there, I think the
answer nine times out of 10
would be cabernet, right?
This is what you do.
It's these volcanic soils.
It's mountain, hillside farming.
Napa Valley, Diamond Mountain.
It's successful, it's working.
We weren't the first to do it.
The good news is that the
market for Napa cabernet
is bigger than the market
for Napa anything else,
so you do have that going
for you, so there's that.
People like Napa cabernet.
People like cabernet.
People drink cabernet.
It's the number one red
wine grape in California.
So in '94, we started replanting
vineyard on this property
for the first time, pulling
out chardonnay initially
and planting cabernet.
And it's actually literally
about eight rows down this way
where there's some '94.
My dad would pass away in '98.
My mom was still alive at the time.
And we liked the idea of honoring my dad
who had recently passed
away with a bottle.
And even though it wasn't
necessarily his idea
to do cabernet here, we
thought what the heck,
we're gonna honor him by
naming this wine after him.
So 2001 was the first vintage.
2004, we launched this wine.
It was an interesting time to some degree,
challenging for me personally.
My role transitioned
from being more involved
just with winemaking to
really being the member
of the next generation
to manage the winery
and the business.
Once the 9/11 episode happened,
our business, we lost 30%
of our sales in that year.
And so that was devastating.
Concurrent to that, we were hey,
we're gonna sell a cabernet.
Diamond Mountain cabernet, it's good.
Plenty of people were, what,
you guys do sparkling wine.
Why would you do cabernet?
You shouldn't do cabernet.
I mean, I definitely heard
that from many people.
You shouldn't do that.
It's a mistake.
You're making a mistake.
We're like no, we're not making a mistake.
We definitely should grow
cabernet on our property.
And so, we definitely were
convinced that we could do it.
And we worked hard at it.
And it was cool 'cause my mom was here.
And she fully believed
that it was gonna work.
But it took all of the year to
sell the 500 cases, for sure.
It wasn't like we released
it and the pff, gone.
And now we make a little bit more
and we've added some
pinot noir to the mix.
We have a separate tasting facility.
I mean, so we've grown up a little bit,
but heck, we've been selling
the cabernet now for 15 years.
Now I've got more gray
hair and I'm older, too.
When we launched this, I would've been 38.
Now I'm 53, so.
I have three sons actually.
14, 12, and 10 currently.
We live here on the property.
They're living and breathing our winery,
the vineyards, the program, the industry
more than they know.
And I really, I do hope
that they'll be inspired
to continue on with
this thing that started
long before I was here, right?
For many people, this isn't necessarily
the sole means for the family's survival.
But this is what we do.
And we've had some tougher moments.
But knock on wood, on
this barrel, it'll work
and another generation,
several generations,
hey what the heck, will
continue on with this thing
that was started all those years ago.
18 year old bottle.
But it's exciting to
taste the first vintage
of our J. Davies cab here.
(bright piano music)
There's always been a
beautiful dark berry,
dark kinda plum essence to the aroma.
I find it still quite pronounced,
quite pleasing, quite.
There's a ripeness to it.
With berries, they can range
from being a little redder
and a little bit more tart,
and then they can be really
jammy on the more extreme range
of the ripeness spectrum.
I would put our, our cabernet
is on the redder side
of that ripeness spectrum.
And I think part of that
gives us some longevity too,
some age worthiness.
(bright piano music)
Look at that color.
It's still bright, man.
Nothing like cabernet in the morning, huh?
Where's the brie, my friend?
("Fur Elise" by Beethoven)