Verticals (2019) s01e03 Episode Script

(clinking glass)
(soft piano music)
- Alright, let's see
which path do I take Dom?
Should we take,
the upper one
and go that way?
Or the lower one?
Let's take the lower one.
- Alright.
- And then we can come
around the other way.
(soft piano music)
Do you see what happens since
you were here a week ago?
- Yeah, these all came out into bloom.
- That's right.
And what were they?
- Hold on give me a second.
- (whispering) Clary sage.
- Oh no, Clary Sage, no I'm supposed
to give you the Latin name,
right?
- Okay, yeah.
- (whispering) Salvia sclarea turkestanica
- Are you whispering to me?
- (laughs) I'm prompting you.
- Salvia, turkestanica.
- Yeah, Salvia
Yes (laughs)
- Good enough?
- That's good enough.
- Alright.
- Yeah, but look how they popped up.
Just exactly where they should have.
In the middle of the poppies.
Aren't they fabulous?
(soft piano music)
- Chappellet is a winery on
the top of Pritchard hill.
And they've been up
there since the late 60s.
(upbeat music)
Pritchard was an area that had
a small history under vine,
prior to prohibition but really
that kind of died out after prohibition.
And the Chappellet's
moving up there in the 60s.
That was really the rebirth of the region.
So, the Chappellets are
kind of the founding family
in a sense I think for a lot of people
of Pritchard hill and that area.
- Donn Chappellet,
was,
he hated the term.
But a giant visionary.
- At 33 years old,
he had created a very successful business.
- I'd like to say that we might not
have gotten to Starbucks without Donn.
Donn started a company that was founded
on his exclusive license for
the very first vending machine
to make coffee by the
cup from fresh grounds.
And, on the basis of that
machine and that license,
he built an international
company that made him
the largest coffee buyer in the
world, for a period of time.
- I noticed that the energy
and the excitement of the
business that he started.
I don't know whether it
was 10 or 12 years before.
Was waning and he no longer came home
with sparkles in his eyes.
- My mom said, "You know,
we've got an opportunity.
"We're still young, what
do you really wanna do?"
- And so after he though a bit, he said,
"Well the only thing I'm
really passionate about is,
"my wines."
He said, "But I'm not a winemaker."
And I said, "Why not?"
And then he started thinking about,
would that be a possibility?
And so at first he said,
"Well, I wouldn't wanna do
it unless I could make wine
"that was comparable to these
great wines that I love."
Some of the Bordeaux and
some of the Burgundies.
And again, my great input was, "Why not?"
Isn't that a great line?
So, that's why we are here.
- He loved the idea of it,
and eventually when he
got here he realized,
that it was the right thing for him.
- Now we here about that
kind of thing, all the time.
People living there
corporate jobs, or whatever
and coming to wine country
and starting a winery.
But at that time, that
was a very novel thing.
- Move the family up from Los Angeles.
And, as Donn always liked to say,
he traded his jacket for a tractor.
And, began developing the
Chappellet family winery.
- [Dominic] And he was absolutely
in love with this property.
And with the product that we make.
- [Jay] The vineyards progressed
up to about 1800 feet.
Very near the top of Pritchard hill.
And, just below those upper top vineyards,
what we call the upper terraces.
Sits, Molly Chappelet's house.
The family house where she
and Donn raised six kids.
- [Dominic] You know he couldn't
have done anything more perfect
for himself and we're just grateful
we get to be part of it now.
Mom we have a 1974,
Pritchard Hill, Chenin Blanc.
You probably remember this
a little more than I do.
'Cause I was about six,
when this was harvested.
- I hope I remember it more than you did.
- Well sometimes you
let me have a little sip
at the dinner table just
to know that we're in the wine business.
- Actually you should remember it,
because you picked those grapes.
- From the early ages 10
years old, 11, 12, 13.
We started doing projects
and working on the vineyard.
Whatever needed to be done we would do.
Actually to the point that
the schools during harvest,
would close down for several days.
Because they knew that all the families
who went to the school in Elina,
were going to be working on the vineyards.
My mother thinks it's kind of interesting
she kind of jokes about it.
They had to have another
child once we moved up here
because they needed to have cheap labor.
- So, they brought up five
with them from Los Angeles,
and then they decided they needed one more
for working the vineyard I guess.
I probably out there with my brothers
and sisters piking some of these grapes.
- Yeah, It was in that
picture we have of you and me,
picking grapes and your three years old.
And I'm teaching you,
did I teach you well?
- By then I knew it all.
But when I say 74 to you?
What do you think of?
- A lot of children a lot
of noise, a lot of meals.
Not much traffic, it was really nice.
When Donn,
decided that this was a career
that he could put his heart and soul into
and that he really wanted to do.
There is no question,
that we were all for it.
The only thing that was
difficult was going to town
to get food because it was quite a drive
and with five jumping little children,
there were no seat belts in those days.
- My mother was a perpetual bus driver.
She had to move five kids
and then as Dominic came along, six kids.
Back and forth around the valley.
- I thought, "Well this is silly.
"Why are we going to town, we get there
"and their vegetables are old.
What are we doing here?"
And we have this beautiful
big piece of property.
Of course will be self sufficient.
So that's really what started
the gardening madness,
it was all about necessity.
Necessity or surrender for this.
I'm sure you remember when
this was a vegetable garden.
- I do, it's not as useful
anymore but it's sure is pretty.
- For the herbs it is.
(laughter)
But what part of the
garden did you work in?
- I remember carrots.
- Oh yes, remember that was the only time
that I could get the children
to work in the vegetable garden
and I let them choose there
own favorite vegetable.
- Yeah, so the carrot were mine.
- They had to maintain that part.
Looking back in this direction
you'll see three different
colors of the sages.
Slavias, the purple sage
and the golden sage.
And those are all edible.
And then this is the oregano.
This year we are keeping it
very low, just smell that.
It's so great.
- Oh yeah.
- You father loved that,
remember?
- Yep.
- He added it to almost
anything whether it was supposed
to be or not, even when time for dessert.
It's just like wine making.
(laugher)
You have to have, it
is, you want the harmony
but you want the interest
and the complexity.
So, isn't there a similarity here.
It's between that and also an orchestra.
I always feel I'm doing here.
I'm saying, "Okay, let
those trumpets blows there.
"Now you stay a little softer."
And that's the way we do it.
And it just, it happens.
- It's funny how that doesn't
quite work in my garden,
but it seems to work beautifully in yours.
- Let me see your hands.
- I know they're a little.
They're not as dirty.
- That's why.
They have to be dirty under the nails.
- You're ready?
- Mhmm
- Okay.
- I'm excited.
Aren't you?
- I am.
- I always like to see how
my children perform after,
how many years?
- (laughs) After they've left the nest?
- So, Chenin Blanc was here,
when the Chappellets brought the property.
And, it was planted in the upper terraces,
above Donn and Molly's house.
Molly's likes to think of that part
of the vineyard as her backyard.
She, along with any other people,
fell in love with Chenin Blanc
once Chappellet started
making it, in the late 60s.
And, became very passionate about it.
- Well, Chenin was my oldest here,
because it was the nearest
growing right behind
our house in the terraces.
And of course I knew
that, that particular area
of the vineyard probably
better than the rest
because I worked more with
the men in that vineyard.
(slow piano music)
- Wow look at that color.
It says something.
- See right off the
bat, you know we can see
that it's got some really
golden beautiful color
which is to be expected, you
know after being a little old.
- Gosh, that's
I know.
- Aren't you?
I don't care if we taste it, it's--
- No, it's really spectacular.
I hope we can share this with
a few more people before we--
- I hope not (laughs)
- Just you and me.
- Now lets do a toast before we taste it.
(clinking glass)
'Cause it's good this way.
- Cheers.
- Okay.
- Okay.
- I hope, it's as good on the tongue.
- Wow, there's nothing wrong with that.
You know, Chenin Blanc when you think off,
as the first wine that we bottled.
Was the first one we sell.
We think of it as a wine that we open up
within that first year.
And in the nose it almost
feels like it's going
past the sweetness, but it's dry,
it's got a lot of acidity.
It's really beautiful. (laughs)
- Boy is that beautiful.
But more than that,
I was always,
drawn
to the Chenin after we made it.
And Donn, said, "Well that's
a variety will pull out.
"Because that's not really
a significant varietal."
and after he made the first year.
And we tasted it, he said,
"I think we'll wait a while."
It was like no other
Chenin I'd ever tasted.
I became it's biggest fan probably
and then watching people
finally appreciate a dry Chenin,
because at that time I think
there were only Chenins
that were slightly on the sweet side.
And that's what they were used to.
So they didn't think of
it as a great food wine.
And, I realized being the
chef, and the gardener
that it went with practically everything.
So, it was my go to wine if,
I didn't know what to serve,
I would serve Chenin.
- The time that this was being made,
it was at it's probably at it's peek,
you know the vines were
about 10 years old.
- And that was an exciting happy time
because we were doing things
that other people had not done.
Especially in the Napa
Valley, with their Chenins.
I was really a bit upset when they decided
that we should maybe make a change
to all of those terraces up
there which was quite a lot.
And put in the Bordeaux varietals
to make a beautiful cabernet.
- [Dominic] I think
our last crop was 2003.
And then we ripped it all out.
- I mean I didn't mind
that they took out half
or a little bit.
But they took the whole thing out.
All of the terraces, so we had none.
- There was though about, you
know, what are we gonna do?
Are we gonna go back to
Chenin Blanc, maybe not.
And Molly sort of settled that argument
when she walked in the lab
one day in 2007 and said,
"So gentlemen, where are
we replanting the Chenin?"
- And we put in, three little acres.
That's all we have today.
- But that's not what dad came here for.
He came here to make cabernet
and to see what we could do in that realm.
- What he had really
discovered over all those years
was that, there really
weren't a lot of places
in the Napa Valley that
were making cabernet
of this quality, that we were making.
He said, "Oh, we should
do what this man wants
"to do the best himself."
That's what he did.
(upbeat music)
- Donn was a collector of great wines
and his goal was to make great wine.
So this wine, the
Chateau Latour of the 60s
were his inspiration to
come and seek out a property
that could make wines that would rival
these first growths from Bordeaux.
You know the 60s, things
were so quiet in Napa valley.
Only a few wineries and
only a few new wineries,
that were built from the
ground up since prohibition.
Those were few and far between.
And El Robert Mondavi's
winery was the first
to be built in the 1966 and
then Chappellet in 1968.
So, for him to come here and
choose this piece of property,
I think took a lot of nerve.
But it think that was the
kind of person that Donn was.
- He had this passion for
wine that had been developing
in his 20s and then his early 30s.
- He had a fascination, he had a drive
and an interest to collect
some beautiful Bordeauxs
and had a little wine cellar,
in Beverly Hills where our home was.
- What everybody said it couldn't
be done and there was just
an assumption that
french wines were better.
Would always be better, and
there was all we could be
was like a kind of a weak second.
And he felt that it was possible.
This is quite an honor, you
don't get to do this everyday.
To have an old bottle of Chateau Latour
at your disposal like this,
you know we're hoping
it's been well stored.
The cork, it looks a little old.
Let's see this thing is a little loose.
I didn't take a class on this, at Davis.
There we go.
Come on, here we go.
We're back in the running here.
Looked a little dicey there for a minute.
They didn't skimp on the
corks back then either.
This is a nice long cork,
and it looks pretty clean.
Very little, sediment in the neck.
We've had this, standing up for 24 hours.
So, most of the sediment
should be on the bottom.
(soft violin music)
Well,
the color, the color looks pretty good.
I mean it's definitely showing some age.
Little brickish on the edges,
but a nice,
dark center.
(soft violin music)
And for just being open,
it already smells great.
I mean it's got some earthiness,
but there's you know some coffee tones.
Herbs are in the background very sweet
and there's a nice kind of,
almost like a ripped fruit baked fruit.
It's sill young (laughs).
It's a Latour, I think
it's supposed to be.
Very firm tannins and maybe a structure
that were not so used to in California.
It is, long way from
being mature or you know,
in no way in danger of
going over the hill.
I think this wine has a
long life ahead of it.
- He was also willing
to talk to other people
and learn about where could he make
the very very best cabernet in California.
- One of the first people he talked to,
about where to go and find the best grapes
to make the best wine
was Andre Tchelistcheff,
who was making wine for BV.
- Andre Tchelistcheff
was a Russian immigrant,
who taught America how to make wine.
- People call him, the dean
of American wine making.
He was very highly regarded, very tiny man
with a huge personality
and an incredible pallet
who was just well thought of
in the American California
wine making scene.
And somebody whom my
father really looked up to.
And he had been collecting BV along
with those other great wines.
You know the Latours, Lafites
and the Muntons, Margaux
- And he didn't want to move to France.
He knew that Bordeaux had
thousands of years of history.
He liked being here,
this was home for him.
I'm a fifth generation
Californian, he is a fourth.
- One of the things Andre told Donn during
there time together was Andre said,
"I make a pretty good
wine at Beaulieu Vineyard
"and most of my fruit comes
from the valley floor.
"If I can get more fruit
from the hillsides,
"I could make a better wine."
And that was what Donn needed to hear,
that's set him off on a quest
to find a great hillside estate.
- And also gave them the idea
that there was a quality wine
that could come out of Napa Valley
that would compete with
the best in the world.
- Well, this is gonna be interesting,
because I know the 75
Chappellet much better
than I know this 75 Latour.
So we'll open up the 75 Chappellet
and do a quick little comparison.
And see if Donn was right.
(soft music)
This is the 1975 Chappellet
Cabernet Sauvignon,
and at the time, this
was the estate cabernet.
It was only one wine, and it
was, it really represented
the best of the vineyards and the vintage.
And it all went into the wine bottles.
This is the same wine we
started out making in 1969.
I think it's a testament to Donn's idea
that you could make great wines.
You know, rivaling the best wines
in the world in Napa Valley.
Without irrigation, we
got these small berries,
small clusters, but very powerful wines.
Oh,
its beautiful, look at that.
So now we get to try the 75 Chappellet.
Very similar color to Latour.
Maybe a little darker and more
saturated in the pigments.
Same kind of red brick edge.
It is just aging gracefully.
This wine is a blend of
Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
You have a big Cabernet,
you have a soft Merlot,
you put them together
you find the sweet spot.
Aromas are not terribly
different from the Latour.
If you had them side by side,
that kind background fruit.
Some dark fruit in the background.
Some very complex herbal and
leather and coffee tones.
The Chappellet has a
little broader texture.
Maybe a little lower acid,
it's not an alcohol thing,
'cause the wines that we made
in the 60s and in the 70s
were, very low alcohol, very
similar to the Bordeaux wines.
I'm trying to be impartial,
because this wine I have known,
you know since I was in my 20s.
And this is the first time
I've tasted this wine.
Although I've had other Latours
and certainly it's reputation precedes it.
So, yeah I'm definitely
learning something here
and I think he pilled off something
that,
his instincts were dead on
and I don't think he just got lucky.
I think he saw this property
and he really understood the potential.
- So the 1980 was the very first vintage
we made a Sauvignon Cabernet.
And as you can see,
dad's name is right here.
Well, over the years it's become
the bread and butter of Chappellet's.
The most important wine
we make every year.
Bringing this wine and having
1980 Cabernet is kind of fun
because I graduated from high school,
in 75.
I remember this wine specifically.
I went to Cal Poly
and I was in there agri
business management school.
I thought, "Boy, managing a farm
"or a big ranch should
be really terrific."
I didn't ever put the idea of managing
this vineyard in that program.
Of the 32 wineries that
were here when we were here.
There are on or two of them,
still owned by the family.
All the rest are owned by somebody else.
- At this point it's my brother
Cyril and I here day to day.
And, you know after you go and
you try doing your own thing
for a while and you know see
what the rest of the world
is like, I think things
come into perspective
and you realize, to at least I did.
That, hard to find something better
to be a part of, than this.
- You sort of value, what
this land is made up off.
Which is rocks, rocks, rocks.
(laughter)
As you know having been in the vineyard.
- Well I think we've all had
our moments of moving rocks.
- [Dolly] But that's what
makes our wines so good,
don't tell anybody.
- [Dominic] No, that's
what we tell everybody.
- Oh you do?
- It's the rocks.
- No, it's more than that.
- Oh sorry.
- [Dolly] Its this view,
isn't that beautiful?
- [Dominic] Yeah.
- [Dolly] Oh, it's so beautiful.
- [Dominic] Yeah.
- My father really believed
in a, Bordeaux pricey model.
Where if they're really great vintage.
The Bordeaux negotiants would charge
a much much higher price.
And he always though
that was a good thing.
And if wine is that much
better, charge more.
He realized, from making wines since 1968
here for the property.
That this was a standout
vantage, everything aligned.
It was a terrific complex bottle of wine.
So the question was, how do
we get the marketing people
to understand we could
charge a higher price for it.
We finally convinced him
how about he would just sign
the bottle and if he'd sign the bottle,
we could raise the price.
So that's as simple as it was.
It wasn't like some big mystic.
He signed the bottle and on this bottle
he signed out right at the very bottom.
You can see this is the older style label
that we were producing at that time.
Now what's interesting is
the vintage after this.
The 81, the 82 and the 83.
Were not signature
wines and they went back
to that 17 or 18 dollars.
But there's not very much
of these wine left around.
You'd have to probably
go to auction to able
to find these bottles
of wine at this point.
There is a little bit of
sediment on the cork there.
'Cause this bottle has
been stored upside down.
Oh it might lurked out here.
Remarkable,
still a tremendous amount of structure
on this wine and you know the
colors lighten just slightly.
I do get a little bit
of that leatheriness.
And I think that's a smell and
a flavor that I really enjoy.
And there's still fruit in this wine.
This wine is not a wine
that is just passed over.
To me this is somewhat
of a nostalgic wine,
because I remember those
conversations when we were trying
to convince Jack Daniels and Win Wilson,
that we could charge
a higher price for it.
And how we can make all that happen
and by signing the bottle,
that my father believed
was gonna be,
a royal class wine
that would last for a long time.
And I think that, my
father would be very proud
that he signed this bottle of wine.
When we first moved here.
And that's back in,
67,
I remember my dad wearing
a white pair of jeans.
Every single day as he go
out and get on the tractor.
And drive a blue Ford tractor,
through the vineyards.
And I think those were the
happiest days of his life.
He was, somebody who was
extremely thoughtful.
- He was, so honest and believed in
that's just the way he was from his core.
He couldn't do anything
that wasn't totally true.
- My dad was very soft spoken.
Big guy, so he could be intimidating.
And you knew when he wasn't happy
because he got really quiet.
But always kind, love
animals, loved spending time
at the beach with his kids and
showing us how to body surf.
But his life was this
winery, this vineyard.
He shared it with all of us.
And made us part of it.
I picked this particular bottle today
because it is the first representation
of Pritchard Hill Cabernet,
that we ever made.
1997 also for me it's special
because it's the birth year
of my first born, my daughter.
And then also my belief
is, that this is hitting
that sweet spot that I always
look for in our Cabernets.
Where, you start seeing all
of the pieces come together.
You know the Cabernets that
we've been making for years
and years were a great expression
of what we're making on Pritchard Hill.
But there came sort of a
change through out the valley
of people who were not just
taking the best of the crop
but taking the best of the
best of the crop and making
these small production high
end, beautiful Cabernets.
And so the Pritchard Hill
Cabernet really just focuses
on all the grapes coming from
this property specifically
and starts there and ends
there to make the best of
what we can make here, at home.
In many ways I think of
this as a young one wine.
But I know that you know
it's got 22 years on it.
But I think we're gonna find
a big fruit, big tannin,
put all those tertiary flavors
that we know come with age,
are gonna be expressing themselves also.
So I see this as that sort
of perfect moment in time.
Alright we made it.
Cork looks actually really great.
Not that I was expecting it not to.
(soft piano music)
so right off the bat.
You know the color is still very dark
there's some tar traits that
came in there into the glass.
I'm not too concerned about that.
I think that's teeth are for.
Straining those out.
But the color is amazing,
you know a little brick on the edges.
But still seems really, vibrant.
(soft piano music)
yeah it's, it's even more
youthful than I remembered.
Its really still just a baby.
My dad loved the idea
that we were making wines,
at the top caliber, you
know at every level.
And so, the decision to
make the Cabernet under
the Pritchard Hill Estate
label just fell right
into his whole idea about
making world class wine.
- From the time we were
10 or 11 years old,
this was really dad's thing.
And he encouraged us to work together,
he encouraged us to be
thoughtful of where we were going
and what we could do and how
we could protect this property.
- It's been very
rewarding that they wanted
to come into the business
and you're asking
how do you get a long because some of them
are running their business.
They all think they are
running the business,
but they don't know, right?
- We always refer to you.
- That is differ to me not refer.
- Mother we refer
(laughter)
- No, I'm so pleased to have them do it.
I couldn't do what they do.
I don't think ahead.
I feel I was born on Pritchard Hill.
I really,
became alive in the way
that I have in the last 50 years,
of connecting with nature
and people and the arts.
The arts meaning, the art of growing.
The art of growing vines.
The art of wine, the art of
music, the art of everything
and being a part of it.
And in such a magnificent place.
Who could not love it?
(upbeat music)