Verticals (2019) s01e04 Episode Script
Corison
- As I was graduating from UC Davis
with a degree in enology,
my major professor sat me down
and he told me that there was no way
I would ever be a winemaker
in the Napa Valley.
- [Interviewer] Why?
- Because I was a woman.
(slow melodious music)
I wasn't offensive about it
but I heard this little voice in my head
that said, "Watch me."
(slow orchestral music)
- [Interviewer] Cathy Corison
is a rock star winemaker
that sort of merged out of the 1970s.
Cut her teeth at Chappellet
in her early days
and then forged her own
path in the mid late 80s
starting her eponymous winery.
- I'm out here starting
now almost everyday.
I don't necessary do all the hand work.
My crew does but I started that but break
and then I'll walk at least
one of the vineyards every day.
- I love Cathy Corison.
I can't visit Napa Valley
without stopping by and seeing her.
She's just so generous and warm
and she's one of the
most talented winemakers
in Napa Valley.
- Oh, I don't know.
I'm a biologist, I'm a naturalist.
I hunt mushrooms, I watch birds.
This is my happy place.
(slow piano music)
- Cathy is a gentle, loving person.
I think that is clear from
the first minute you meet her.
She has this kind of warmth
to her and its patience.
You know, somebody of
her stature, you know,
her wines are really
converted and sought out.
I'm sure she's flooded
with requests for her time
and I found her to be incredibly
generous with her time
and with her knowledge,
not just with me but with
anyone I've sent her way
and a lot of people in the industry.
She has this really beautiful humility
that kind of floats around her.
- This year when we spaded,
everywhere there were earthworms.
And so after decades of organic farming,
these swirls are just wildly alive.
I can't imagine a place I'd rather be.
(slow orchestral music)
This was my very first commercial vintage.
1978, I wasn't the winemaker
but I was involved in production
for the first time in my life.
I was an intern at Freemark Abbey
so I was a cellar rat.
I was learning how to hold horses around
and run a cellar which wound
up being very important for me
because I've always been
involved in small wineries.
I studied biology at Pomona College.
I thought I would be a marine biologist.
That's what I was studying specifically.
I was 19 years old, a sophomore
and on a complete whim, took
a wine appreciation class.
It grabbed me by the neck and ran with me
and I've never looked back.
(upbeat violin music)
Landed here and worked here
in the valley for that year,
first at a wineshop wine bar
and then later, at the
tasting room at Sterling.
I knew I wanted to make wine
but I had no idea
how that was gonna go
here in the Napa Valley.
I'd just been told by major professor
that I would never make
wine in the Napa Valley.
So all the while, I was taking
two classes over at Davis,
getting ready to go get my
master's degree over there.
Next two years, I got my degree
and was getting out of school
right before this was crushed.
In 1978, there were only 30 wineries
in the Napa Valley in those days.
And it was family owned and one
of the best wineries around.
All that summer, I was frantically trying
to finish my thesis and
bottling at Freemark Abbey,
on the bottling line.
They always had an intern
from Davis every year
so I knew I wanted that job.
It took me two years to get it
because Larry Longben, the winemaker and I
had to be convinced that
I could do the work as a 90 pound woman.
There had never been a
woman in a wine cellar
in the Napa Valley before
unless if it was before Prohibition.
So I went over and we
marked up rakings and all.
We became convinced that
I could do the work.
It's hard work but I think small people
know more about leverage
than big people will ever learn.
And he offered me the job.
That was in 1977,
only to have to take it back
when the owners wouldn't have a woman.
(rhythmic piano music)
I never knew I was a second class citizen.
Went to a small liberal arts school
where I had no idea that there
was a difference in genders
until I got out of college.
And it was like running
into a different world.
I didn't know that I couldn't do anything
I wanted to do or that it
was gonna be really hard
to do anything I wanted to do.
I just didn't wanna accept that.
So I went back to school
to finish my degree
and then the next season,
Larry went to the owners and
says, "I'm hiring Cathy."
And they did.
And I was the intern there
and spent all my energy.
I couldn't even pay attention
to how the wine was being made.
I was spending all my attention
trying to be sure I
didn't make any mistakes
and learning how to run a cellar.
It was a completely different education.
It was exhausting. (laughing)
I was in really good shape by
the end of the harvest, yeah.
We made this wine over 40 years ago.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So, yeah, I haven't tasted this wine
probably in 30 years.
(slow rhythmic music)
Yeah, in one piece.
(Cathy pours, swirls and smells the wine)
Still kicking.
It reminds me a lot of forest floor
when it's just been raining.
Mushroomy and little
bit minty, very earthy.
Still hints of plummy fruit,
very aromatic, jumps out of the glass.
(energetic orchestral music)
All of us were very fortunate living
University of California-Davis
in the late 70s.
The Paris tasting had occurred
less than 10 years prior
and the Napa Valley was just exploding.
So there were opportunities for all of us
regardless of gender
which is pure luck frankly.
I chose a 1987 because it was one
of the best vintages at Chappellet.
I was the winemaker
there for all the 1980s.
And it was a wonderful opportunity
for a scrawny, young woman to
run a big, important winery.
- Cathy Corison is someone
that I kind of grew up around
for all these years.
- I was 26-years-old when
I started at Chappellet.
That's crazy.
- She originally came here
and was finishing her masters
or doctorate or something
that she was at Davis doing
when she first started as
an assistant winemaker here.
I lived up at Chappellet actually.
I had a house as part of the deal.
I started there as the head winemaker
and I was hired to run
a 30.000 case winery
right out of the shoot.
I had no business,
you know, two years out
of school doing that
but in those days, there
just weren't enough
little old winemakers to go around.
- She's a very, very smart woman,
very gifted taster and somebody
who added a lot to those
wines out of the 80s.
I was scared to death,
but only for a little while.
And once I got past the first vintage
and past a whole year cycle,
I wasn't scared anymore.
Donn was just a terrific boss.
He had complete trust in me
and in fact wouldn't be involved
at all in the wine making
or even taste the wine until I put
the bottle of wine on his desk.
I was just a young,
young aspiring winemaker.
There were a couple of other
women that were in wineries
when I started here.
There was Zelma Long at Robert Mondavi
and Dawnine Sample
but I came in right after that
and I'd say I was the third.
I made this wine and made all
the the 1980s at Chappellet
and we would have picked the grapes
and crushed them into the tank
and fermented them there, pumping over.
Very, very standard classic wine making.
And then macerated quite a bit of it.
The tannins up in the mountains
tend to be fairly
aggressive and astringent.
And so I did more maceration up there
and that's after the wine
has finished fermenting.
We'd lead the new wine
into the tanking contact
with the skins.
That changes the quality of the tannins.
I haven't tasted this wine for decades
so it's an amazing honor and treat
to have a chance to taste it, truly.
Ah, there we go.
Yes.
Almost one piece.
(wine pours into glass)
I can't wait to taste it.
It's beautiful.
I'm smelling cassis and plums
and a little bit of tobacco.
It's developed all sorts of
beautiful bottle bouquet.
That term is called
bouquet because of many age
where the red wines developed,
a perfume of floral perfume.
I mean this is just gorgeous.
It's earthy,
it's young, it's amazing.
What's astonishing to me is
that it's still so fruity.
It's not astonishing to
me that it's still lively
but often Cabernets this old
wouldn't have more fruit left.
They'd be all bottle bouquet.
And this has decades left on it.
It's pretty exciting.
One of the things that I loved
about having my own project
at the same time was that from then on,
I was in the vineyards constantly
and I'm really making the wines out there.
So there's no question that it's better
for the winemaker to be in the vineyard,
to be growing the grapes.
I manage these vineyards.
(anticipatory piano music)
87 is significant for another reason.
In 1987, I made this
Cabernet for Chappellet.
But also made my very
first vintage of course,
a Cabernet in 1987.
I made this at Chappellet actually.
Donn Chappellet was always so supportive
of his winemakers.
I'm really lucky that way.
He was a terrific boss.
- So Cathy Corison is
working for Chappellet
and she makes a very bold move
in starting her own winery.
She never gave up.
You know it was very difficult,
they almost ran out money at one point.
But she keeps going and
it's a true testament
to her personality.
- It's wonderful when somebody
can spread their wings
and do their own thing and
have to be their own brand.
And here she's doing a remarkable
job in doing that, too.
- Towards the end of my
tenure at Chappellet,
there was this wine inside
of me that needed to get out.
It was not a mountain Cabernet,
it was a Cabernet from
the Rutherford bench area.
Relatively speaking, the wines
that I can make down here
on the Rutherford bench are more elegant.
They're big, they are
powerful, it's Cabernet.
They're dark but they can also
be very elegant and pretty.
This is a very rare bottle.
I think we have fewer than 10 cases
of this left in our world.
It's very fortunate that it
was a very, very good vintage
so it's perfect first vintage for Corison.
This is such a treat because it's so rare
even we saw someone get
a chance to taste it.
So it's with great excitement.
My staff was really excited too.
They've never tasted it.
So the cork's still in really good shape
which is encouraging because
the lifespan of a cork
turns people seem to think of it
in terms of being only 25 years or so
and this one is 32-years-old.
Hmm, much like the Chappellet .
It's still really lively.
Downright fruity.
This one always had a
lot of bright fruits.
I pick quite early and one
of the reasons I do that
is to keep the good, snappy acidity
which goes along with the
bright red and blue fruits
and which turn into pretty
perfume over time in the bottle.
A little bit of the peppermint,
tart cherries, blueberry,
plums, a stony minerality
that I love and it's fairly
rare in the Napa Valley.
It's almost as thought
you've sprayed concrete
on a hot summer day and you sort
of smell that mineral character.
Lots of perfume, dried roses, violets.
Hmm, it's just so alive.
So the wine making was easy by then.
I had every confidence.
I knew the vineyards.
I made the one in other
people's facilities
so that was a huge challenge.
But the wine making didn't scare me at all
and I knew it was a great vintage
I knew what the weather had done.
So it was crazy as crazy could be.
In fact, I was one of the first winemakers
to start their own project.
Randy Dunn who came right before me
and he was a little bit
of a model for that.
When I first started to
sell this wine in 1990,
I was selling it in a vacuum.
I was not a high profile
winemaker up at Chappellet.
So nobody knew my name.
Was a different world in those days.
So, worked all year to sell it
and then on the 30th of
November, two things happened.
It was the Wine of the Week
at the San Francisco Chronicle
and it was also featured in
the New York Times magazine
and it was almost all sold out.
I met my husband when I
was selling this wine.
Actually in 1990, I had met
a woman in Ashland, Oregon
I had taken a Shakespeare
course that summer
and Connie and I were quite
a bit younger than the group.
And we became pretty close
friends over that week.
And the next fall I was
selling my first wine
and so when I traveled to Boston,
I stayed with Connie
and Connie and William were housemates
and she was opening a
community play that weekend
and didn't have that much
time to spend with me.
So she asked him to show me around.
- We ended up going to
dinner that first night
and she was selling her first
vintage, the 1987 Corison
and so she offered to go out
to a nice restaurant with me
and I said yeah, that sounds great.
So we went there and she
opened up a bottle of the 87
to pour for the somm and we
each had a glass as well.
And I ordered what I
typically like to order
when I go restaurants,
which is grilled lamb.
And as I was tasting the
lamb and tasting her wine,
and meeting her, I was like wow.
This is really cool.
In a way, the wine was a way
to get to know her faster
because it's almost like an
artist showing you their studio
and seeing what they did.
To me, that was the quickest way
to get to know Cathy in essence.
So I think we had a lot of common ground
in terms of our love of food
and wine and also theater.
Two years later, we got
married and he moved here.
We picked the 1999 because
that was the very first vintage
we made in the new winery.
The 1990s were very busy around here.
We had two daughters, Rose
in 1994 and Grace in 1997.
And then in 1995, we had
the amazing good fortune
to buy Kronos Vineyard.
We had already bought this
property for the grapes
and we knew it was 10 acres
and we knew that we could
get a use permit.
- [William] So we looked
just pretty seriously
at should we try to build a winery here.
- And we started to pencil it out
and then in 1999, we broke ground.
- So the Kronos Winery is located
right in the thick of things, right,
right on Highway 29
in the very southern
regions of St. Helena.
And it's right on the main thoroughfare
and it's this beautiful old barm.
- [Cathy] The farmhouse was built in 1898
and we wanted the barn winery
to look as though it had
been here since then.
When William designed this,
and it was important to him to have it
be beautiful from all sides.
But it was a wonderful process
because Cathy was
involved in the wine side
of how the building would function.
And then I got to do more
of the architectural design
based on both barms on the
West Coast and the East Coast
where I'm originally from.
So it was really driven out of the growth
of what was going on at
the valley at that point
and then the desire that Cathy
always knew that she wanted
to have her own place.
It's just that wendied
to make that decision.
- We thought we could afford it
but you know wine came
in four times over time
and four times over budget.
We ran out of money.
We kicked all the contractors out,
closed all the openings with plywood
and made wine in here.
The contractors couldn't believe it.
We told them we were making wine here
and I don't think they believed it until
the grape trucks arrived.
And it was an incredible challenge.
The roof wasn't on,
the walls weren't in.
We had no permanent power, no water.
It started to rain late in the season
when we were still doing pump over
so we had to tent all
the tanks in the tent
and then crawl under there
and do the pump overs.
And then it got very cold.
So William wrapped the entire barrel room
and locked in plastic and we
ran propane heaters in there
to get the malolactic fermentations to go.
- We built the crushing heat in 1999.
It wasn't as finished
as it was supposed to be
but you know, that kind of
goes with the territory.
It's the wine business.
Nothing is not always what you planned.
- So for two whole years
after we were already making wine here
this looked like a bordered up derelict.
- Yeah, so it was a difficult challenging
but very adventurous harvest that year
while the building was
still being constructed
around us as we were
making the 1999 vintage.
- Yeah, it was a challenge.
We had two children and we built a winery
with a two-year-old and five-year-old.
I think we're still reeling from that.
- That was a pretty exhausting time
and Cathy's such a perfectionist
therefore for her, she couldn't
let go of all the things
that she felt like she
needed to do that day
for the winery.
- I wear way too many hats
for this one one pointy, little head.
I grow the grapes, make
the wine, run the winery
and then raise two daughters.
- And so it was a big struggle for her
to just to try to balance kid
time and professional time.
It made it a lot easier that
we could be completely flexible
in our work schedules.
Thank goodness, there were two of us.
But Cathy, she would be up late at night
still trying to finish stuff
until she found a way to
start balancing it better.
- When we finally built
this place in 1999,
it was our 13th vintage
finally in our own space
and it was our fifth location.
So as a vagabond, I was a gypsy.
My superstition wagon was the center
of my wine making world.
Having a place of our own,
I think it's allowed me
to make much better wine.
We have complete control
at every single juncture.
It's infinitely easier to
make wine in our own space.
- It's appointment only but
what I love most about it
is driving by as I always see
this kind of sandwich board outside,
almost like you would advertise
your soup of the day on.
And it says usually,
"Library Tasting Today".
And I think that's special too, right?
She's always kept a library,
she opens these wines, she shares them.
They age really well and to share that
and be generous with
her library like that,
it's very inviting
and it's a interesting side of Napa Valley
that not a lot of visitors see.
- So this is a 1999.
It's one of my favorite vintages.
It was a very long, cold season.
In fact, it was so long
and cold that I was worried
that at one point that the
grapes wouldn't get ripe.
But they did and that always
makes my very favorite wine.
We were making this wine in
a half-finished facility.
It was so stressful.
(cork pops out)
But the wine got everything it needed.
It was just the people that suffered.
So lots of cold nights, inky color,
dark, dark fruit, plums and blackberries.
Had time in the bottle
now to start developing
that dried rose petal and
violet perfume that I love.
It's been in a bottle
now for almost 20 years
so it's developed lots
and lot of bottle bouquet,
but there's still some underlying fruits
so it's in a really nice spot.
I make this one in this style
for a couple of reasons,
one because that's what I like to drink.
But it's also because I believe it's what
this little corner of the world does best.
It's a hot place where
you can get cabernet ripe
but it's got those those cold nights
from the fog coming in every night.
So it's truly one of the best places
in the world to grow Cabernet.
(upbeat music)
I was often asked in the early days,
"Why do you make Cabernet?"
Well, I make cabernet cause I'm a Napa.
What else would I do?
- [Interviewer] I always
think of Cathy Corison's wines
as classic and made
with a lot of restraint.
- The goal is to make wines
that are both powerful and elegant,
Cabernet Sauvignon should be powerful.
It doesn't matter what you do,
how you brew it, how you make it.
But for me, it's much more interesting
an intersection of elegance.
And so that's driven me
from the very first day as
a Chappellet until today.
- Like she's not the winemaker
that you're going to
get bushels and barrels
of like oozing super ripe fruit.
But she balances her wines in
way that you're gonna get lots
of complexity and they take
a long time to develop.
- This wine was full formed
in my head before I started.
I came into this little
corner of the world
to make this wine.
And I'm trying to do exactly
the same thing I was
trying to do 32 years ago.
I hope I've gotten better at it.
And I know we've gotten
better out in the vineyard
and so I hope the wines are better.
But I'm trying to do
exactly the same thing.
Professor Ough is gone.
Rest in peace.
And he watched me over time
and I don't know if he
remembered what he said.
But how did he know?
You know, everything was changing.
There's absolutely nothing
about what I do as a winemaker
that is anymore more
difficult than being a woman.
Absolutely nothing.
- And look at how many people and women
are in the industry now that
Cathy helped lead the way for.
- I had it a little bit easier.
I didn't struggle and I think
it's because she paved the
way for people like me.
- I certainly feel a
responsibility to my gender
only because there had never
been women in production,
in really small wineries.
It's starting to be the case
that it's not always, "Oh,
she's a woman winemaker."
She's a winemaker.
Still only 10% of all
controlled winemakers
are women in California.
Napa Valley has scratched its way
all the way up to 12 or 13%.
There's a whole new generation
of young women coming up.
It's really very exciting.
There are women in the cellar,
there are women in the vineyard.
One of the last things to
go was vineyard managers.
And now there's several important
women vineyard managers.
Not just in the lab.
There are women who are full
time career solid people.
- If you're a young sommelier
and you go to Napa Valley
and you make an appointment at Corison,
she's probably gonna be there
and she's probably gonna
take time to talk to you.
That's a human connection and
that's not always easy to do
with famous or fancy wineries.
Right.
To connect to somebody in that .
She's very open to that.
- We would really love
it if one of our kids
or both of our kids decided
to come into the business.
That would be wonderful and I
think that would be something
Cathy would really enjoy,
the overlap time as well.
I think there's certainly
potential in both of them.
But we wanna let them have some
time in their early 20s now
to explore the world and
see where that takes them
because you never know.
- Well, I never got the
memo about retirement
and I hope I'm making wine when I'm 99.
I do hope I'm not running a desk anymore
and I hope I'm not worried
about payroll anymore.
But I wanna be making wine.
I wanna be dragging my tractor.
(Cathy laughs happily)
This is a wrecking move.
(Cathy laughs loudly)
Wine making's messy.
(slow mellow music)
with a degree in enology,
my major professor sat me down
and he told me that there was no way
I would ever be a winemaker
in the Napa Valley.
- [Interviewer] Why?
- Because I was a woman.
(slow melodious music)
I wasn't offensive about it
but I heard this little voice in my head
that said, "Watch me."
(slow orchestral music)
- [Interviewer] Cathy Corison
is a rock star winemaker
that sort of merged out of the 1970s.
Cut her teeth at Chappellet
in her early days
and then forged her own
path in the mid late 80s
starting her eponymous winery.
- I'm out here starting
now almost everyday.
I don't necessary do all the hand work.
My crew does but I started that but break
and then I'll walk at least
one of the vineyards every day.
- I love Cathy Corison.
I can't visit Napa Valley
without stopping by and seeing her.
She's just so generous and warm
and she's one of the
most talented winemakers
in Napa Valley.
- Oh, I don't know.
I'm a biologist, I'm a naturalist.
I hunt mushrooms, I watch birds.
This is my happy place.
(slow piano music)
- Cathy is a gentle, loving person.
I think that is clear from
the first minute you meet her.
She has this kind of warmth
to her and its patience.
You know, somebody of
her stature, you know,
her wines are really
converted and sought out.
I'm sure she's flooded
with requests for her time
and I found her to be incredibly
generous with her time
and with her knowledge,
not just with me but with
anyone I've sent her way
and a lot of people in the industry.
She has this really beautiful humility
that kind of floats around her.
- This year when we spaded,
everywhere there were earthworms.
And so after decades of organic farming,
these swirls are just wildly alive.
I can't imagine a place I'd rather be.
(slow orchestral music)
This was my very first commercial vintage.
1978, I wasn't the winemaker
but I was involved in production
for the first time in my life.
I was an intern at Freemark Abbey
so I was a cellar rat.
I was learning how to hold horses around
and run a cellar which wound
up being very important for me
because I've always been
involved in small wineries.
I studied biology at Pomona College.
I thought I would be a marine biologist.
That's what I was studying specifically.
I was 19 years old, a sophomore
and on a complete whim, took
a wine appreciation class.
It grabbed me by the neck and ran with me
and I've never looked back.
(upbeat violin music)
Landed here and worked here
in the valley for that year,
first at a wineshop wine bar
and then later, at the
tasting room at Sterling.
I knew I wanted to make wine
but I had no idea
how that was gonna go
here in the Napa Valley.
I'd just been told by major professor
that I would never make
wine in the Napa Valley.
So all the while, I was taking
two classes over at Davis,
getting ready to go get my
master's degree over there.
Next two years, I got my degree
and was getting out of school
right before this was crushed.
In 1978, there were only 30 wineries
in the Napa Valley in those days.
And it was family owned and one
of the best wineries around.
All that summer, I was frantically trying
to finish my thesis and
bottling at Freemark Abbey,
on the bottling line.
They always had an intern
from Davis every year
so I knew I wanted that job.
It took me two years to get it
because Larry Longben, the winemaker and I
had to be convinced that
I could do the work as a 90 pound woman.
There had never been a
woman in a wine cellar
in the Napa Valley before
unless if it was before Prohibition.
So I went over and we
marked up rakings and all.
We became convinced that
I could do the work.
It's hard work but I think small people
know more about leverage
than big people will ever learn.
And he offered me the job.
That was in 1977,
only to have to take it back
when the owners wouldn't have a woman.
(rhythmic piano music)
I never knew I was a second class citizen.
Went to a small liberal arts school
where I had no idea that there
was a difference in genders
until I got out of college.
And it was like running
into a different world.
I didn't know that I couldn't do anything
I wanted to do or that it
was gonna be really hard
to do anything I wanted to do.
I just didn't wanna accept that.
So I went back to school
to finish my degree
and then the next season,
Larry went to the owners and
says, "I'm hiring Cathy."
And they did.
And I was the intern there
and spent all my energy.
I couldn't even pay attention
to how the wine was being made.
I was spending all my attention
trying to be sure I
didn't make any mistakes
and learning how to run a cellar.
It was a completely different education.
It was exhausting. (laughing)
I was in really good shape by
the end of the harvest, yeah.
We made this wine over 40 years ago.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So, yeah, I haven't tasted this wine
probably in 30 years.
(slow rhythmic music)
Yeah, in one piece.
(Cathy pours, swirls and smells the wine)
Still kicking.
It reminds me a lot of forest floor
when it's just been raining.
Mushroomy and little
bit minty, very earthy.
Still hints of plummy fruit,
very aromatic, jumps out of the glass.
(energetic orchestral music)
All of us were very fortunate living
University of California-Davis
in the late 70s.
The Paris tasting had occurred
less than 10 years prior
and the Napa Valley was just exploding.
So there were opportunities for all of us
regardless of gender
which is pure luck frankly.
I chose a 1987 because it was one
of the best vintages at Chappellet.
I was the winemaker
there for all the 1980s.
And it was a wonderful opportunity
for a scrawny, young woman to
run a big, important winery.
- Cathy Corison is someone
that I kind of grew up around
for all these years.
- I was 26-years-old when
I started at Chappellet.
That's crazy.
- She originally came here
and was finishing her masters
or doctorate or something
that she was at Davis doing
when she first started as
an assistant winemaker here.
I lived up at Chappellet actually.
I had a house as part of the deal.
I started there as the head winemaker
and I was hired to run
a 30.000 case winery
right out of the shoot.
I had no business,
you know, two years out
of school doing that
but in those days, there
just weren't enough
little old winemakers to go around.
- She's a very, very smart woman,
very gifted taster and somebody
who added a lot to those
wines out of the 80s.
I was scared to death,
but only for a little while.
And once I got past the first vintage
and past a whole year cycle,
I wasn't scared anymore.
Donn was just a terrific boss.
He had complete trust in me
and in fact wouldn't be involved
at all in the wine making
or even taste the wine until I put
the bottle of wine on his desk.
I was just a young,
young aspiring winemaker.
There were a couple of other
women that were in wineries
when I started here.
There was Zelma Long at Robert Mondavi
and Dawnine Sample
but I came in right after that
and I'd say I was the third.
I made this wine and made all
the the 1980s at Chappellet
and we would have picked the grapes
and crushed them into the tank
and fermented them there, pumping over.
Very, very standard classic wine making.
And then macerated quite a bit of it.
The tannins up in the mountains
tend to be fairly
aggressive and astringent.
And so I did more maceration up there
and that's after the wine
has finished fermenting.
We'd lead the new wine
into the tanking contact
with the skins.
That changes the quality of the tannins.
I haven't tasted this wine for decades
so it's an amazing honor and treat
to have a chance to taste it, truly.
Ah, there we go.
Yes.
Almost one piece.
(wine pours into glass)
I can't wait to taste it.
It's beautiful.
I'm smelling cassis and plums
and a little bit of tobacco.
It's developed all sorts of
beautiful bottle bouquet.
That term is called
bouquet because of many age
where the red wines developed,
a perfume of floral perfume.
I mean this is just gorgeous.
It's earthy,
it's young, it's amazing.
What's astonishing to me is
that it's still so fruity.
It's not astonishing to
me that it's still lively
but often Cabernets this old
wouldn't have more fruit left.
They'd be all bottle bouquet.
And this has decades left on it.
It's pretty exciting.
One of the things that I loved
about having my own project
at the same time was that from then on,
I was in the vineyards constantly
and I'm really making the wines out there.
So there's no question that it's better
for the winemaker to be in the vineyard,
to be growing the grapes.
I manage these vineyards.
(anticipatory piano music)
87 is significant for another reason.
In 1987, I made this
Cabernet for Chappellet.
But also made my very
first vintage of course,
a Cabernet in 1987.
I made this at Chappellet actually.
Donn Chappellet was always so supportive
of his winemakers.
I'm really lucky that way.
He was a terrific boss.
- So Cathy Corison is
working for Chappellet
and she makes a very bold move
in starting her own winery.
She never gave up.
You know it was very difficult,
they almost ran out money at one point.
But she keeps going and
it's a true testament
to her personality.
- It's wonderful when somebody
can spread their wings
and do their own thing and
have to be their own brand.
And here she's doing a remarkable
job in doing that, too.
- Towards the end of my
tenure at Chappellet,
there was this wine inside
of me that needed to get out.
It was not a mountain Cabernet,
it was a Cabernet from
the Rutherford bench area.
Relatively speaking, the wines
that I can make down here
on the Rutherford bench are more elegant.
They're big, they are
powerful, it's Cabernet.
They're dark but they can also
be very elegant and pretty.
This is a very rare bottle.
I think we have fewer than 10 cases
of this left in our world.
It's very fortunate that it
was a very, very good vintage
so it's perfect first vintage for Corison.
This is such a treat because it's so rare
even we saw someone get
a chance to taste it.
So it's with great excitement.
My staff was really excited too.
They've never tasted it.
So the cork's still in really good shape
which is encouraging because
the lifespan of a cork
turns people seem to think of it
in terms of being only 25 years or so
and this one is 32-years-old.
Hmm, much like the Chappellet .
It's still really lively.
Downright fruity.
This one always had a
lot of bright fruits.
I pick quite early and one
of the reasons I do that
is to keep the good, snappy acidity
which goes along with the
bright red and blue fruits
and which turn into pretty
perfume over time in the bottle.
A little bit of the peppermint,
tart cherries, blueberry,
plums, a stony minerality
that I love and it's fairly
rare in the Napa Valley.
It's almost as thought
you've sprayed concrete
on a hot summer day and you sort
of smell that mineral character.
Lots of perfume, dried roses, violets.
Hmm, it's just so alive.
So the wine making was easy by then.
I had every confidence.
I knew the vineyards.
I made the one in other
people's facilities
so that was a huge challenge.
But the wine making didn't scare me at all
and I knew it was a great vintage
I knew what the weather had done.
So it was crazy as crazy could be.
In fact, I was one of the first winemakers
to start their own project.
Randy Dunn who came right before me
and he was a little bit
of a model for that.
When I first started to
sell this wine in 1990,
I was selling it in a vacuum.
I was not a high profile
winemaker up at Chappellet.
So nobody knew my name.
Was a different world in those days.
So, worked all year to sell it
and then on the 30th of
November, two things happened.
It was the Wine of the Week
at the San Francisco Chronicle
and it was also featured in
the New York Times magazine
and it was almost all sold out.
I met my husband when I
was selling this wine.
Actually in 1990, I had met
a woman in Ashland, Oregon
I had taken a Shakespeare
course that summer
and Connie and I were quite
a bit younger than the group.
And we became pretty close
friends over that week.
And the next fall I was
selling my first wine
and so when I traveled to Boston,
I stayed with Connie
and Connie and William were housemates
and she was opening a
community play that weekend
and didn't have that much
time to spend with me.
So she asked him to show me around.
- We ended up going to
dinner that first night
and she was selling her first
vintage, the 1987 Corison
and so she offered to go out
to a nice restaurant with me
and I said yeah, that sounds great.
So we went there and she
opened up a bottle of the 87
to pour for the somm and we
each had a glass as well.
And I ordered what I
typically like to order
when I go restaurants,
which is grilled lamb.
And as I was tasting the
lamb and tasting her wine,
and meeting her, I was like wow.
This is really cool.
In a way, the wine was a way
to get to know her faster
because it's almost like an
artist showing you their studio
and seeing what they did.
To me, that was the quickest way
to get to know Cathy in essence.
So I think we had a lot of common ground
in terms of our love of food
and wine and also theater.
Two years later, we got
married and he moved here.
We picked the 1999 because
that was the very first vintage
we made in the new winery.
The 1990s were very busy around here.
We had two daughters, Rose
in 1994 and Grace in 1997.
And then in 1995, we had
the amazing good fortune
to buy Kronos Vineyard.
We had already bought this
property for the grapes
and we knew it was 10 acres
and we knew that we could
get a use permit.
- [William] So we looked
just pretty seriously
at should we try to build a winery here.
- And we started to pencil it out
and then in 1999, we broke ground.
- So the Kronos Winery is located
right in the thick of things, right,
right on Highway 29
in the very southern
regions of St. Helena.
And it's right on the main thoroughfare
and it's this beautiful old barm.
- [Cathy] The farmhouse was built in 1898
and we wanted the barn winery
to look as though it had
been here since then.
When William designed this,
and it was important to him to have it
be beautiful from all sides.
But it was a wonderful process
because Cathy was
involved in the wine side
of how the building would function.
And then I got to do more
of the architectural design
based on both barms on the
West Coast and the East Coast
where I'm originally from.
So it was really driven out of the growth
of what was going on at
the valley at that point
and then the desire that Cathy
always knew that she wanted
to have her own place.
It's just that wendied
to make that decision.
- We thought we could afford it
but you know wine came
in four times over time
and four times over budget.
We ran out of money.
We kicked all the contractors out,
closed all the openings with plywood
and made wine in here.
The contractors couldn't believe it.
We told them we were making wine here
and I don't think they believed it until
the grape trucks arrived.
And it was an incredible challenge.
The roof wasn't on,
the walls weren't in.
We had no permanent power, no water.
It started to rain late in the season
when we were still doing pump over
so we had to tent all
the tanks in the tent
and then crawl under there
and do the pump overs.
And then it got very cold.
So William wrapped the entire barrel room
and locked in plastic and we
ran propane heaters in there
to get the malolactic fermentations to go.
- We built the crushing heat in 1999.
It wasn't as finished
as it was supposed to be
but you know, that kind of
goes with the territory.
It's the wine business.
Nothing is not always what you planned.
- So for two whole years
after we were already making wine here
this looked like a bordered up derelict.
- Yeah, so it was a difficult challenging
but very adventurous harvest that year
while the building was
still being constructed
around us as we were
making the 1999 vintage.
- Yeah, it was a challenge.
We had two children and we built a winery
with a two-year-old and five-year-old.
I think we're still reeling from that.
- That was a pretty exhausting time
and Cathy's such a perfectionist
therefore for her, she couldn't
let go of all the things
that she felt like she
needed to do that day
for the winery.
- I wear way too many hats
for this one one pointy, little head.
I grow the grapes, make
the wine, run the winery
and then raise two daughters.
- And so it was a big struggle for her
to just to try to balance kid
time and professional time.
It made it a lot easier that
we could be completely flexible
in our work schedules.
Thank goodness, there were two of us.
But Cathy, she would be up late at night
still trying to finish stuff
until she found a way to
start balancing it better.
- When we finally built
this place in 1999,
it was our 13th vintage
finally in our own space
and it was our fifth location.
So as a vagabond, I was a gypsy.
My superstition wagon was the center
of my wine making world.
Having a place of our own,
I think it's allowed me
to make much better wine.
We have complete control
at every single juncture.
It's infinitely easier to
make wine in our own space.
- It's appointment only but
what I love most about it
is driving by as I always see
this kind of sandwich board outside,
almost like you would advertise
your soup of the day on.
And it says usually,
"Library Tasting Today".
And I think that's special too, right?
She's always kept a library,
she opens these wines, she shares them.
They age really well and to share that
and be generous with
her library like that,
it's very inviting
and it's a interesting side of Napa Valley
that not a lot of visitors see.
- So this is a 1999.
It's one of my favorite vintages.
It was a very long, cold season.
In fact, it was so long
and cold that I was worried
that at one point that the
grapes wouldn't get ripe.
But they did and that always
makes my very favorite wine.
We were making this wine in
a half-finished facility.
It was so stressful.
(cork pops out)
But the wine got everything it needed.
It was just the people that suffered.
So lots of cold nights, inky color,
dark, dark fruit, plums and blackberries.
Had time in the bottle
now to start developing
that dried rose petal and
violet perfume that I love.
It's been in a bottle
now for almost 20 years
so it's developed lots
and lot of bottle bouquet,
but there's still some underlying fruits
so it's in a really nice spot.
I make this one in this style
for a couple of reasons,
one because that's what I like to drink.
But it's also because I believe it's what
this little corner of the world does best.
It's a hot place where
you can get cabernet ripe
but it's got those those cold nights
from the fog coming in every night.
So it's truly one of the best places
in the world to grow Cabernet.
(upbeat music)
I was often asked in the early days,
"Why do you make Cabernet?"
Well, I make cabernet cause I'm a Napa.
What else would I do?
- [Interviewer] I always
think of Cathy Corison's wines
as classic and made
with a lot of restraint.
- The goal is to make wines
that are both powerful and elegant,
Cabernet Sauvignon should be powerful.
It doesn't matter what you do,
how you brew it, how you make it.
But for me, it's much more interesting
an intersection of elegance.
And so that's driven me
from the very first day as
a Chappellet until today.
- Like she's not the winemaker
that you're going to
get bushels and barrels
of like oozing super ripe fruit.
But she balances her wines in
way that you're gonna get lots
of complexity and they take
a long time to develop.
- This wine was full formed
in my head before I started.
I came into this little
corner of the world
to make this wine.
And I'm trying to do exactly
the same thing I was
trying to do 32 years ago.
I hope I've gotten better at it.
And I know we've gotten
better out in the vineyard
and so I hope the wines are better.
But I'm trying to do
exactly the same thing.
Professor Ough is gone.
Rest in peace.
And he watched me over time
and I don't know if he
remembered what he said.
But how did he know?
You know, everything was changing.
There's absolutely nothing
about what I do as a winemaker
that is anymore more
difficult than being a woman.
Absolutely nothing.
- And look at how many people and women
are in the industry now that
Cathy helped lead the way for.
- I had it a little bit easier.
I didn't struggle and I think
it's because she paved the
way for people like me.
- I certainly feel a
responsibility to my gender
only because there had never
been women in production,
in really small wineries.
It's starting to be the case
that it's not always, "Oh,
she's a woman winemaker."
She's a winemaker.
Still only 10% of all
controlled winemakers
are women in California.
Napa Valley has scratched its way
all the way up to 12 or 13%.
There's a whole new generation
of young women coming up.
It's really very exciting.
There are women in the cellar,
there are women in the vineyard.
One of the last things to
go was vineyard managers.
And now there's several important
women vineyard managers.
Not just in the lab.
There are women who are full
time career solid people.
- If you're a young sommelier
and you go to Napa Valley
and you make an appointment at Corison,
she's probably gonna be there
and she's probably gonna
take time to talk to you.
That's a human connection and
that's not always easy to do
with famous or fancy wineries.
Right.
To connect to somebody in that .
She's very open to that.
- We would really love
it if one of our kids
or both of our kids decided
to come into the business.
That would be wonderful and I
think that would be something
Cathy would really enjoy,
the overlap time as well.
I think there's certainly
potential in both of them.
But we wanna let them have some
time in their early 20s now
to explore the world and
see where that takes them
because you never know.
- Well, I never got the
memo about retirement
and I hope I'm making wine when I'm 99.
I do hope I'm not running a desk anymore
and I hope I'm not worried
about payroll anymore.
But I wanna be making wine.
I wanna be dragging my tractor.
(Cathy laughs happily)
This is a wrecking move.
(Cathy laughs loudly)
Wine making's messy.
(slow mellow music)