Book Excerpt: Common Ground – Charting the Future of Napa Valley

BY RICHARD MENDELSON | SEPTEMBER 04, 2024

Vineyard Registry

I spent a large part of my career working with growers and vintners to capture in our federally recognized American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) the essence of what makes Napa Valley a unique and world-class winegrowing region. Defining those AVA boundaries was often contentious. And the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and later its successor, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) had a bias in the early years—and perhaps still— toward enlarging proposed appellations to ensure that neighboring lands whose owners wanted to be included were allowed in.

Over time, we have come to recognize some of the viticultural distinctions that were overlooked. I think back to the appellation battles of the 1990s over the proposed Rutherford, Oakville, Rutherford Bench, and Oakville Bench AVAs. Growers and vintners whose vines were included in the communal AVAs but not in the Bench AVAs felt slighted, as if their vineyards had been declassified. But the terroir differences between the eastern and western foothills and the river-fronting valley floor sites are real and are increasingly acknowledged.

I do not expect these AVA boundaries to change. The community-named AVAs—Yountville, Oakville, Rutherford, St. Helena, and Calistoga—are easy for consumers and the trade to understand. They bring together in one organization significant segments of the grower and vintner community, with some clout in the marketplace.

But AVAs are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to capturing the unique and special qualities of the land. To mix metaphors, vineyards are the last peel of the onion. “Great wine is made in the vineyard,” so the saying goes.

Unlike AVAs, vineyards are not defined or mapped by TTB. The definition and use of vineyard designations is left to the growers and vintners who separately—or jointly—decide on their names and locations. Over time, with new owners, the names and boundaries may change. TTB’s sole requirement is that a vineyard designation cannot be used on a wine label unless 95 percent of the wine in the bottle was produced from grapes grown in the named vineyard.

Grape grower Andy Beckstoffer, following the settlement of his lawsuit with Robert Mondavi Winery over the To-Kalon name, encouraged the growers trade association, Napa Valley Grapegrowers (NVG), to establish a registry of our historic vineyards. The goal of the project, which NVG began in 2004, was to identify, map, and certify these historic vineyards. The research and fact-finding phase was completed, but the project ended prior to the mapping and certification phases.

The Historic Vineyard Society has taken on some of this work. It certifies California’s “heritage vineyards” that are at least 50 years old. The vineyard must currently produce grapes, and at least one third of the producing vines must be traced back to the original planting date.

Napa Valley should be at the forefront of establishing a vineyard registry and that registry should be expanded from historic vineyards to all vineyard designations in Napa Valley that are used on wine labels. The vineyard registry need not have the force of law. Where the facts are not clear or are in dispute, such as the ongoing dispute over the To-Kalon name and boundaries, the registry would so state, and any disputes would be resolved by TTB, in a court proceeding, or better yet by a non-biased organization like The National Register of Historic Places or the Historic American Landscape Survey that are experts in historical authentication.

In my view, this project also should record the history of the vineyard and the historic vineyard practices. This would set the stage for preservation, and in some cases readoption, of some tried-and-true but now largely forgotten viticultural practices. Among them are field-grafted vines instead of bench-grafted vines; the use of cuttings from an existing vineyard to propagate a new vineyard instead of clones; dry farmed, non-irrigated vineyards that were the norm before the advent of PVC pipe and polyethylene drip hose; goblet-trained (also known as head-trained) vines instead of the Lodi ladder; and field blends of multiple varieties planted in a single vineyard.

Today’s wine enthusiasts and wine critics focus increasingly on wines from specific vineyard sites—Dr. Crane, Martha’s Vineyard, To-Kalon Vineyard, Eisele Vineyard, to name a few. Already there is talk about the Grands Crus and the Premiers Crus of the Napa Valley. (A cru in France means “growth.” In Burgundy, it refers to a high-quality vineyard, which is classified as Premier Cru or Grand Cru.) By establishing a list of our vineyard designations including their names, boundaries, and past and current owners, Napa Valley would enhance the integrity and the relevance of these sites and give wine critics and consumers reliable and verifiable information for their classifications.

A vineyard registry also would help stem the tide of wineries that convert geographic place names into brands and then use those brand names on wines from other places, capitalizing on and sacrificing the goodwill associated with those places.

Our renowned vineyard-designated wines, along with our celebrated estate wines made from estate-grown grapes like Harlan Estate, Screaming Eagle, Dominus Estate, and Heitz Martha’s Vineyard will secure Napa Valley’s reputation in the fine wine global market. They are now global benchmarks, just like Haut-Brion, Petrus, Rousseau Chambertin, Domaine de La Romanée-Conti La Tâche, and Conterno Barolo Riserva Monfortino. Anything we can do to recognize and publicize specific vineyard sites will benefit the entire Napa Valley.

© 2024, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright, but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.

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