Little Old Winemaker Me--Not

ST. HELENA — I suppose that most Californians trudge the tundra of workaday life with a secret dream of escape. In this state, there is no shortage of roads less traveled to contemplate while stuck in traffic, or in middle management. For some people, the dream might be a bed and breakfast on the Mendocino Coast. For others, an art gallery on Melrose. Or a 12-seat diner at the beach. There are days when I’d settle for a hog ranch in Butte County.

I also suppose that, in this strange economic season of corporate downsizing, such escapist fantasies have received more than a little exercise. The list of recession-battered California businesses that have given workers layoff notices or buyout checks is a long one. It’s had everybody thinking. . . .

My own little dream involves the California wine country. I see a small vineyard, free of weeds and bordered by roses. There’s a yellow farmhouse, big and airy. The kitchen smells of lamb and Cabernet. I’m out chugging along on a tractor. The kids run around barefoot with purple toes. It’s a clean, simple life: We go to bed early, leave doors unlocked, and sell no wine before its time.

For all its clarity, this recurrent fancy has been etched almost entirely from imagination. I can count on one hand the times I’ve passed through Napa Valley, never stopping. So on Thursday I came here to sniff around a bit. Not that I’ve strapped on a Buyout Parachute: Let’s just say I was curious.

*

February here is a time for pruning and planning. Several columns of smoke marked where prunings had been piled and set afire. The vines were barren and wild mustard plants flourished amid the rows. What struck me most was the scale of the valley. My sense of agriculture was developed in the San Joaquin Valley, where croplands run vast and unbroken almost to the horizon. By comparison, the Napa Valley seems tiny, cluttered.

California 27 cuts through the heart of it, and along both sides the big-name wineries come one after another--Mondavi, Beaulieu, Rutherford, Martini. The little towns along the way are long on quaint, short on rustic: More Carmel than Corcoran. In the past two decades, the number of wineries has increased from about 30 to more than 200. The big push came in the 1970s, when everyone in the world caught the vintner bug. The newcomers ran the gamut from movie moguls to aerospace engineers, from giant corporations to little guys to Daryl Sattui.

Sattui found his way to the valley 20 years ago, a cabdriver’s son with $5,000 and a dream of re-creating the winery his great grandfather operated long ago in San Francisco. At first, he slept in a sleeping bag on the winery floor. He hauled his wine in a Volkswagen micro-bus. People laughed. He hung with it, though, and slowly built an unusual operation that caters to tourists and only sells its wine on the premises. Last year, it sold something like 39,000 cases. Today Sattui has obsessions beyond his winery. For instance, there’s the 1,000-year-old monastery he has bought in Italy . . .

“There was no secret,” he said. “Just hard work. Most people have dreams, but are usually unwilling to pay the price. I paid the price and got where I wanted to go.”

Did anything surprise him now that he was there?

“Well, I thought it would be more romantic.”

*

Jack Cakebread also made it. He came to Napa from the garage business in Oakland. Today, Cakebread enjoys a reputation for high-end wines. While he can talk excitedly about the thrill of harvest, Cakebread made clear the business only begins at the vineyard. Many people have come here and made good wine without knowing how to market it, how to elbow their way onto retailers’ shelves and restaurant wine lists. These people aren’t around anymore.

“In this business,” Cakebread said, “everybody is always traveling in the market. It’s not like we’re sitting here in Camelot.”

This is a dicey time for the wine country. A pest, called phylloxera, has been ravaging the vines, forcing thousands of acres to be ripped out. The market’s been uneven: Sales are up, profits down. Something like 16 wineries are on the block. There is concern about being trampled under by tourists and well-to-do weekend farmers, about rising land prices and disappearing land. In short, I was told, the game has changed in ways that today would preclude little guys like Sattui and Cakebread from breaking into it.

“The gangplank has been pulled up,” Cakebread said.

“Maybe you should think of cherries or something like that,” Sattui said.

Next stop: Butte County.