Speaker 1: (00:06)
[inaudible].
Speaker 2: (00:16)
All right. Let’s see. Which path do you want to take dumb? Should we take, um, the upper and go that way or the lower? Let’s take the lower one, right? And then we can come around the other way.
Speaker 3: (00:29)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (00:33)
do you see what happens since you were here a week ago? These all came out into bloom. That’s right. And what were they? Hold on, give me a second. Oh, no. Clary Sage. No, no. I’m supposed to give you the Latin name. Right. Okay. Yeah. Um, are you whispering to me, prompting you? Salvia. Salvia Turkistan Anika? Yeah. Yes. Thank goodness. That’s good. No, but look how they popped up just exactly where they should have in the middle of the puppies, aren’t they? Fabulous.
Speaker 1: (01:08)
[inaudible]
Speaker 4: (01:17)
chapel lay is a winery on the top of Pritchard Hill, and they’ve been up there since the late sixties.
Speaker 5: (01:26)
[inaudible]
Speaker 4: (01:29)
Pritchard Hill was an area that had a small history under buying prior to prohibition, but really that kind of died after prohibition and the chalets moving up there in the 60s that was really the rebirth of the, of the region. So the chalets are kind of the founding family in a sense, I think for a lot of people of, of Pritchard Hill and that area,
Speaker 2: (01:49)
Don chapel lay, uh, was, he hated the term, but a giant visionary. At 33 years old, he had created a very successful business. I like to say that we might not have gotten to Starbucks without Don. Uh, Don 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 he had started, I don’t know what it was, 10 or 12 years before, um, 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 want to do? And so after he thought a bit, he said, well, the only thing I’m really passionate about is my wines.
Speaker 1: (02:50)
[inaudible]
Speaker 2: (02:52)
he said, but I’m not a winemaker. And I said, why not? And then he started thinking about would be a possibility. And so at first, he said, well, I wouldn’t want to do it in this. I could make wine that was comparable to these great wines that I love some of the Bordeauxs and some of the burgundies. And again, my great input was, why not? Isn’t that a great line? So, uh, that’s why we’re here. He loved
Speaker 6: (03:18)
the idea of it. And eventually, when he got here, he realized that it was the right thing for him. Now we hear about that kind of thing all the time. People leaving their 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 Don always liked to say, he traded his jacket for a tractor and began developing the chapel, a family winery,
Speaker 2: (03:45)
and he was absolutely in love with this property. And with the product that we make, the vineyards progress up to about 1800 feet very near the top of Pritcher Hill and just below those upper top vineyards, what we call the upper terraces, sits Molly Shacklees house, the family house where she and Don raised six kids. 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 Shevon walk. You probably remember this a little more than I do cause I was about six when this was harvested. I hope I remember. Then you did well, sometimes you’d let me have a little sip at the dinner table just to know that we’re in the wine business. But actually, you should remember that because you pick those grapes
Speaker 7: (04:36)
from the early ages, 10 years old, 11, 12, 13, we started doing projects and working in 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 Santa Lena were going to be working in the vineyards. My mother thinks this kind of interesting as you kind of jokes about it. They had to have another trial, and she moved up here because they needed to have cheap labor.
Speaker 6: (05:03)
So uh, so they brought five up with them from Los Angeles, and then they decided they needed one more for working the vineyard. I guess I probably was out there with my brothers and sisters picking some of these grapes.
Speaker 2: (05:14)
Yeah, it wasn’t that picture we have of you and me picking grapes, and you’re three years old, and I’m teaching you. Did I teach you? Well, I knew it all. But when I say a 74 to you, what do you think of? A lot of children. A lot of noise, a lot of meals. Not much traffic. That was really nice when Don decided that this was a career that he could put his heart and soul into and that he really wanted to do. There was no question, and we were all for it. The only thing that was difficult was, uh, going to town to get food because it was quite a drive. And with five jumping little children there, no seatbelts 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, Oh, this is silly.
Speaker 2: (06:07)
Why are we going to tell them we get there and the vegetables are old. What are we doing here? And we have this beautiful big piece of property. Of course, we’ll be self-sufficient. So that’s really what started the gardening madness. It was all about necessity. Necessity or certain Dimittis I’m sure you remember when this was a vegetable garden. It’s not as useful anymore, but it’s true. It’s pretty for the herbs. It is. Uh, but what part of the garden did you work in? Uh, I remember carrots. Oh yes. I remember that was the only time I could get the children to work in the vegetable garden. I let them choose their own favorite vegetable, and then they were mine. They had to maintain that part. Looking back in this direction, you’ll see three different colors of the sages salvias the purple stage and the golden Sage, and those are all edible, and then this is the oregano.
Speaker 2: (06:58)
This year we’re keeping it very low. Just smell that. It’s so great. Your father loved that, remember? Yup. He added it to almost anything. Whether it was supposed to be or not. Even one time a dessert. It’s just like winemaking have to have, it is you want the harmony, but you want the interest in 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’s those trumpets blaze there. Now you stay alum softer, and that’s the way we do it, and it just 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 or your, I know there are little spies. They have to be dirty under the nails.
Speaker 2: (07:45)
You’re ready. I’m excited. I am. I’m always, I just see how my children perform after how many years after they’ve left the nest. So Shannon block was here when the chapel bought the property, and it was planted in the upper terraces above Don and Molly’s house. Amali likes to think of that part of the vineyard as her backyard. She, along with any other people, fell in love with the Shannon block once a chapel. They started making it in the late sixties and became very passionate about it. Well, Shannon was my oldest child 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 venue. Wow. Look at that color. Is that something? So yeah, 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.
Speaker 2: (08:54)
That’s, I know. 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. Now let’s do a toast before we taste it cause it’s good this way. Chips. Okay. I hope it’s as good on the tongue. Wow. There is nothing wrong with that. You know, Senator blank we think of as the first wine that we bottle. It’s the first one we sell. We think of it as a wine that we open up within that first year and the nose. It almost feels like it’s going to have some sweetness, but it’s dry. It’s got a lot of acidity. It’s really beautiful. Why is that beautiful? But more than that, uh, I was always drawn to the Shannon after we made it, and Don said, well, that’s a variety we’ll pull out because that’s not really a significant variety.
Speaker 2: (09:55)
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 Shannon I’d ever tasted. I became its biggest fan probably. And then watching people finally appreciate a dry shin. And because at that time, I think there were only Shannon’s 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 uh, I realized being the chef and the Gardner that it went with practically everything. So it was my GoTo wine. If I didn’t know what to do serve, I would serve Shannon the time that this was being made, it was at, it’s probably at its peak, 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 Shannon’s.
Speaker 2: (10:49)
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. 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 some thought about, you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to go back to Chena block? 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 Shannon? 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 role. But 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 it. This man wants to do the best. And so that’s what he did.
Speaker 5: (11:56)
[inaudible]
Speaker 6: (12:08)
Dawn was a collector of great wines, and his goal was to make great wines. So this wine, the Chateau Latour’s of the 60s where his inspiration to come and seek out a property that could, uh, make wines that would rival these first growths from Bordeaux. You know, the sixties things were so quiet and 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 Robert Mondavi winery was the first to be built in 1966, and then chapel lay in 1968. So for him to come here and choose this piece of property, I think took a lot of nerve. But that is the kind of person that Dawn was. He had this passion for wine that had been developing in his twenties and then his early thirties.
Speaker 7: (12:58)
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.
Speaker 6: (13:09)
What everybody said is it couldn’t be done. And there was just an assumption that French wines were better, would always be better. There were, and there was all we could be was like a kind of a week second, and he just felt that it was possible. This is quite an honor. You don’t get to do this every day to have an old bottle of Chateau Latour at your disposal like this. You know, we’re, we’re hoping it’s been well stored. The cork looks a little old. Well, let’s see. This thing is a little loose. I didn’t take a class on this at Davis. There we go. Come on. There we go. We’re back in the running here looked a little dicey there for, they didn’t skimp on the court. Expect that 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 sediments should be on the bottom.
Speaker 1: (14:16)
Well, the color
Speaker 6: (14:23)
color looks pretty good. I mean, it’s definitely showing some age, little brickish on the edges, but a nice dark center. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (14:31)
[inaudible]
Speaker 6: (14:36)
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 is a nice kind of, um, almost, you know, a ripe fruit baked fruit.
Speaker 5: (14:53)
[inaudible]
Speaker 6: (15:01)
it’s still young. It’s a Latour. I think it’s supposed to be very firm tannins and maybe a structure that we’re 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, has a long life ahead of it.
Speaker 5: (15:21)
[inaudible]
Speaker 7: (15:23)
he was also willing to talk to other people and learn about where could he make the very, very best Cabernet in California.
Speaker 8: (15:31)
One of the first people he talked to, uh, about, you know, where to go and find the best grapes to make the best wine was Andre Tchelistcheff, who was making wine for BV.
Speaker 6: (15:42)
Andre Tchelistcheff was a Russian immigrant who taught America how to make wine.
Speaker 8: (15:47)
People call him the Dean of American winemaking. Uh, he was very highly regarded, very tiny man with a huge personality and an incredible palette who was just well thought of and the American California winemaking scene and somebody who my father really looked up to and he had been collecting BV along with those other great wines. You know, the tourism, the feats and the moutons and Margot’s
Speaker 7: (16:12)
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 California, and he was a fourth.
Speaker 6: (16:24)
One of the things Andre told Don during their time together was Andre said, I make a pretty good wine at believe vineyard, and most of my fruit comes from the Valley floor. If I could get more fruit from the hillsides, I could make a better wine. And that was what Don needed to hear. That set him off on a, a quest to find a great hillside estate
Speaker 8: (16:45)
and also gave him the idea that there was a quality of wine that could come out of Napa Valley that would compete with the best in the world. Well,
Speaker 6: (16:51)
this is going to be interesting because I know the, um, I know the 75 chapel a much better than I know the 75 Latour. So we’ll open up the 75 Shapleigh and do a quick little comparison and see if Don was right.
Speaker 5: (17:05)
[inaudible]
Speaker 6: (17:13)
this is the 1975 shop, lay 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 in the vintage, and it all went into the one bottle. So this is the same wine we started out making. And in 1969 I think it’s a Testament to a Dawn’s idea that you could make great wines, you know, rivaling the best wines in the world in Napa Valley, you know, without irrigation, we got these small berries, small clusters, but very powerful wines. Oh, it’s
Speaker 1: (17:55)
beautiful. I get that.
Speaker 6: (18:00)
No, you get to try that 75 shop away.
Speaker 6: (18:12)
Very similar color to the tour. Maybe a little, a little darker and more saturated. And 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 Marlow, 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 um, kind of background fruits and dark fruit in the background. Some very complex herbal and leather and coffee tones. The chalet has a little broader texture, maybe a little lower acid. It’s not an alcohol thing because the wines that we made in the in the sixties and seventies were very low alcohol, very similar to the Bordeaux wines. I’m trying to be impartial because this, this wine I’ve known, you know, since I was in my twenties and this is the first time I’ve ever tasted this wine. Although I’ve had other Latour’s and certainly its reputation proceeds it. So, yeah, I’m, I’m definitely learning something here. And I think he pulled off something that, um, 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. [inaudible]
Speaker 9: (19:41)
[inaudible].
Speaker 7: (19:44)
So the 1980 was the very first vintage. We made a signature Cabernet. And as you can see, dad’s name is right here. Well, over the years, it’s become the bread and butter for Shapley is the most important wine we make every year. Bringing this wine and having 1980 Cabernet is kind of fun because I had graduated from high school in 75 I remember this wine specifically. I went to Cal poly, and I was in their ag 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 one or two of them who are still owned by their family. All the rest are owned by somebody else.
Speaker 6: (20:27)
At this point, it’s my brother Cyril, and I are here day today, 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, or at least I did that a hard to find something better to be a part of then than this. You
Speaker 2: (20:48)
sort of value what this land is made up of, which is rocks, rocks, rocks, rocks, rocks. As you know, having been in the vineyard didn’t, well I think we’ve all had our moments with stones, rocks, but that’s what makes our wine so good. Don’t tell anybody, but that’s what we tell everybody. Oh, you do? It’s the rocks. No, it’s more than that. It’s this view. Isn’t that beautiful?
Speaker 1: (21:11)
Yeah.
Speaker 2: (21:14)
So beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 10: (21:17)
My father really believed in a Bordeaux pricing model where if they’re really great vintage, the Bordeaux negotiates, would charge a much, much higher price, and he always thought that was a good thing. And if wines that much better charge more, he realized from making wines since 1968 here from the property that this was a standout vintage. Everything aligned. It was a terrific complex bottle of wine. So the question was, how do we get the marketing people to understand that we could charge a higher price for it. We finally convinced him, how about if 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 mystique. He signed the bottle, and on this bottle, he signed up 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 82 and 83 were not signature wines, and they went back to that 17 or $18, but there’s not very much of this wine left around. You’d have to probably go to auction to be able to find these bottles of wine at this point
Speaker 1: (22:24)
[inaudible]
Speaker 10: (22:27)
there is a little bit of sediment on the cork there cause his bottle has been stored upside down. Oh, you might’ve lucked out here.
Speaker 1: (22:38)
[inaudible]
Speaker 10: (22:43)
remarkable. Still, a tremendous amount of structure on this wine and you know, the colors lightened just slightly.
Speaker 10: (22:56)
Do you get a little bit of that leather Enos, and I think that’s some smell and a flavor that I really enjoy, and there’s still fruit left in this wine. This is, the 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 when Wilson that we could charge a higher price for it and how do we make that all happen. And by signing the bottle that my father believed was going to be, uh, world-class wine and wine too. It lasts for a long time. And I think that, uh, my father would be very proud that he signed this bottle of wine
Speaker 10: (23:35)
when we first moved here. And that’s back in 67, 68 I remember my dad wearing a white pair of jeans every single day as he’d go out and get on the tractor and drive a blue Ford tractor through the vineyards and I think those are 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 know, you knew when he wasn’t happy because he got really quiet, but always kind loved animals. You know, 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, you know, with all of us and made us part of it.
Speaker 8: (24:40)
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. My firstborn, 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 had been making for years and years were a great expression of what we were making on Pritchard Hill. But there came sort of a change throughout 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.
Speaker 5: (25:47)
Yeah,
Speaker 8: (25:47)
in many ways I think of this as a young one, but I know that you know, it’s got 22 years on it, but I think we’re going to find big fruit, big tannin, but all of those tertiary flavors that we know come with age are going to be really expressing themselves also. So I see this as that
Speaker 10: (26:05)
sort of perfect moment in time. All right. We made it. Cork looks actually really great. Not that I was expecting it not to
Speaker 11: (26:18)
[inaudible] [inaudible]
Speaker 8: (26:36)
so right off the bat, no, the color is still very dark. There’s some, there’s some tar traits that came into the glass. I’m not too concerned about that. Um, I think that’s what teeth are for, is straining those out. But the color is amazing. You know, a little, little breakout on the edges but still seems really vibrant.
Speaker 1: (27:00)
[inaudible]
Speaker 8: (27:09)
yeah, it’s, it’s even more youthful than I remembered. Uh, it’s really still just a baby. My dad loved the idea that we were making wines at the top caliber, uh, 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.
Speaker 7: (27:39)
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.
Speaker 2: (27:53)
It’s been very rewarding. They wanted to come into the business, and you’re asking, how did you get along? Because some of them are running a business. They all think they’re running the business, but they don’t know. Right. We always refer to you. It defers to me. Not read. Uh, uh, no. I’m so pleased to have them do it. I couldn’t do what they do. Um, I don’t think I had
Speaker 1: (28:17)
[inaudible].
Speaker 2: (28:22)
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 going by and 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.
Speaker 1: (28:48)
[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible].