One Hundred Fifty Years (and Counting) at the Napa Valley Vanguard

It requires a certain kind of vision to take the mantle of leadership at Napa Valley’s first and oldest winery, Charles Krug. Eponymously named for the twenty-seven-year-old Prussian who founded it in 1861, Charles Krug, the man, was an innovator many times over: he opened the first tasting room in California in 1882. He introduced the cider press to winemaking, making it considerably easier to press wines and separate liquids from solids. A true pathbreaker, he made careful study and selection of rootstock, varieties and vineyard locations, a total rarity in the nineteenth and even into the middle twentieth centuries. Over time, the winery fell into other hands and was eventually far worse for wear – which is where the Peter Mondavi  Sr. Family came into the picture during World War Two.

Anyone seeking to work with this particular winery must have dedication to preserving the historical birthplace of Napa wine while also being open to making the business, the vineyards, the production processes themselves better along the way, and it should come as no surprise that the patriarch of the family which has managed the winery the longest, seventy years and counting, also is known for his vision, and he simply continued on his own family’s tradition of innovation in the wine business. Peter Mondavi, Sr.’s father, Cesare, emigrated from Italy in 1906 and came to Lodi during Prohibition, building a successful grape- and fruit-shipping business and partnering in Sunny St. Helena Winery (now Merryvale). He purchased the Charles Krug Winery in 1943 for $75,000, revitalizing it from its Prohibition-era neglect. One could say the future of Napa as the “Napa Valley” hung in the balance of that purchase, though no one realized it at the time.

Peter took over as President in 1966, and his efforts have resulted in enological, viticultural, and marketing revolutions, which include the vintage-dating of varietal wines; cold fermentations of white wines; cold sterile filtration of wines; leading the planting of Carneros to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir varieties; conducting fermentations in small French oak barrels; producing the first winery newsletter, Bottles & Bins, in 1949; and creating the annual Tastings on the Lawn concert series in 1951, the first wine industry tasting events for the general public. For these successes and more, Peter was justly named by the Napa Valley Vintners Association as one of its twelve “Living Legends” in 1999. He modestly says, “We worked at it. We did a lot of research in our day.” And for those efforts, Governor Jerry Brown proclaimed September 10th, 2011 as “Charles Krug Winery Day.”

Change, in the name of better wines, continues to this day with the next generation of Mondavis leading the way. Peter’s sons, Marc and Peter, Jr., have just completed a nine-year, $22-million initiative to replant more than four hundred acres of estate property and upgrade the winery to twenty-first-century equipment. Those upgrades in combination with new winemaker Stacy Clark’s vision are already producing distinction: the current 2008 releases have received a slew of 90+ scores and Gold, Double Gold, and Best of Class awards. Produced from eleven vineyards and encompassing four AVAs – Carneros, Howell Mountain, St. Helena, Yountville – across 850 acres, the wines are clearly amongst the best the Valley has produced. Balance and structure in the name of wines for the “dining room table” are always the goal, says Peter, Sr.: “When you have a nice dinner, you want a wine that is drinkable, but won’t overpower it.”

The various wine tiers carry out these ideals. The Napa Valley and Carneros releases all are made for food and include Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel. The Family Reserve Generations utilizes special vineyard blocks, and the Vintage Selection Cabernet Sauvignon is the flagship bottling, only having been produced in special years since 1944. The Limited Release bottlings are small-lot, one-hundred-to-five-hundred-case wines only available directly from the winery and display a real sense of adventure. There are several different Cabs – including the very special 150th Anniversary Cab in 1.5 liter magnum bottles. Limited Release selections, including the ever popular Zinfandel Port, are sold exclusively through the tasting room and online.

The tasting options for these wines, current releases, Reserve and Limited releases, and a special Barrel Tasting, all take place, literally, inside of history. The property’s layout still echoes Krug’s choices, and the train tracks which run through the property harken back to how wineries survived during Prohibition: shipping grapes nationally for legal home winemaking. As you wander, you’ll see the original cider press, wine bars made from the same redwood as the tanks, and lots of historical artifacts.

The many-gabled Redwood Cellar was built by Krug himself in 1872 after his original burned to the ground. Now on the National Register of Historic Places and a California Historic Landmark, the newly restored building holds the state-of-the-art barrel room, holding the Family Reserve wines and serving as the location for special, ninety-minute barrel tastings. As Peter, Jr. says, “You’re in the room where wine is aging in oak barrels, and you’re trying wine that came from those barrels.” Artisinal cheeses are provided to accompany this very unique tasting experience, and it is limited to eight people at a time to ensure its educational value.

As you can tell, the winery has never shied away from trying new things nor going where others cannot or will not go; befitting the enormity of a 150th anniversary, the winery has been conducting a search for the oldest pre-Prohibition or Peter Mondavi Family-era (1944 onwards) bottle of Charles Krug wine. While this quest is not yet complete, several very old bottles have been located. The winery will be announcing the results soon – check in with them at the tasting room for the latest insider updates on the search. Think about how few wineries anywhere could even contemplate such a quest; it’s quite impressive to basically be conducting two at the same time – one for the oldest bottle produced by the man himself and one for the oldest produced by the property’s longest running caretakers.

And that really is what today’s – and tomorrow’s – Charles Krug Winery is all about. The family doesn’t want to forget its past, they celebrate it in fact, but it also seeks to move ahead to new ways of growing and making even better wines while creating new chapters in their four generations of owning the Charles Krug Winery. Go taste for yourself and see why wine lovers have been coming to Charles Krug Winery since the nineteenth century. Enjoy!