A Sense of Place: An Intimate Portrait of the Niebaum-Coppola Winery and the Napa Valley
Obscenely wealthy entrepreneurs--men who made their bundle in the coffee business, mining, shipping, commodities, and politics--decide to buy hobby vineyards in the trendy Napa Valley. TheSan Francisco Examinerpublishes a special lifestyle edition on California wines. Sound familiar? Welcome to Rutherford, California circa 1890.And welcome toA Sense of Place: An Intimate Portrait of the Niebaum-Coppola Winery and the Napa Valleyby Steven Kolpan, professor of wine studies at The Culinary Institute of America. By charting the history of one piece of Napa soil, the author provides an absolutely fascinating tour that is part documentary, part Hollywood fable, and part scathing chronicle of corporate ineptitude. When Finnish mariner-turned-San-Francisco-millionaire Gustav Niebaum establishes Inglenook Estate in 1879, his dream is to make the finest wine in California. His heir comes close to fulfilling the dream before selling a portion of the estate to a wine co-op, which is purchased by liquor giant Heublein. Heublein turns the once-proud estate into a jug wine brand. Meanwhile, the heir's Mormon wife--who hates everything about the wine business--sells the original house and remaining vineyards to film director Francis Ford Coppola, who 20 years later buys Heublein's parcel to reunite the original estate. Chapters recount this tale through the recollections of Rafael Rodriguez, a migrant laborer working at the property in the 1950s and now vineyard manager; Scott McLeod, current Niebaum-Coppola "winegrower" and artisan of the high-end Rubicon; and Dennis Fife, Inglenook's final president during the tumultuous Heublein days and now a respected winemaker in his own right, in a chapter that reads like a financial report written by Mel Brooks.Captain Niebaum's 1884 Inglenook Claret sold for $3 a case. Coppola's 1995 Rubicon was $75 a bottle. For the price ofA Sense of Place, every Cabernet fan will be able to savor a little piece of "Rutherford dust."--Tony Mason