University of California Berkeley Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series Richard L. Arrowood SONOMA COUNTY WINEMAKING: CHATEAU ST. JEAN AND ARROWOOD VINEYARDS & WINERY Interviews Conducted by Carole Hicke in 1995 and 1996 Copyright 1996 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well- informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ************************************ All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Richard L. Arrowood dated August 24, 1995. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Richard L. Arrowood requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Richard L. Arrowood, "Sonoma County Winemaking: Chateau St. Jean and Arrowood Vineyards & Winery," an oral history conducted in 1995 and 1996 by Carole Hicke, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1996. Copy no. Richard L. Arrowood and Alls Demers Arrowood, ca. 1990. Photograph courtesy of Alis Demers Arrowood Cataloging Information ARROWOOD, Richard L. (b. 1945) Winery Owner and Winemaster Sonoma County Winemaking: Chateau St. Jean and Arrowood Vineyards & Winery, 1996, viii, 140 pp. Early career at Korbel Champagne Cellars, Italian Swiss Colony, Sonoma Vineyards; winemaker, Chateau St. Jean: winery start-up, growth, vineyard- designated labels, Chardonnay, Late Harvest Riesling; sale to Suntory Corp. and working with the Japanese; Arrowood Vineyards: founding in 1986; building the winery, winemaking and vineyard management, Domaine du Grand Archer, Smothers Bros., financing growth; discusses cooperage, bottles, and corks, small and large wineries. Includes interview with Alis Arrowood (b. 1951) on marketing and public relations. Interviewed in 1995-1996 by Carole Hicke for the Wine Spectator California Wine Oral History Series, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. TABLE OF CONTENTS --Richard L. Arrowood PREFACE i INTERVIEW HISTORY- -by Carole Hicke vi I BACKGROUND AND FAMILY 1 Vanoni Family 1 Arrowood Clan 3 Growing Up in Santa Rosa 4 College and University Education 5 II DEVELOPING A KNOWLEDGE OF WINE 8 Summer Work at Korbel Champagne Cellars, 1965 8 Studies at California State University, Fresno, 1968-1969 10 III EARLY WORK EXPERIENCE IN WINE INDUSTRY 15 Continuing at Korbel, then to Italian Swiss Colony 15 Joining Rodney Strong Vineyards 17 IV WINEMAKER FOR CHATEAU ST. JEAN 20 Startup 20 Making the Wines 27 Allan Hemphill, President of Chateau St. Jean 28 Varietals 31 Problems Developing at Chateau St. Jean 39 Chateau St. Jean Sold to Suntory 41 V ARROWOOD VINEYARDS & WINERY 53 Finding the Site 53 Alis Arrowood 53 The Winery Property 57 Building the Winery 59 Wine Production 61 Financial Negotiations 62 Equipment 68 Fining and Filtering 69 A Smaller Winery- -The Personal Touch 70 Yeasts and Fermentation 74 Cooperage 76 Bottles and Corks 78 Other Labels: Domaine du Grand Archer; Smothers Brothers 81 Vineyards and Vineyard Management 82 Marketing 87 VI SONOMA COUNTY 88 Evolution of Winegrowing 88 Appellations 90 Vineyards: Growth and Replanting 91 Fruit and Blending 93 Changes in Ownership 96 Wine Auctions and Other Activities 100 Thoughts on the Future 104 VII INTERVIEW WITH ALIS ARROWOOD: MARKETING AND DISTRIBUTION 107 Getting Arrowood Winery Started: Cellar Work 107 Sales 109 Pricing Growth of Sales and Distribution In the Marketplace: Life on the Run 114 Expanding the Market 118 Selling Grand Archer Professional Associations and Activities 124 130 TAPE GUIDE APPENDICES A "Mead on Wine" article re. Arrowood wines by Jerry D. Mead 132 B Wine Spectator announcement, April 30, 1995, re. Arrowood 1993 White Riesling. I 33 C "The Ashington-Pickett Wine Review" announcement, Vol. 1, Issue 11, re. Arrowood 1991 Cabernet Sauvignon, 1994. 134 D The Underground Wine Journal (Vol. XIV, No. 6) and San Francisco Chronicle (July 28, 1993) announcements re. Arrowood 1991 and 1992 releases. 135 E Arrowood Vineyards and Winery wine list, 1994. 137 INDEX I 38 PREFACE The California wine industry oral history series, a project of the Regional Oral History Office, was initiated by Ruth Teiser in 1969 through the action and with the financing of the Wine Advisory Board, a state marketing order organization which ceased operation in 1975. In 1983 it was reinstituted as The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series with donations from The Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation. The selection of those to be interviewed has been made by a committee consisting of the director of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; John A. De Luca, president of the Wine Institute, the statewide winery organization; Maynard A. Amerine, Emeritus Professor of Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis; the current chairman of the board of directors of the Wine Institute; Carole Hicke, series project director; and Marvin R. Shanken, trustee of The Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation. Until her death in June 1994, Ruth Teiser was project originator, initiator, director, and conductor of the greater part of the oral histories. Her book, Winemaking in California, co-authored with Catherine Harroun and published in 1982, was the product of more than forty years of research, interviewing, and photographing. (Those wine history files are now in The Bancroft Library for researcher use.) Ruth Teiser 's expertise and knowledge of the wine industry contributed significantly to the documenting of its history in this series. The purpose of the series is to record and preserve information on California grape growing and winemaking that has existed only in the memories of wine men. In some cases their recollections go back to the early years of this century, before Prohibition. These recollections are of particular value because the Prohibition period saw the disruption of not only the industry itself but also the orderly recording and preservation of records of its activities. Little has been written about the industry from late in the last century until Repeal. There is a real paucity of information on the Prohibition years (1920-1933), although some commercial winemaking did continue under supervision of the Prohibition Department. The material in this series on that period, as well as the discussion of the remarkable development of the wine industry in subsequent years will be of aid to historians. Of particular value is the fact that frequently several individuals have discussed the same subjects and events or expressed opinions on the same ideas, each from his or her own point of view. Research underlying the interviews has been conducted principally in the University libraries at Berkeley and Davis, the California State ii Library, and in the library of the Wine Institute, which has made its collection of materials readily available for the purpose. The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record autobiographical interviews with persons who have contributed significantly to recent California history. The office is headed by Willa K. Baum and is under the administrative supervision of The Bancroft Library. Carole Hicke Project Director The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series July 1994 Regional Oral History Office The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley ill CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY INTERVIEWS Interviews Completed as of September 1996 Leon D. Adams, Revitalizing the California Wine Industry. 197 A Leon D. Adams, California Wine Industry Affairs; Recollections and Opinions. 1990 Maynard A. Amerine, The University of California and the State's Wine Industry. 1971 Maynard A. Amerine, Wine Bibliographies and Taste Perception Studies. 1988 Richard L. Arrowood, Sonoma County Winemaking: Chateau St. Jean and Arrowood Vineyards & Winery, 1996 Philo Biane, Wine Making in Southern California and Recollections of Fruit Industries. Inc. , 1972 Charles A. Carpy, Viticulture and Enology at Freemark Abbey. 1994 John B. Cella, The Cella Family in the California Wine Industry. 1986 Charles Crawford, Recollections of a Career with the Gallo Winery and the Development of the California Wine Industry. 1942-1989. 1990 Burke H. Critchfield, Carl F. Wente, and Andrew G. Frericks, The California Wine Industry During the Depression. 1972 William V. Cruess, A Half Century of Food and Wine Technology, 1967 Jack and Jamie Peterman Davies, Rebuilding Schramsberg; The Creation of a California Champagne House, 1990 William A. Dieppe, Almaden is My Life. 1985 Paul Draper, History and Philosophy of Winemaking at Ridge Vineyards: 1970s- 1990s. 1994 Daniel J. and Margaret S. Duckhorn, Mostly Merlot; The History of Duckhorn Vineyards, 1996 Ficklin, David, Jean, Peter, and Steve, Making California Port Wine: Ficklin Vineyards from 1948 to 1992. 1992 Brooks Firestone, Firestone Vineyard; A Santa Ynez Valley Pioneer. 1996 Louis J. Foppiano, A Century of Winegrowing in Sonoma County. 1896-1996. 1996 Alfred Fromm, Marketing California Wine and Brandy. 1984 iv Louis Gomberg, Analytical Perspectives on the California Wine Industry. 1935- 1990. 1990 Miljenko Grgich, A Croatian-American Winemaker in the Napa Valley. 1992 Joseph E. Heitz, Creating a Winery in the Napa Valley. 1986 Agustin Huneeus, A World View of the Wine Industry, 1996 Maynard A. Joslyn, A Technologist Views the California Wine Industry. 1974 Amandus N. Kasimatis, A Career in California Viticulture. 1988 Morris Katz, Paul Masson Winery Operations and Management, 1944-1988, 1990 Legh F. Knowles, Jr., Beaulieu Vineyards from Family to Corporate Ownership, 1990 Horace 0. Lanza and Harry Baccigaluppi, California Grape Products and Other Wine Enterprises. 1971 Zelma R. Long, The Past is the Beginning of the Future: Simi Winery in its Second Century, 1992 Richard Maher, California Winery Management and Marketing. 1992 Louis M. Martini and Louis P. Martini, Wine Making in the Napa Valley. 1973 Louis P. Martini, A Family Winery and the California Wine Industry. 1984 Eleanor McCrea, Stony Hill Vineyards; The Creation of a Napa Valley Estate Winery. 1990 " Otto E. Meyer, California Premium Wines and Brandy. 1973 Norbert C. Mirassou and Edmund A. Mirassou, The Evolution of a Santa Clara Valley Winery. 1986 Peter Mondavi, Advances in Technology and Production at Charles Krug Winery, 1946-1988. 1990 Robert Mondavi, Creativity in the Wine Industry. 1985 Michael Moone, Management and Marketing at Beringer Vineyards and Wine World. Inc.. 1990 Myron S. Nightingale, Making Wine in California. 1944-1987. 1988 Harold P. Olmo, Plant Genetics and New Grape Varieties. 1976 Cornelius Ough, Researches of an Enologist. University of California. Davis, 1950-1990. 1990 John A. Parducci, Six Decades of Making Wine in Mendocino County. California. 1992 Antonio Perelli-Minetti, A Life in Wine Making. 1975 Louis A. Petri, The Petri Family in the Wine Industry. 1971 Jefferson E. Peyser, The Law and the California Wine Industry. 1974 Joseph Phelps, Joseph Phelps Vineyards: Classic Wines and Rhone Varietals, 1996 Lucius Powers, The Fresno Area and the California Wine Industry. 1974 Victor Repetto and Sydney J. Block, Perspectives on California Wines. 1976 Edmund A. Rossi, Italian Swiss Colony and the Wine Industry. 1971 Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., Italian Swiss Colony. 1949-1989; Recollections of a Third-Generation California Winemaker. 1990 Arpaxat Setrakian, A. Setrakian. a Leader of the San Joaquin Valley Grape Industry. 1977 Elie Skofis, California Wine and Brandy Maker. 1988 David S. Stare, Fume Blanc and Meritage Wines in Sonoma County; Dry Creek Vineyard's Pioneer Winemaking. 1996 Rodney S. Strong, Rodney Strong Vineyards; Creative Winemaking and Winery Management in Sonoma County. 1994 Andre Tchelistchef f , Grapes. Wine, and Ecology. 1983 Brother Timothy, The Christian Brothers as Wine Makers, 1974 Louis (Bob) Trinchero, California Zinfandels. a Success Story. 1992 Charles F. Wagner and Charles J. Wagner, Caymus Vineyards; A Father-Son Team Producing Distinctive Wines. 1994 Wente, Jean, Carolyn, Philip, and Eric, The Wente Family and the California Wine Industry. 1992 Ernest A. Wente, Wine Making in the Livermore Valley. 1971 Warren Winiarski, Creating Classic Wines in the Napa Valley. 1994 Albert J. Winkler, Viticultural Research at UC Davis (1921-1971), 1973 John H. Wright, Domaine Chandon: The First French-owned California Sparkling Wine Cellar, includes an interview with Edmond Maudiere, 1992 vi INTERVIEW HISTORY- -Richard L. Arrowood Richard Arrowood, owner and winemaster of Arrowood Vineyards and Winery, was interviewed as part of the Wine Spectator's California Wine Oral History Series to document his career and contributions to the history of California wines. His wife, Alis Arrowood, was also interviewed as part of this oral history to record her work in the marketing and distribution field. Dick Arrowood made a name for himself as winemaker for the Chateau St. Jean winery in the 1970s and 1980s. As that winery's first employee, he was instrumental in its growth and recognition. In 1986 he and Alis invested in property near Glen Ellen, California, and built the Arrowood Vineyards. Richard talked candidly and occasionally vehemently about the growing of fine wines and the making of a top-quality winery. His experiences inform the reader of the many aspects of winegrowing that require care and expertisenot just producing the wines but managing the business. Alis detailed the role of the marketing and distribution manager, including her normal daily routine when on the road. Dick and Alis were interviewed in their offices at the beautiful winery they built near Glen Ellen in the Sonoma Valley. Dick was interviewed on August 24, November 13, 1995, and February 7, 1996. Alis's recollections were recorded on February 7, 1996. Both reviewed their transcripts carefully and made corrections that clarified their statements. This series is part of the ongoing documenting of California history by the Regional Oral History Office, which is under the direction of Willa Baum, Division Head, and under the administrative direction of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Carole Hicke Project Director July 29, 1996 Regional Oral History Office Berkeley, California vii Regional Oral History Office Room 486 The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley, California 94720 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (Please write clearly. Use black ink.) Your full name yC.vJU.M Jl Date of birth\l/ql4S "Birthplace^ Father's full name Occupation Birthplace Mother's full name Occupation '^g.C Your spouse Your children Where did you grow up? Present community Education ^ GaJ IT. occu pa tion(s) uXJ^- r~-^ C-iMW^V^rv^s. Qjc>-A-^ t VT oS i ^^ ^V ) ) ' \ Other interests or activities f ^ r^r-^-f <-& Organizations in which you are active ') viii Regional Oral History Office Room 486 The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley, California 94720 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (Please write clearly. Use black ink.) Your full name Date of birth Q% / 3/ / 6 / ~ ~~ Birthplace mS, 'fl/snL Father's full name Occupation Jf.^ ~ it \\ Birthplace Mother's full name Occupation Your spouse l\ ,/ Your children Af Birthplace Vl^^/Vii i X. (7 ' / Where did you grow up? Present community Education QcuL- ?.: .P ) Occupation(s) . -/ <* tt eas of expertise Other interests or activities C/ A/Ur Organizations in which you are active ; /LV<,& L I BACKGROUND AND FAMILY [Interview 1: August 24, 1995] II 1 Vanoni Family Hicke: Let's just start out this morning with when and where you were born. Arrowood: I was born in San Francisco, California, on December 9, 1945. Hicke: Well, a real Californian! Arrowood: You bet, yes. As a matter of fact, that was really the only time I was to spend any time out of the north coast area. I consider myself a Sonoma County native, so of my forty-nine years, I've probably lived in, actually in the Santa Rosa vicinity and Sonoma County, for forty-seven and a half of those forty-nine years. Hicke: Okay, so you moved out early. But before we get into that, let me ask you what you can tell me about your forebears, your ancestors . Arrowood: I'm just going to give you what was told to me. Some of this I've seen in writing, not all of it, looking back to my grandfather and great-grandfather and grandmother and great- grandmother. My ancestry on my mother's side is Swiss Italian. Hicke: What was her name? 'This symbol (it) indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun or ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript. Arrowood: Vanoni [spells]. Hicke: That was her last name? Arrowood: That was her maiden name, right. Hicke: And her first name? Arrowood : Donna . Hicke: Well, you were about to tell me about your grandfather and great-grandfather . Arrowood: Yes. My great-great-grandfather was one of the original founderswith a group, I think, the growers groupof Italian Swiss Colony Winery. But I don't have all the details. That really had no influence on me getting into the business, but that was my understanding that Mark Vanoni, when he came off the boat from Italy, was one of the original founders there. Hicke: He came from what part of Italy? Arrowood: Lake Como area, right on the Switzerland-Italy border. Hicke: He was Italian Swiss! Arrowood: Yes, exactly. Hicke: Very appropriate. Okay, so he must have come before the turn of the century, I guess. Arrowood: Yes, back in the late 1800s, and again, I don't have all the details of that. I'm just trying to think who might if you really wanted to get that information, but it would probably be- - there still are some Vanonis living up in Geyserville, which is where they were originally settled. They had the Vanoni Ranch up there. So my grandfather, Al Vanoni, which was my mother's father, had a shop in Geyserville, as a matter of fact. That picture [points to picture] is one of the shops in the early 1920s. Hicke: A machine shop? Arrowood: He had a machine shop, and then he also was a deputy sheriff, and also the poundmaster in Sonoma County for a period of time. Hicke : Poundmaster? Arrowood: Yes. That's the animal control officer. At that time they were called poundmasters . Hicke: On this ranch that your great-grandfatherit was your great grandfather? Arrowood: Yes, the Vanoni Ranch. Hicke: Was he growing grapes? Arrowood: You know, I don't know what they had on the ranch. No, I think it was a cattle ranch, if I'm not mistaken, at the time. But again, to find some of that history out, you'd probably have to get into some of the Sonoma County archives. I know that Clement Vanoni, Jr., is still alive and lives on part of the ranch. They sold a good part of it. It's now known as The Vineyard in Geyserville, and that was the old Vanoni Ranch. But a lot of that information, again, I just don't have. Now, interestingly enough, my grandmother and grandfather are still alive. My mother and father have passed away. My grandfather probably is not going to make it much longer. I saw him the other day; he's very, very old. But my grandmother is eighty-eight years old and looks like she's about seventy. She's very alert and very aware of what's going on. So that's really, as far as on my mother's side anyway, the family that's left alive. Arrowood Clan Arrowood: On my father's side, there's really only one member of the Arrowood clanhis sister is still alive, my aunt. She lives in Santa Rosa. But other than that, they're all gone. Hicke: Where did they come from? Arrowood: Originally from Modoc County, and then they settled here in Santa Rosa. My grandmother on my father's side, my father's mother, her maiden name was Mulkey [spells]. She married Jay Arrowood, and Jay was originally from Savannah, Georgia. Hicke: That's amazing. You have family on both sides that have been Calif ornians for generations. Arrowood: Yes, for quite some time. That's right. Hicke: Jay Arrowood was your grandfather, you said. Arrowood: That was my grandfather; that was my father's father. Hicke: Why did he move to Sonoma? Arrowood: Good question. I really don't -know. I know he worked at Arragonies Market in Santa Rosa. As a matter of fact, that's my grandfather, my father's father, so on my father's side, that's my grandfather. [points to picture] Hicke: Oh, these pictures are wonderful. Arrowood: And my grandmother here. And then my grandfather on my mother's side here in the navy. You have to dig through some of the old records to find out just all the details, but I'm only recalling it as well as I can remember as a youngster. Hicke: Okay, so back to San Francisco. You lived there until you were about two? Arrowood: I think actually--! don't know all the details on the San Francisco thing--! think I was only there for just a few months, and then my mother moved here to Sonoma County. You see, my background is a little different than usual. My father, Clyde Arrowood, is not my paternal father. My paternal father is a man by the name of Kenneth Jensen, and the last time I talked to him was when I was still in college, so it's been that longbut I believe he's still alive, as far as I know, and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. So that's the other side of my family. I really don't know a lot of the details of that side, because when my mother and father split, I was young enough where I didn't realize what that scenario was. I know that he was in the coast guard when my mom and dad got married originally. So that part of the family aspect is kind of in the background there. Then when the man I consider my father adopted me, my name changed from Jensen to Arrowood. So that was back when I was three or four or whatever age I was then. Growing Up in Santa Rosa Hicke: What part of Sonoma did you grow up in? Arrowood: I grew up in Santa Rosa. Hicke: You said that, yes. school? Okay. You went to school there, high Arrowood: Went to school there, you bet. As a matter of fact, the funny part of this whole school thing is that Alexander Valley School, which is now owned by Alexander Valley Vineyards --they have it as a guest houseboth my mother and my grandmother went to class in that little school, and when I went to high school in Santa Rosa, I had the same English teacher that taught both my grandmother and my mother English. Hicke: Good heavens! Arrowood: Yes. That's kind of amazing. I'm sure she's long gone by now. Hicke: Oh, that is amazing. I've heard of people following their brothers and sisters, but not too many who have followed their grandmothers . Now, what things did you like about school? Arrowood: Oh, I think from the beginning, I've always been one of these curious kids, so when I got my first chemistry set when I was twelve, that became my area of focus, so I always enjoyed the sciences. After I went through the grammar school era, went to Santa Rosa Junior High School, Santa Rosa High School, Santa Rosa Junior College, I then went off to college at California] State University, Sacramento, and got my degree in chemistry. Then I did my graduate work in fermentation science at Cal State University, Fresno. Because my father was a good friend of Adolph Heck, who owned Korbel Champagne Cellars, my first job in the wine business in 1965 was at Korbel. College and University Education Hicke: That's a good overview. Now let's back up a little bit. Were there any teachers let ' s go back to high school and ask about any teachers you particularly remember. Arrowood: Well, high school teachers? Probably none that I could point a finger to and say yes, they really motivated me. I think probably it didn't really occurmy motivation in following the sciences and chemistry probably didn't occur really until I got into junior college. There were two people that impacted me, I think, very well there. There was a fellow by the name of Glen Watson, Glen W. Watson. He was a chemistry professor and Hicke: Arrowood ; Hicke: department head. And then also a fellow by the name of Vincent Cucuzza [spells]. He also was a very strong influence. He was a chemistry professor also. Both of these gentlemen, I think, in their own ways, influenced me enough to want to pursue the career that I did; so after I got my degree in chemistry, I then decided, Well, okay, I'll do my work in fermentation science, because of the fact that I had a summertime job at a winery and I felt it was a very interesting career field. But I think that their influence on me was probably to the extent of showing me, "Hey, look, you can do just about anything you want to do." If you've got the drive, the gray matter is there, if you really want to do it. But you've got to work on it. Sciences came relatively easy to me. My biggest problem I think in school was I just didn't spend much time in the humanities. I had no time for that. I was always kind of a resentful kid that all the people in humanities and sociology never had to take chemistry, but all the people in chemistry, of course, had to take the "damn sociology" and things like that, that meant nothing to me then. Unfortunately, today I wish I had taken more interest in that, because obviously that's what makes the world go around and how you get along with people better, and I think it would have perhaps given me a different outlook. At the time, I was really, again, into the sciences, and so that was my major area of focus, and everything else wasn't important to me. But you evolve and you grow and you mature out of that scenario. Yes. It's probably easier to learn that aspect of things by yourself than it would be chemistry. Yes, I suppose. But like anything else, if you would have realized the usefulness that was there--. The problem is, much of the rote material that was being taught at the time was so damn dreadfully dry and boring that you couldn't see any relationship to what you could use this for, let alone what the heck I'd ever use this for in life. And that's a shame, because there are people out there who can teach and are very effective at it and can bring your interest to the forefront. Hence the examples of Glen Watson and Vince Cucuzza. These were people who could pique my interest, and it was always more fascinating with their input. It became more interesting, and I enjoyed it. Well, you've just described very well why I like to ask about influential teachers, because I think you're absolutely right: I think they can make or break a subject, and a lot of them have attracted students into a specific field. Arrowood: Absolutely true. The shade is either up or it's down, and you can tell the people who are there to teach because they're finishing their Ph.D. dissertation or whatever they're doing, and they couldn't care less about the students. The shade's down. You can tell, on the other side of the coin, about the people that can explain things to you. I once had, I remember- - this is a side issue--a problem in chemistry that 1 worked up, and I did all the formulas right, and 1 did the calculations correctly, but I slipped a decimal point at the very end. So when I turned it in, Professor Watson gave it back to me and took 50 percent off. 1 went to him and said, "You know, you've got to be out of your mind! It doesn't seem fair. It's almost all correct! I just made a decimal--" He cut me off and said, "All right, all right, all right. That's fair. So what I'm going to do is I'd like to borrow $100 from you today. Have you got $100? Could you loan me that? I'll pay it back to you." I said, "All right, so if I give you $100?" He said, "Yes, you give me $100, and then tomorrow I'll pay you back $10. It's just a decimal point. That's the only difference." Needless to say, I had little with which to defend my original position. And what he taught me, not just by that statement, but what he was trying to show is that you have to look at something logical. Is it a milliliter or is it an ocean? Is it logical? And that's what's always worked for me in my life, that I may not always know the precise answer, but I know it's either 1,000 gallons or 100,000 gallons of wine, or it's one gallon of wine or 1,000 gallons. Is the answer going to come up where the logic comes in? And that was taught to me, I think, very effectively. He was an interesting guy. He worked on the Manhattan Project, was an assistant in that. Worked at the Los Alamos [Laboratories] as one of the chemists there during the war years in development of the first and second atomic bombs. He was an interesting guy and had a lot of interesting stories, and always kept me fascinated. He was sort of like the uncle that I wish I had, so to speak. Hicke: Great teacher to have. He really sounds good. Arrowood: Yes, definitely. II DEVELOPING A KNOWLEDGE OF WINE Summer Work at Korbel Champagne Cellars. 1965 Hicke: Arrowood: Well, you mentioned that you had a summer job in a winery? was this, and where was it? When Yes. July of '65 was my first year in the industry, and I got a job at Korbel Champagne Cellars, and worked for a fellow by the name of Allan Hemphill, who was actually the first graduate from California] State University, Fresno, in enology. He worked for Adolph Heck. As a matter of fact, he was married to Adolph's daughter. Up until the time she was killed and a little bit after that, Allan was the production manager at Korbel Champagne Cellars. Because my father was a very good friend of Adolph Heck's, I kept bugging Adolph every time he'd come over, "Can 1 get a job in the winery? I'd sure like to work in the laboratory. Can I get a job? Can I get a job?" So he finally gave me a job through Allan. He just said, "Go talk to Allan, and Allan will take care of you." Allan said, "Well, I don't need anybody in the lab right now. But what I really need is somebody in the cellar. If you'd like to come work, we'll put you to work in the cellar." So I got a chance to learn the wine business essentially fromthe first job I had, I think, was cleaning out the men's room! And from there to the bottling line, to champagne disgorging, and bottling line, and riddling, and the whole shot. It gave me an opportunity, I think, to learn the business from the ground up. There is very little in our winery today that I can't do, so I feel comfortable--! 'm a winemaker by trade, but in addition I have the chemistry background so that if I have to do lab work, I can do lab work. A lot of winemakers hate that aspect of it, and a lot of chemists, of course, a lot of laboratory people don't like the winemaking aspect of it. Well, I had a Hicke: chance to do all of those things, and if you're in the wine business and understand that, as a winery owner--! eventually became a winery owner- -it gives you a lot more. To me, a better broad brush-stroke on the overall business aspect, so you really can see what's going on, and you're not just focused on one thing. 1 think it makes you a better manager. Well, let me go back and ask, did you drink wine in your family growing up? Arrowood: Oh, you know, we did a little, but I'm ashamed to say it was mostly special occasions. My mother and father were of the forties, fifties, and sixties, so during that time when you came home from work, you usually had an Old-Fashioned or a Martini or two. My parents weren't big drinkers, but that's what they drank; if they wanted to relax, they'd have a Martini or an Old- Fashioned, and there it was. Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, special occasions, birthdays and things, a bottle of wine would come out , but not a tremendous amount of knowledge as far as wine was concerned. So when I got in the business, there was nothing in the family that led me to know anything about the wine business per se. Everything I learned had to be taught to me by either the hands-on experience or in school, or both. Hicke: Did you acquire an interest in wine before you went to Fresno? Arrowood: Yes, definitely. I was still going to school at Sacramento when I was working at Korbel. I graduated in '68 from Cal State Sacramento, and then '68- '69 went to Fresno and did my graduate work there. My interest in wine was really just from the experience that I'd had at the Korbel winery, and my palate was far from developed at that particular point but in fact was just in the infant stages of developing. Because I had a chance to have hands-on experience, when I did take my enology courses at Fresno, I had a little bit of a leg up on many of the other students because I'd already worked in the business, so I had an understanding of what--I didn't know it all, but at least I had an idea of what was going on, and it kind of tied in the academic aspect of it to the practical aspect of it and made it fit pretty well for me. Hicke: You had really been interested in the business itself more than in wine or wine-drinking? Arrowood: No, I think to be honest with you, for the first part of it, I was more interested in the laboratory, chemistry aspect of it. The chemistry of winemaking seemed to be very fascinating to me. 10 But again, as you mature, I knew at one time that I might not want to be in a laboratory all my life, so I'd better pay attention to what production is all about. And in production, you can express yourself more because winemaking is a combination of both technology and art form. It's about 10 percent technology and about 90 percent art form. People who are in the science aspect of it might like to reverse that, but the fact of the matter is it really is an art form. You're going to be much better off if you have the technology to make it happen for you, and to understand, to sidestep some of the pitfalls that people tend to step into on occasion, but you really don't need that training to still make a fine bottle of wine. It just helps. Studies at California State University. Fresno. 1968-1969 Hicke: Who were some of the people you studied under at Fresno? Arrowood: Fresno was one of those crazy places that at the time, in enology anyway- -viticulture is a different story--but in the enology aspects of it, a Professor Dick Norton was the fellow that was in charge. Dick was a pretty easygoing professor. You learned if you wanted to learn on your own. It was a very practical, not so much academic-type aspect of the enological learning experience, so much as it was just a hands-on, of course, operational, small little winery. A winery that again Allan Hemphill at Korbel helped set up there and put together. Even at that time when Allan was going to school, I think- -Joe Heitz was teaching there, if I'm not mistaken. You'd have to check that with Allan Hemphill to have him give you some details . But when I was there, it was Dick Norton who was just a nice, crazy, easygoing guy. I'm not so sure he was any type of a mentor or authority figure that I would want to mimic, [laughs] He was just a little bit too loose for me in that regard. Probably the most influence of any person that I could say at Cal State Fresno was Vince Petrucci, and Vince taught me viticulture. I really felt that I picked up a lot more in the viticulture end of things. The enology I picked up a good chunk at Korbel under Allan's tutelage. Yes, there were more things that I was interested in the enology aspect, but Petrucci was one of these guys who could make it fun and interesting for you, and the practical aspect of fanning your own little acre of 11 vineyard, and so on and so forth. That was very pleasant and I enjoyed that. And it certainly helped me learn that aspect of the wine business. But Fresno is certainly now an academic force, with Dr. Miiller and Fugelslang there and several other people that are now intimately involved in the operation. Vince Petrucci, I think, has just retired. He's a great guy, and 1 see him on occasion at different functions. I've always had a great admiration for him, because he's a real earthy, family-man guy. Just very pleasant to be around. Always enjoyed him, always dependable, would answer your question when you had a question, had great stories, and I think that's what teaching is about. Again, it's back to the old statement, "the relationship." If you can relate your experiences, your life experience to somebody else, that's how you get to "where does it apply?" Where does it make sense? And that's part and parcel of why it works. Professor Petrucci could do that. Hicke: Okay. So he really introduced you to the viticulture side of things? Arrowood: Yes, the viticultural end. But of course, what is winemaking anyway? Winemaking is grapegrowing. You don't make great wines from poor grapes. You can make poor wines from great grapes, but you can't start with the raw material the way it is and improve it. Winemaking begins in the soil, and that's what you really have to pay attention to is where the grapes are grown; the geologic and geographic considerations have to be taken into account. You have to take into account crop levels and all the other things that go along with it. It's great if you say, "Well, I've got the grapes and now I'm a winemaker." Well, in reality, the Good Lord- -nature- - Mother Nature is the winemaker. You just act as a custodian. Whatever 's there, whatever comes in that little round ball when it's brought to the winery, that's what you've got to start with. You cannot make it better. You can keep it the same, but you can't make it any better. Hicke: This is a reasonably new way of looking at things, isn't it? Arrowood: Oh, I think I've always kind of looked at it that way. Hicke: I'm not talking about you, but like decades ago-- Arrowood: Yes, they always thought, Well, we can manipulate this and do that. But it's like anything else: you just have to believe that if somebody is growing Merlot and they're bringing it in at 12 eight or nine tons to the acre versus somebody growing Merlot at two to three to four tons for the acre, I promise you one will have a lot more concentration than the other, and one will have a lot more flavor interest than the other. They will both be Merlot, and they'll both be wine, but one will just taste better than the other. Again, this goes back to the fact that wine is made in the vineyard. Another way to say it is that the winemaker is obliged to make sure the vineyard yielding the grapes--the complexity of flavors and texturesare all in balance. I think this was Petrucci's major theory, and I've always believed it. It sounds a bit trite, and people don't always follow it but the simple theory is that a given vine on a given piece of ground in a given year can give you or will yield, a given quantity of quality fruit; period. It's a known quantity. In other words, if the vine's energy can be channeled to produce five pounds or seven pounds or fifteen pounds of great fruit, and you try to push that more than that, you'll get more fruit, you can do that, but you won't get more quality fruit. Hicke: So was he interested in trellising and Arrowood: Oh, absolutely. I think that's where- -unfortunately, I was at school at the time when trellising was just starting to be experimented with. So most of that information that I picked up came from within the industry, which is fine. The wine industry is a continual learning classroom every day. But that was just starting to be looked at, and I think he was certainly in the forefront of that research and of that development. Hicke: Were there any other summer jobs that you had that are of importance? Arrowood: No. Before I went to work for Korbel, I had a summer job in Santa Rosa working in a pharmacy, a couple of pharmacies. Not that that's any big deal. My first job when I was a kid in Santa Rosa was at Empire Drug Store in downtown Santa Rosa. God, that was so many years ago. That was owned by John Carico [spells]. Then that shop was bought out bythey moved a Rexall Drug Company right next to the five-and-dime there on Fourth Street. Then it was bought by Merle Bartel [spells]. I don't know what happened to Merle; I think he's moved someplace else now. But there were only a couple of drugstores right there on Fourth Street, which was Farmer Brothers and Empire Drug. I used to do a lot of the deliveries and that kind of stuff, a stockboy; if you will. But I always enjoyed the pharmacy aspect, because of the chemistry connection, and I always enjoyed that. That was 13 always fascinating to me. You could look up on the shelf--! still to this day, think back on it but I could go down the list and look at the drugs and tell you what each one was used for. I'd ask the pharmacist, he'd tell me, and I'd remember it. Totally useless information, but just things that were fascinating to me as a kid. "What kind of a drug is this, and how's it made, and blah blah?" And I worked for people that were always nice enough to share that information. Hicke: This is a personal opinion, but that makes more sense to me than memorizing baseball statistics. Arrowood: I suppose! [laughter] Yes, it probably does. But again, typical Fergie's Facts: unless you go into pharmacy or medicine, it's probably not very useful to you. But it was always fascinating to me. Hicke: Okay. Anything else in the way of a summer job? Arrowood: No, that was pretty much it. The influence with that. Hicke: But you learned a lot at Korbel. Arrowood: Yes. I think that piqued my interest to the point of thinking, Well, there's good application of chemistry here in the wine business, and that part is fascinating. It seemed to be a relatively--enology; although it's a very old science, it was a relatively new, modern science, modern technology science at the time. So I said, Gee, I can get in on the ground floor of this and pick up a few things, so that was why I think I stayed interested in it. Hicke: What year were you there at Korbel? Arrowood: I was there from 1965 to 1968. I left in late '68. Hicke: Oh, I thought this was a summer job. Or it started out as a-- Arrowood: Exactly. What I did was I worked during the summertime and also part-time when I was going to school. They were good enough to let me work full-time in the summer, and then during my session at school, whether it was at Fresno or Santa Rosa Junior College or Sacramento, I'd drive home on the weekends and work there on the weekends. It was great, and I had income coming in. Hicke: Yes, and you got a lot of experience. I didn't realize you were there for that long a time. Okay, so in '68 you graduated. 14 Arrowood: Yes, and then I stayed at Korbel for a short period of time, and then I decided to go to Fresno. I was still working at Korbel, working in the summertime and then coming back on weekends. It's a long drive from Fresno, but I did many of those trips, and put a lot of miles on my old Ford. But when you're younger, it doesn't seem to be as much trouble, I don't know. As you get older, it must be a little less pleasing. Hicke: Let me just turn the tape over here. 15 III EARLY WORK EXPERIENCE IN WINE INDUSTRY Continuing at Korbel. then to Italian Swiss Colony Arrowood: Once I left Fresno, I felt that when I went to work full-time for Korbel, I had been doing a lot of different things. I was married at the time, to my first wife. Hicke: What was her name? Arrowood: Her name was Allison [spells]. Not to be confused with my wife now: her name is Alis [spells]. Quite often, it's kind of weird how these things go, because my wife's first husband's name was Richard. So she could never make a mistake. She could never call me the wrong name. I've never called my wife Allison, but a lot of times she'll get mail that's addressed to Allison Arrowood. So we were married in September of '68, and then we moved to Guerneville. Actually, finished my work at Fresno, then from Fresno moved back to Guerneville, which was at the end of '69, first part of '70. I don't remember all the details, and it's not that important, but there wasn't enough money coming in from Korbel, and I had a great offer from Joe Vercelli at Italian Swiss Colony, so I took a job there as the chief production chemist working under a fellow by the name of Bob Del Sarto [spells] . I worked there for--oh, gosh, the best part of a year. Then I left Italian Swiss, and my first job really that gave me any chance to be somewhat more creative was with Rod Strong at Sonoma Vineyards. I joined them in 1970 and stayed there until May of '74, when I left and started with Chateau St. Jean with the Merzoian Brothers and Ken Sheffield as its first employee. 16 Hicke: Before we get to that, tell me some of the things that you did first at Italian Swiss. What were they doing and what you were doing? Arrowood: Production control. I ran the laboratory that did all the testing and analysis in the table wine department; we did the backup analysis for the base wines for the charmant bulk process champagnes; and then also I got a fair amount of experience in the brandy operation. That was very, very good knowledge that I picked up. It didn't necessarily help me further my career but a chance as an enologist to work in a brandy operation, rectification, distillation, and ameliorization was, to me, a very good learning experience. I think a lot of enologists today have no idea how brandy is produced and so on and so forth. I got a chance to pick that up. The charmant bulk process of sparkling wine production was, I felt, important to learn. I got a chance to learn both the small operations and the large operations and get to see it from many different angles . That helps , and I think that I had a better, more well-rounded education on that basis by working in different venues. Korbel was sizeable, but not the size it is today. Italian Swiss Colony, of course, is now basically defunct and closed (actually, Chateau Souverain--Wine World still runs an operation there). But at that time, it was a very large operation, multi-million-gallon operation. So it gave me a chance to pick up a fair amount of education in producing wines in obviously larger quantity. Hicke: Korbel was obviously using methode champenoise? Arrowood: Yes. All bottle fermented, all methode champenoise, versus the charmant bulk process. So one is a real quick turnover process, you are looking at two to three weeks in fermentation, filtration, bottling, whereas Korbel would take a year or more in the bottle. You got a chance to see what the difference was in the quality and type of product produced. But at the time when I was fairly young, I was just happy going from Korbel to Italian Swiss just because there was a fair amount more money offered, and although I wanted to learn more from it, it was like anything else, you-- Hicke: You've got to eat. Arrowood: You need to live. So it did seem to help a little bit. 17 Joining Rodney Strong Vineyards Arrowood: When I joined Rod Strong at Sonoma Vineyards, I think Rod gave me a chance to really develop a turning point in my career as far as the idea of what quality production was all about. Rod was and is a very talented winemaker, and what he needed, because he was also trying to grow his business and develop his grapegrowing operation and vineyards and so on and so forth, was somebody to come in and really handle the production aspect of the operation, both from a technical standpoint of view and practical standpoint. I got a chance to do that with him from '70 to '74. They had a few problems at that time. Again, this is where the pitfalls are, if you understand sanitation, for instance, and what it takes to bottle a sterile product, especially if you're bottling wines that have a small amount of residual sugar in them. What they were having happen at the time was a fair amount of their bottles were re- ferment ing. They'd bottle the wine, and the damn thing would re-ferment with spoilage yeast, because they weren't sterilizing the wine or the equipment properly. The fellow that they had running itI'll choose not to use his namebut he was a total boob, just a total idiot. I came in and had a chance to really fix the problem. Hicke: You spotted that problem? Arrowood: Right away, and said, "Okay, here's how we can do it," and fixed it for him. Unfortunately, by the time I'd got there, they had already bottled about 25,000, 30,000 cases of wine, all of which had to be cork-pulled and dumped and reprocessed, which was very expensive. But we didn't have another case of that problem occurring again to my knowledge. I've never had a bottle of wine spoil on me since that time and I've actually never had a bottle of wine spoil or re-ferment in the bottle that wasn't supposed to--vis-a-vis champagne, etc. That's where the technology comes in. The art form is important; you really had better understand it, but you also have to know where are the pitfalls, so the schooling helped me a lot there. I went through the whole bottling system and said, "Okay, take all this apart." They had bottling machines and the filler, the damn thing was held to the base with this leather gasketacted like a sponge in soaking up micro-organisms but they said, "Well, we sterilize it with 140-degree water." I said, "Well, look, in 140-degree water, yeast just it's almost like a hot tub for them, and they love that. They just 18 get stronger. You need at least 175- , 180- , preferably, degree water to sterilize the system, and more like 190 is ideal." And plus the fact that the way the things were put together, as I said, there was a big old piece of--I remember looking at this thing. There was a leather gasket in the middle of the filler, and when you took this thing off, I could have started the harvest for the whole world with this leather gasket, it was so loaded with yeast. You could never sterilize it. And of course, every time you put liquid in it, it would just re- inoculate everything that came in contact with it. So we got rid of that, put a Teflon gasket in it, and it took care of it for them. All of a sudden, there was no problem. So they thought it was magic. I just thought it was obvious . Hicke: Well, it was magic for them. Arrowood: Yes. So that worked for several years. Rod and I have stayed close friends to date. He's a great guy, and of course has a tremendous amount of talent and sophistication. Rod's background, I don't know if you've had a chance to ever interview him-- Hicke: I have interviewed him. Arrowood: Okay, you know what he is. Hicke: Yes. He's a fabulous guy. Arrowood: Very articulate, and just a super guy. I had an interesting tenure with him, because he helped me mature a little bit at the time. I've never forgotten that. He was a very, very good influence on me. Hicke: Yes. He seems to be a very well-liked person. Arrowood: Very much so. Very much so. Hicke: Well, that was during the time also when there was a little dip in the wine business, wasn't there? Arrowood: Yes. That was when the slide started. Of course, Rod, unfortunately at that time, was just getting ready to go public with the company, it was in the early seventies I think. Unfortunately, he got mixed in with some real wheeler-dealers. One of his partners I still have a lot of respect for today was Peter Friedman. He and Peter, I know, got along very well. But 19 there were a couple of other guys involved who I really think were not out to see that the operation was successfully built. So just before I left Sonoma Vineyards, I was promoted to vice president of production. And for a kidlet's see, at that time I would have been twenty-five--it was a big move for me. I was very pleased that that had happened as it gave me my first introduction into the wine business world. 20 IV WINEMAKER FOR CHATEAU ST. JEAN Startup Arrowood : That gave me the stepping stone so that when the chance came to work with the owners of Chateau St. Jean, that was a natural next step. Now, that kind of happened in a very funny way. I met the owners through a--as a matter of fact, how this all happened is my closest friend, my best friend, Dr. John Renfree [spells], who delivered both my daughters. He's a local doctor here in town. In 1970, my wife Allison was pregnant with our first daughter, Holly, and she was going to another doctor in town. He was out of town, when she went into labor, so I took her to Memorial Hospital, and on call for him was a Dr. Renfree. So John delivered Holly. We just got talking. He wanted to know what business I was in, and I told him the wine business. Oh, my goodness, he was so excited, and he asked me, "Have you ever heard of a wine called Lambrusco?" And I thought, Oh, God. [laughter] Jeez. "Yeah, I have heard of that." I said, "Yes, it is a great wine, but we can do better than that." Hicke: Arrowood : To make a long story short, one thing developed into the next, and John said, "You know, you're a young guy," so I was twenty-five, twenty-six at the time. He said, "You're a young guy coming up in the world. Why don't you join me at the 20-30 Club? I'm a member there." He just had come into town, practicing physician, an OB/GYN-- Is this Sonoma now? This is all in Santa Rosa. So I went to what was then a restaurant called the Black Forest, and again this was in 1970. I Joined John as a guest at lunch. John unfortunately had a delivery to make, so he was a little late coming, and I met 21 Hicke: Arrowood: Hicke: Arrowood : another fellow whom he'd set up to greet me, a guy by the name of Drew Juvinall [spells]. Drew was one of these outgoing, very fascinating guys, I mean, he'd make you crazy, Justvery funny, he had a great sense of humor, and a nice guy. So we started talking, "What do you do?" I told him I was a winemaker. "Oh, do you knowI've got some good friends down in the San Joaquin Valley. They're going to build a winery someday." I said, "Oh, really?" He said, "Yeah, named Merzoians [spells], Bob and Ed Merzoian, and an old friend of mine, Ken Sheffield. They've got a large table grape and wine grape operation down in the San Joaquin Valley. You ought to meet them someday." I said, "Sure, I'd like to do that." Well, one day he called me up at the office. "Can you get the day off tomorrow?" I said, "Possibly. What did you have in mind?" He said, "Do you want to fly down to the San Joaquin Valley?" I said, "Well, let's see, I've got a San Francisco airport flight schedule--" "Oh, no," he said, "we've got a local private plane up here, we'll fly on down." So that's what we did. We flew on down to the San Joaquin Valley and he introduced me to Bob, Ed, and Ken- -Bob and Ed Merzoian and Ken Sheffield. To make a long story a little longer--? Sure. That's what we're here for. They were interested in building a "world-class" winery. I've heard these stories before. I said, "Well, okay, when you get to that point, let me know." So I went down there a second time to visit with them, and they wanted to know if I'd be interested in joining their company if they developed a winery. I said, "Well, perhaps." But first they had to find a piece of property up here in Sonoma County. So they had Drew, who was in the real estate business at the time, look for the property for them. They weren't going to make it in the San Joaquin Valley? No. They wanted to come up here and grow grapes up here. They sold all their grapes primarily to Gallo and to Setrakian and to a few other places in the San Joaquin Valley. How this thing kind of came together is that they found Drew eventually in 1973 found a piece of property called the Goff [spells] Estate. The old Goff Estate is where Chateau St. Jean sits right now. It is the chateau of Chateau St. Jean. So they made an offer on the property with contingencies, which was 22 Hicke: Arrowood: promptly rejected by the court because it was a trust sale. At that time it was 269 acres of property, and they wanted to buy the whole thing, and I think they offered--! forget what the heck it was--the asking price was around $475,000, and I think they offered $465,000 for it, thereabouts, but it had too many contingencies on it. So I guess they put their heads together. The table grape business was doing okay, but it wasn't doing as well as they hoped it would do. They managed to put enough financing together to buy the piece of property for an all cash sale. It was kind of funny how this thing came down, because Ezra Goff, who is still alive, to my knowledge, lives above the chateau, is kind of a funny old guy. He tried to stop the sale. He wanted to sell it to somebody else. He came into court the day it was supposed to go through, and he said, "I've got another offer." The judge says, "Well, let's see it." He says, "Well, it's verbal." The judge says, "Well, that isn't going to do it. If you can get the offer in here in the next couple of hours, I'll stay the execution of the sale. Otherwise it's a cash deal." Wells Fargo I think was acting as trustee for the estate. To make a long story again even longer, it got fairly twisty and turny. Ezra couldn't come up with the actual sale, but as it turned out-- [telephone interruption] The judge sold it, but Ezra, one of the deals he was trying to make was that the Smothers brothers were looking at the estate, wanted to turn it into sort of like a tennis ranch or something, and Dick and Tom were taking a look at it. Well, as luck would have it, my father was in the title business. He had been a loan officer, but he was an escrow officer and vice president of Northwestern Title Company at the time. He did the escrow work for Pat Paulsen when Pat bought his vineyard up in Cloverdale, and my dad was introduced to Pat Paulsen. Well, of course, Pat Paulsen and the Smothers brothers go way, way back. As it happened, through Pat Paulsen I met Tom and Dick Smothers and we've been friends (as a matter of fact, I make their wine for them) with them for years. Yes, I noticed that on some of your labels it says Smothers Brothers. I'm glad to get this story. That's how the story kind of came about. I see Dick Smothers on occasion. Dick lives in Virginia, but Tom lives right here in Kenwood, so I see or hear from Tom and his wife, Marcy, usually a couple of times a month. They didn't have the cash to get the 23 Hicke: Arrowood : chateau in one piece, the Merzoians did and got the chateau and decided to build the winery from there. So the Smothers brothers lost out. They lost out in that "particular" deal. There was another person in the bidding too, but they couldn't put it together. So later on, we became friends. It Just happened several months after the deal was consummated. Once the Merzoians owned the property, they went ahead to proceed to build the winery. At that timethat was 1974, the sale took place in October of '73--so early '74, they came to me when I was still at Sonoma Vineyards with Rod Strong and they said, "We want you to come to work as our winemaker." "I just got promoted to vice president," I remember saying, "so I think I'll probably stay here. I don't know if I want to leave." They said, "Well, maybe we'll go to Europe and pick up a European winemaker." I said, "Well, if you want some help, I'll be happy to help you with anybody you select, if you want me to talk to them and see what their knowledge is." I guess they looked around and they couldn't find the person they really wanted. They came back to me and said, "Look. What do you want?" I said, "What do you mean, what do I want?" It was one of those things. "We really want to have you for our first employee, the winemaker here," and so on and so forth. So we made a deal, and I left Sonoma Vineyards, and with Rod's blessing; Rod understood and was happy for me--I don't know about happy to see me go, but he was happy for me. Hicke: Let me stop you just a minute, winemaker? Why did they want a European Arrowood: Well, they were thinking that might work better. A lot of European winemakers come over, and they were trying to be as avant-garde as possible to try to really get somebody thatthey wanted to build a world-class winery to make world-class wines, and that was their whole reason of developing the new winery to be known as Chateau St. Jean. You've got to remember that the Merzoians liked to do things in a big way, but as splashy as they sometimes were, they were very good people, very nice people. Ed's passed away; Bob's still alive, and of course Ken's still alive. (He lives in Florida and we talk on occasion.) But they really wanted to Hicke : Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke : Arrowood; Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke : Arrowood : do something first class, and they wanted to develop a premier class operation, about 30,000-, 35,000-case winery. It is now approaching three quarters of a million cases right now, but anyway, that was the original plan. A European winemaker would have prestige and background and things like that? Exactly, exactly. That was their idea. So I don't know why they didn't get one; I never did find out the reason behind it, but they wanted to know what it would take to make me join them, so we worked out a deal, hammered out a contract, and went on from there. I joined them officially May of '74 as the first employee. What was your title, just out of curiosity? It was vice president /winemaster. And I've been interested: what's a winemaster as opposed to a winemaker? Experience, more than anything. So at that time, I was probably more a vice president /winemaker. My experience was directly in the business five or six years, so I still would have been a winemaker per se, but that's the title that I had, so it was winemaster. Five years from then, no problem, because by that time we'd started to perfect some new ideas and things that put Chateau St . Jean on the map and made it the white wine winery force to deal with in California. But I think the difference- like here, for instance, my title is president and winemaster. We also have a winemaker here who works under me, and he is also the general manager of the cellar and such. I am still a hands- on winemaker; we're both winemakers, but-- you. I can see, you have a winemaker working for Yes, exactly. So if an operation had one, two or three winemakers, it would be two or three winemakers and one winemaster. What did you start out to do there, and what were their goals? I think their goals again were to producethe old statement-- singularly recognizable world-class wines. How much direction did they give you? Which wines to make and-- Really very little. I worked pretty closely with Ken Sheffield. Ken was, of all the people involved in this operation, the most 25 important of any of them. Ken Sheffield was Ed's brother-in- law: two brothers, Bob and Ed Merzoian, and brother-in-law Ken Sheffield, and Ed's wife was Jean Merzoian, the "Jean" of Chateau St. Jean. Hicke: Ah, okay. Arrowood: And she's still alive. 1 worked much closer with Ken, I think, than just about anybody else in the operation. He was a conceptualizer. I think he conceptualized the idea of Chateau St. Jean with Bob and Ed Merzoian. He was the one that put together a lot of the wheels to make things go. He worked with the bankers, trying to get financial support, and at the time, I've got to tell you, this was one of the most difficult and challenging points in time to ever try to borrow a penny to build a winery. Hicke: Yes, that was right when the banks were turning everybody down. Arrowood: Nobody wanted to do anything, and they turned everybody down, including the Merzoians. It wasn't until, finally it was First California Bank, I think--! want to say Security Pacific but I think it was First California Bank that actually they got their loan from, or California Bank; that's not critical. If you want those details, I'm sure we can get them; Ken's memory may be better than mine. We were on the verge of --we had the property, we started planting the vineyard, we were working on a very narrow budget . One of the problems was that they were sending money from the Valley operation up to here to finance the Sonoma County operation. The banks didn't like it. B of A [Bank of America], who was dealing with them, was just giving them nothing but trouble about this. They were also dealing with PCA, Production Credit Association, Farm Credit at the time, and a lot of these things were happening that weren't working. It wasn't until that first bank came in and helped things along, and then they finally got in with Equitable and Equitable gave them some financing that they needed to make the thing really roll. But up until that time, it was an on-again, off- again type of operation. They never missed my paycheck; I always got my check, and they always honored what they had to do for me, but I admit it was a bit uneasy at times. 26 Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood: Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood: We really went through some--I think back to some of the fun times my first wife and I have had in this operation many years ago when the banks wouldn't talk to us and were really putting the prongs to us, and I know that, when I think back about it, the Merzoians probably had to live that same hell that we had to live, only in their own way. They did some things they probably shouldn't have done, but they had a love to do this thing and they wanted to do this operation, and the banks weren't cooperating. They finally got the financing they needed. We built the first phase of the winery, started in 1975, and completed. Okay. I'd like to hear a little bit more about that, involved with that? You were From the beginning, yes. I basically worked from the original construction, the first brick and mortar that went into Chateau St. Jean until I left in 1990, when all the major construction had been done at that particular point in time. I worked with the architect and engineer on this, and the architect was a fellow by the name of Richard Keith of Keith and Associates in Santa Rosa. (He was actually an engineer with architects working for him.) Had he built wineries before? Yes, he had. He'd done Chappellet; let's see, who else had he done? Oh, there were probably a couple of others that he did some work on that I don't recall on the top of my head. Firestone? I think he did do Firestone, yes, he did. I just interviewed him. Oh, okay, yes. Recognized the name. Yes, Richard Keith, he's off in Hawaii someplace doing- -he was kind of a wheeler-dealer. So we started out, the first drawings that were done, it was the grand--! mean, this thing was bigger than the Taj Mahal, plus. So they had to kind of pare it down a little bit. For the first five years of operation, we had no tower like you see today. It wasn't until September of '80 that the second phase was completed where the tower went in, and the rest of the winery you see of Chateau St. Jean the way it is 27 today was built. We had this kind of wall sticking up, with all the tanks on the outside, and the barrel room was enclosed. The chateau, of course, was built in the twenties, so that was there, but no offices. All the offices were temporarily in the chateau. We worked under a one -step-at-a- time type scenario. But it worked. Making the Wines Hicke: And you were aiming for 30,000, is that right? Arrowood: Yes, 30,000, 35,000 cases, something like that. In 1980, we were probably at about 100,000 cases coming out of the operation. But it was a successful operation. Some of the ideas, for instance, the vineyard-designated [label] idea, that concept--! 'd love to tell you it was my own, but it was Ken Sheffield's. Ren's idea it was, and he came to me and said, "What would it take to make the best--" I'm paraphrasing this because I have to recall it, but he wanted to know what it would take to make the best wines. I said, "You've got to start with the best grapes." "Okay, assuming you've got the best grapes, how does that work?" I said, "Well, you get the best grapes from the different vineyards around and you blend." He said, "What if you didn't blend them?" I said, "Well, then you get the fingerprint and individuality of each vineyard, just like they do in Europe." He said, "Ah-hah. That's what I'm trying to get at. What if we did that?" I said, "Well, it would cost a fortune." He said, "I didn't ask you how much it would cost." He asked if I could make the best wines that way. I said, "Yes." He said, "I'll worry about getting the finances. You build the best wines you can. Find the best vineyards, build the best wines from the best vineyards. We'll make this a success." That's one of the reasons they were able to sell it for $40-plus million, because that idea had caught on. We were on top, Chateau St. Jean was on top for many, many, many years. At one time before I left, probably a couple of years before I left, we had won more medals, more gold medals, than any winery in California. That brag is not because I'm trying to inflate my ego or anything, but it is a fact that we had probably a collection of the finest estates and vineyards in California to deal with. 28 Hicke: Did you buy all the grapes, or were some of them-- Arrowood: I would say that up until the time I left, we were probably buying 75 to 80 percent. At one time we were buying 100 percent, but we did grow eventually, although the chateau produced somewhere around 20 percent of the total production. Allan Hemphill. President of Chateau St. Jean Hicke: You had some vineyards on the land? Arrowood: Yes. And then we branched out. As a matter of fact, it kind of tied Allan Hemphill into the picture, who I worked for at Korbel. The Merzoians hired him as president of Chateau St. Jean in late '77, so we got together again. We had always been friends; we had a pretty good relationship all along. Allan and I worked together until after the Japanese bought Chateau St. Jean. Hicke: When was that? Arrowood: That was Halloween, October 31st, 1984. Hicke: Oh, well. We don't want to get there quite yet. Arrowood: Yes, we'll get back into that. We'll come to that eventually. Hicke: How and who decided what kind of wines you were going to make? Arrowood: They pretty much left that to me until Allan joined. Allan and I then worked together on trying to refocus and reposition the winery. At that time, we had a lot ofalthough I didn't necessarily agree with some of the things Allan was doing, I think it was right for the time, because we were doing about 35, 40 percent red and about 60 to 65 percent white. And because of the great turnover, the quicker turnover time for whites than reds, Allan's idea was to get better cash flow in this company; we need to back off on the reds and focus more on the whites. As a winemaker, my main concern was to make wine. I didn't have the knowledge of what we were doing as far as financing things, and that wasn't important to me. (Although it well should have been.) I wanted to be a winemaker. See, that's how you grow in this thing. When you have your own business, you learn real fast what it is to run your own business and what finance is all about. Hicke: 29 Yes, but that's also what he told you. He told you you were supposed to be in charge of the wines, not to Arrowood: Yes, that was the deal, and that was the thing. So the Merzoians brought Allan on, and Allan although the good news about Allan, why it was so nice to work with Allan, besides being friends, I think the thing to remember here is Allan was the first graduate in enology from Cal State Fresno. He was the very first. So when I went up to Allan and said, "Hey, I need some more barrels," it wasn't, "What do you need barrels for?" "Okay. You're going to do more Chardonnay? What do you want to do here? What do you think about this?" I could talk to Allan about anythinghe could relate to me and I with him. It wasn't talking to somebody in finance. Allan very much understands finance, but the good thing about Allan was that he understood production, and he understood this in such a way that he and I could communicate very effectively. We probably had the best relationship between a winemaker/vice president and president that's probably ever been in this industry, as far as I'm concerned, because we were both coming from much the same direction. Allan's a very level headed, easygoing guy, and if I had a problem, I'd come talk to Allan. It was just that way. It was sort of a father-figure- type scenario, but not so much father figure as perhaps big brother. That really worked out very nicely for me. When I was a kid still going to junior college, typical beer-drinking parties, I'd come home late once too often and It Arrowood: I came home one day a little bit late and the next daythis had happened too many times all my clothes were out on the front porch. Dad just said, "Hey, it's time to get the hell out, kid," and frankly that was the best thing that ever happened to me. Well, I had no place to go. Allan was kind enough to take me in. His wife, Richie Ann Heck, unfortunately in December had been killed in an automobile accident. That was December of 1965, I think. It was indeed 1965. Allan was kind enough to take me in, and I lived with him at Santa Nella Winery, right above the winery, for several months, while I was still working at Korbel Winery. In any event, we became fast friends, and I had and still have a lot of respect for him. Of course, the good news there was I wasn't even twenty-one at the time- -I was twenty years old so it was kind of neat, because if I wanted a beer, I'd get a beer. It was just there. If I wanted a glass of wine, I had 30 a glass of wine. There wasn't this terrible stigma attached to underage drinking at the timeplus getting drunk was not what it was about. I also had a lot of respect for not drinking and driving, because although 1 was no perfect person by any stretch, I didn't think that was very chic. So I treated it fairly carefully. Drinking was never made to be a mysterious thing. It was never forbidden in my folks' home, because they thought if you wanted a drink, as my dad would say, "Have a drink at our house here. You want a glass of wine, you want a beer, you want a drink, have a drink. But if you're going to drink, you're not driving the car." So we always had a healthy respect for that aspect. Allan continued that with me, I think. Gave me a little dose of much needed maturity. So when Allan came on board at Chateau St. Jean, to get back to that, the adjustment was probably far less, because I had been running the operation more or less by myself, and when Ken and the Merzoians brought Allan in, it was good. They could have brought some other person in that would have not worked, the chemistry would have been bad. But with Allan, it was very good chemistry, so it worked very well. We worked together as a team. It was as good a scenario as I could have hoped for. The one problem was that the Merzoians and Ken Sheffield lived in Visalia and Porterville, respectively, and obviously that's a long distance from the winery. They leased a Beechcraft King Air turbojet, so they could fly back and forth between Sonoma County and Visalia and Porterville. That plane also, I think, is what contributed to making Chateau St. Jean a market force, because what I used to do was: although we had great wines, our sales force was one of the owner's sons, and he was a nice kid but, you know, drank Pepsi most of the time, and really didn't pick up on a lot ofhe's a nice kid, I don't mean to make it sound like belittling him, but he just Hicke: Yes, but he wasn't knowledgeable about wines? Arrowood: Not terribly. So I kind of had to deal with that problem up here. But the thing that was difficult was the fact that we had great wines, but had to get them to market. In those days, it was really one-on-one type selling. So what I would do is work during the day, and then if I had winemaker dinners in Los Angeles, the plane would come and pick me up, fly on down, do a winemaker dinner promotion, retailer, restaurateur, trade tasting, whatever it was, and then could have me right back late that night, so the next morning I'd be back at the operation again. It really worked very well. I think that probably in a 31 Hicke: Arrowood : year, I put in better than 400 hours in that plane, which is a long time. Were you doing everything? Marketing? Up until Allan got there, yes, a little combination of everything . You bet , market support and all that . That ' s how we built the brand. I mean, you'd like to think things are a one-man show. They're never a one-man show. I had some very, very able-bodied people, and one of the people that was with me early on, the first person I hired, was Barney Fernandez, who's the viticulturist for Ferrari-Carano [Winery] now. Together Barney and I were a very, very good team, a very good team. Barney is also a very goodwe don't see each other very much any more- -but was also a very, very good friend. I've always respected Barney a great deal. Varietals Hicke: What kind of wines did you start out making? Arrowood: It was interesting. We actually did our first harvest in 1974, but the winery wasn't built until "75, so how did we do that? Well, what we did was to lease some space; Rod Strong and I got along pretty well still, so I asked Rod, "Hey, could we lease some space and make wine here at Sonoma?" "Sure." So we worked out a deal and worked our first harvest as a custom crush. Our primary wines then were a Cabernet, Chardonnay, and the wine that probably put Chateau St. Jean on the map: a Select Late Harvest Riesling, 1974. Hicke: How did you decide on that one? Arrowood: Just by pure complete luck. I would love to tell you it was great planning on my part, but--. The botrytis was there. The vineyard that had the fruit on it is the old River Road Vineyard that at that time was owned as a partnership, I believe, not the least of which partner was Marvin Shanken, who of course now has the Wine Spectator. So I knew Marvin way back when, before he had attained all the fame and fortune that he's now enjoying. That's basically how that came about. He had some fruit [Riesling] that had a lot of botrytis on it, plus the fact that Robert Young at Robert Young Vineyards, I remember, brought in some Riesling that had all these moldy berries, and he was just shaking his head saying, "I told the 32 guys to sort this out." I said, "Sort it out? How much more of this do you have?" "Well, I've got a whole vineyard full of it." I said, "Would you be interested in picking this separate?" He said, "For what?" I said, "Just to bring it into the winery." He said, "Well, okay, if you really want it. You just want to pay my picking costs or what?" I said, "No, we'll buy the fruit from you." I don't think he believed I was playing with a "full deck" --yet he did bring in the fruit- - perhaps just to humor me. So I said, "Look, I don't know a lot about botrytis, but I've been reading a lot, and this is botrytis cinerea. It looks just like the pictures, this is what it is, it tastes right, I honestly believe it's botrytis." Hicke: And he didn't know it? Arrowood: Well, nobody paid attention to it. Nobody knew what it was all about here in California. Wente [Bros, winery] had made a little bit of Spatlese and Auslese in 1973 which worked pretty well but the wine didn't really pick up a tremendous amount of press. They were probably one of the first to do it. Myron Nightingale had made the premier Semillon with the botrytis; flats of Semillon grapes that he put out and sprayed botrytis spores over the top and let it grow in these chambers. But outside, naturally occurring in California, you always just called it "bunch rot." There was a lot of bunch rot, but there was also botrytis, a lot of botrytis out there. So I got Bob to bring in a couple of bins of this stuff, and I remember he and Jim just were saying, "God, pretty bad." Hicke: Scratching their heads. Arrowood: Scratching their heads. This was "74. So we managed to convince them to bring in a little bit to us, again a little more. Actually, this whole thing kind of started, if you really want to go back-- Hicke: Yes, this is a great story. Arrowood: --to '71, '72, I remember seeing some of these little bunches that I'd taken off the grapes. It was in '73 that at Sonoma Vineyards I'd made a little of this with Bob's grapes, but we had enoughremember Robert Balzer wrote about it. We had "the audacity" to charge $4.50 for a bottle of this Riesling, very expensive! Even in 1973 that was a substantial price for a bottle of wine. 33 Hicke: Was that mostly profit? Arrowood: At that time, you were only paying a couple of hundred bucks a ton for the fruit, but it was still just phenomenally expensive. Well, we finally did make a little tiny bit and it got written up very nicely, but nothing really happened. It wasn't until the 1974 Chateau St. Jean, Robert Young and River Road Vineyard's Riesling- -were combined, we madethe actual combined sugar was an outrageous 27 [Brix] sugar. Well, when you think back--as compared to what we do today we usually bring the fruit in at 40-plus sugar- -we didn't know it then, but it was a revelation in the California wine industry. So we made this botrytis wine and struggled to get it fermented, and it was fruity, rich, and complex, and it was so wonderful and lovely. So we sterile filtered it, and bottled it up at Sonoma Vineyards, '74 vintage. The Merzoians said, "Okay. We're getting the money together for the winery, so you need to come over. We're going to go to Europe in 1974, November of '74; come over and join us in Europe. We're going to find the equipment. You buy it over there and then we'll have it shipped back." Hicke: It was going to be European equipment? Arrowood: Yes, they wanted me to come over and buy it, which I did. We bought the finest European equipmentbottling lines from Germany, wine presses from Germany, centrifuges from Germany, and barrels from France. The tanks were made locally by Santa Rosa Stainless Steel. They were made at Sonoma Vineyards, because that was where Santa Rosa Stainless Steel had their tanks set up; they didn't have their building out at the Sonoma city airport at that time. But the filters and the bottling equipment and the pumps, the presses, and all that, were all European. Hicke: What did you get? Arrowood: Seitz- -bought a Seitz bottling line from Bad Rreuznach, Germany. Centrifuges from West Jalia in Germany and wine presses from Willmes Press Company in Bensheim, Germany. So we went to Europe. We had bottled the late harvest Riesling in October, late October, early November. And just before I took off I decided, Well, I'll just pull a bottle of wine and see how it's doing. Because I'm pretty excited about the wine, and the Merzoians are going to be over in Europe, maybe I'll bring a bottle over, even though the labels haven't 34 been made yet. We were still working on the St. Jean label design, 1 was working with Northwestern Graphics, which at that time was called Bertram and Milner. We had looked at a lot of things, and didn't like most of them, but we were just starting to get the shape of the Chateau St. Jean label and so on and so forth to develop. So I pulled the cork on a bottle of wine, poured it in a glass, and smelled it. No nose, no flavor- -the wine was dreadful. 1 thought, Oh, jeez, what's going on? Here I'm going to Europe to meet with the owners of CSJ, how do I tell them? I'm going to lose my job. All the things you think about when you're just not experienced enough to know what's going on with the wine. I thought, Gosh, I thought the wine was so beautiful when it was fermenting. Now it smelled a little bit like pineapple juice, didn't have much character to it at all, and it was flavorless. Sweet; flavorless. A little acidity on the finish, but overall very unimpressive! Hicke: Which wine was this? Arrowood: This was the '74 Select Late Harvest Riesling. And this was what I was excited about, because it was very unusual. Cabernet was great, Chardonnays were fine, but this was supposed to be really spectacular! Ah, what am I going to do? So I go over to Europe, and the whole time, of course, my stomach is in knots because at any time they could say, "How did that Riesling turn out?" "Oh, it's fine," I'm thinking, and I was just nervous as the dickens. It really wore on me. So I came back, we had bought all the equipment, and I'm thinking, How do I tell them this thing didn't turn out? So I said, "Well, we've got to get the stuff down to be inspected," because now at that point in time, around January, February, March, something like that, in '75, we had to get the wines labeled, although we didn't have our winery yet at Chateau St. Jean. We had the property, but we didn't have a winery built. So they wanted to come up. They said, "We want to taste these wines, and we'll be up in a couple of weeks." And I thought, Oh, God, but okay. So I've got to let them taste the wines. What am I going to do? I seriously considered going out and buying a bottle of late harvest Riesling and just decanting it into the bottle and phonying it in. I was so upset about it, 35 Hicke: Arrowood : because I thought, I just can't show them this. What am I going to do? But that's not me, that's not ethical. I'll just tell them the truth and walk away from it. So I had the guys in at Sonoma Vineyards and I said, "Let's get down a pallet." The wine had since been moved to the warehouse at Sonoma Vineyards and it was way up on top. I said, "Let's take a pallet down, and I'll get a bottle out; let me check it and see where it is, see just how bad it is." So as the forklift driver is taking out the pallet, one of the cases catches on the corner, and the bottom flap opens up, and a bottle drops out and smashes on the floor. I wasn't paying attention, I was talking to Rod or something out in the warehouse --and I heard the thing crash, and said, "What's going on?" "Broke a bottle of wine," was the reply. "God, what's that?" [laughter] "Wow, apricots and peaches and nectar. What is this? What is that bottle? What did you break?" "A bottle of Riesling." I said, "You're kidding! Wow, great!" The guy said, "You're out of your mind." I said, "No, it's fantastic! You don't understand!" So we got a bottle out, I pulled the cork on it, and poured some for Rod. He said, "This is fantastic, Dick. You've done a great job." I was just really relieved. The wine had simply gone into a typical bottle shock phase, and it was just not there before, but it had a chance to sit and rest and it developed. It was just that phase? It went from reticent nose and no flavor to this blossoming peaches and apricot nectar. So I brought a bottle to the Merzoians, and they flipped over it. We started taking it out to wine writers. They all went pretty nuts over it. At that time, I remember I asked Ken, "How much do you want to sell it for?" He said, "It will be $6.50 a bottle." I said, "Ken, you can't get $6.50 for a bottle of California Riesling. There's no way, it isn't going to sell for that. It's just not going to sell." at $6.25. So we argued back and forth, finally came out Hicke: [laughs] I can see you had a lot of influence on him. Arrowood: Yes. So we priced it at $6.25, $50 a case wholesale. The wine sold out very rapidly to distributors, but a lot of it just sat on store shelves. It didn't sell well because people didn't know what it was. A few wine writers picked up on it, but not too much was happening until Jergensen's had tasted this wine 36 and wrote it up in their big newsletter. At that time, Jergensen's was a big force in the marketplace in southern California. In those days, you had what they called California Fair Trade [laws], if you'll recall. You couldn't sell it for less than the posted price, but you could sell it for more. So Jergensen's slapped a $15 price tag on that $6.25 bottle of wine, and they had 200 cases in their inventory, and they sold it out in a week. [tape interruption] Hicke: We were just talking about Jergensen's. Arrowood: Right. They marked it up by this horrendous amount, and they sold it out, and they bought another 200 cases. I think we'd made again, I'm just going to guess--! think we had made a couple of thousand cases is all. But it went through the system so fast, then some of the wine writers picked up on it, and as the wine aged, of course, it got better and better and better, and it was getting great press. I think it won a sweepstakes award at the L.A. County Fair. We started to blossom from there and thus the Chateau St. Jean label started to get recognition. That wine was one that I think brought their attention to late harvest Riesling, to the Chateau, but it really wasn't until "75 that we were able to makeand we can get into that story later onbut we were able to make the very late harvest Trockenbeerenausleses and Beerenausleses those are styles and those wines probably of and by themselves, coupled with the first release, is what gave Chateau St. Jean its initial following. And incidentally, the name Chateau St. Jean [pronounced like the woman's name] was one of those things where people went, "How did you ever come up with that, because doesn't it really say Chateau St. Jean [pronounced like the man's name]?" And what they said was really true, it was named after Ken's sister "Jean." The problem was that they didn't understand the French language enough, it should have been Chateau Ste. Jean, and then it would have been Ste. Jean [woman], and would have been correct. But they didn't do that. I kept saying, "Maybe we ought to change this," "No, we've got to leave it the way it is." So of course, people today still use Chateau St. Jean [woman] versus St. Jean [man], but some will still call it St. Jean [man] . Hicke: But that's one of the things you remember about it. "Oh, no, this is isn't pronounced like French, it's St. Jean [woman's name ] . " 37 Arrowood: Right, and you always had to say it that way. So people always thought we were a little bit nutty, but that's okay. Did they Hicke : Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood : want good French grammar or just great tasting wines? Once a consumer learns that, I think it's-- Right, and that's what you want them to do. that. You want them to do But I think that ' s sort of what brought my artistry to the forefront and started to get the following to the winery. And again, we had pretty free rein to deal with the growers from top to bottom, the contractual arrangements and all of that. That worked out really well, because I had some very good relationships with many of the growers. Robert Young, for instance, a very famous grower and Chateau St. Jean--I'd like to say we made him famous, but frankly together we made each other famous . Robert is an interesting guy. I knew Robert and Gertrude- - when Gertie was still alive--since I was a little boy. As a matter of fact, she used to take care of me when I was a little kid. I used to always joke with the people of the winery, saying, "Well, that's probably why we're paying the higher price for the fruit, because she used to have to babysit me." [laughter] But my mother and my grandmother were very good friends of the Youngs when I was a little boy, so I remember going over to their house and playing on the swings and with their kids. They lived in Santa Rosa? They lived in Alexander Valley. Yes. I used to go out there quite often. Understand, my mom was born and raised in the Alexander Valley, and my grandmother the same way, so they had a lot of friends there at that time. When 1 got into the grower/winery relationship with Bob Young, that was just by happenstance, because I was at Sonoma Vineyards, and it really wasn't until I was at Chateau St. Jean that I took all of Bob's grapes to the chateau, and we essentially crushed virtually 100 percent of his fruit. He had a lot of varieties to choose from- -he had Chardonnay and Cabernet and Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc and Riesling and Gewiirtztraminer and you name it, he had it. 38 It was one of those things that the relationship, I think, helped us really build this vineyard designate program that Ren Sheffield had envisioned, because we managed to get together with the Robert Youngs of the world and the Ron and Henry Dicks of Belle Terre Vineyards of the world, and all the different growers we had around. It all of a sudden became very important, many of the growers said, "Sure, I'll sell you the grapes, but do I get my name on the label?" "Well, it depends on how the fruit turns out, and if you'll grow it the way we want it to, perhaps, we'd make a vineyard designate." In fact, there was at one time nine different Chardonnays- - we had eight vineyard designate Chardonnays and a Sonoma County appellation; so we had nine different Chardonnays in one vintage, which was both a blessing and major curse at the same time. The difficulty, I think, came when many retailers couldn't get certain lots, for instance, Wildwood Vineyards here in Sonoma Valley, which is now the Runde Estate Winery, McCrea Ranch, River View, Bacigalupi Vineyards, Beltane Ranch, Belle Terre, Robert Young, Frank Johnson Vineyards, Chateau St. Jean Estate, and there were so many of them that we dealt with, it was very confusing to many of the retailers. A couple of the wine writers picked up on it and dinged us pretty good because theyI remember L.A. Magazine, there was an article that came out, and the fellow who wrote it went by a pen name, which the name escapes me now [Van Delaney] , but we never were quite sure who wrote the article. But he was saying that he was surprised that a winery such as Chateau St. Jean would put out so many wines, that the idea of experimenting with all these vineyards was something that belonged not in production but in a laboratory. And I remember being so furious, just angry that this guy would write such a thing, and he said, "While I haven't tasted any of the wines, I can't believe they're that different." And of course, that was just it. When I finished the article, I said, "Okay," time to shoot him a response. So I drafted a letter, and the first one was a poison-pen letter, but then the next one was a little less poison. By the time I finally sent the letter out, I had calmed it down pretty good. I invited him to taste the wines and sent some wines to him. I just said, "Give me a fair shot; at least taste the wines. If they're not different, fine. The article stands." L.A. Magazine at that time was really "The Los Angeles" magazine, a very important publication. It was before Spectator really had hit the scene. 39 So he tasted itI'm thinking of his name all the time but I just can't remember, I think it was a pen name of Colman Andrews but I'm just not sure--his pen name was Van Delaney, that's the name he went under. But there's nobody by that name, so it's a pen name of someone. Anyway. Whoever this Mr. Delaney was, he tasted the wines, and by God, he wrote a retraction, and wrote another article and just said that he was astounded to find that these wines were indeed quite different from one another, although they had been treated the same enologically, the various flavor nuances had to do with where the grapes were grown in the vineyards. How about that? Problems Developing at Chateau St. Jean Arrowood: From that time on, it was like a rocket ship, and Chateau St. Jean just took off and flew and flew and flew. Again, unfortunately in the wine industry, there were so many other factors that, although the chateau was doing great, the table grape and the wine grape business in the San Joaquin Valley, the bottom was dropping out on them. The Merzoians were losing dollar after dollar in their operations down there. So it was kind of one of those things that, when Ken Sheffield wanted to sell his interest in the operation, and he didn't want the Merzoians to have to- -he wanted to bring in a partner. Ken went over to Europe. Ken is a real conceptualizer. Interesting guy, and a lot of people put--he had some concepts, he developed a company called Sheffield's : Water Company, but unfortunately it didn't succeed. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, he was just before his time. He was about five years ahead of schedule. Had he done it today, the thing would have flown and probably would have been very successful. Hicke: Bottled water? Arrowood: Bottled water. I mean, it was justyou know. It was not a dumb thing, it just was way too far ahead of its time. He wanted to sell upscale, top-quality, designer water, so to speak, and he had some interesting ideas. He had a way to- -he had a guy from Switzerland that came over who was in my opinion a total charlatan, as far as I'm concerned, and I told Ken that, and it's not a problem. This guy's name was Paul Armaker. Supposedly he had this great process to super oxygenate water. I try to forget it as fast as I canbut he had developed a way to put an inordinate amount of oxygen and dissolve it in water, super- saturate it. Then he could carbonate it and then bottle it, and it would have this high oxygen level, and it would get you over a hangover faster and all this other stuff, which was total bunk, as far as I'm concerned. Ken said, "No--." He had me taste these waters, would ozonate the water. He The problem is, I'm a graduate chemist. So I'd look at this, and I called a lot of my chemistry professor friends. I said, "Is it possible to super- saturate water at room temperature and then sweep through carbon dioxide and still have partial pressure of oxygen and carbon dioxide in balance with one another, and even having an excess of oxygen?" I was told that it's physically not possible. But he was trying to convince everybody this was going onwhich in fact it wasn't! Now, the idea of ozonating water and getting high oxygen content is possible. But to then force-carbonate it and still have a higher oxygen content and maintaining the oxygen level at forty parts per million oxygen, impossible. Just wasn't going to happen. Hicke: You'd have to rearrange the molecules or something, wouldn't you? Arrowood: Well, exactly, and it's just not physically possible. So I asked Paul (the Swiss developer of this "magical process") every time I'd go see him, he had a little shop, we designed a little- -we took our little shop and we turned it into his little laboratory where he could do all his work. So I used to go up, and he would never let me see what he was doingevery time he'd see me coming he'd close up all his stuff. It was one of these shots. It just angered me. I kept saying, "Ken, he's taking you for a ride. The guy is a charlatan. He can't do what he says he can do with super saturation of oxygen and C0 2 !" So I grabbed samples and I'd send them off to my professors and say, "Tell me how much oxygen is in there." They'd come back and it would be barely at saturation or below saturation. And he'd say, [German accent] "Oh, no, Dick, you're wrong. That's not the way it is. They're measuring ze oxygen wrong. They don't know how to do it." I said, "Paul, I don't know. You show me how to measure it." "Veil, it's not important right now. The important thing is that we make the best water," and so on and so forth. Well, yeah, but you're conning somebody. Hicke: Arrowood ; I really resented that, and quite often, I had to do experiments down at the winery for this clown. He made me do some stuff that I had to- -the Merzoians wanted it done, so 1 had to turn wine tanks into special pressure vessels and silliness like this, so it interfered with my winemaking and really angered me, because the guy was a phony. It never was proven that it worked because the guy couldn't prove it, it just wasn't there. But Ken--and this is not demeaning to Ken--Ken is a brilliant guy, I mean, major brilliant guy, but this one I just think he missed, not because it wasn't a good idea. It was just before its time. It still might have been successful had they not spent a fortune in advertising, and unfortunately, it flopped because of the expense involved. He was something of a risk-taker, also, I guess. A little bit of a risk-taker. Chateau St. Jean Sold to Suntory Arrowood: Finally the Merzoians decided they had to sell the company. Ken wanted to bring in somebody from Europe, and quite frankly, he was probably right. I'm glad that it didn't work that way because I wouldn't have this winery today, had it not been for the people who eventually bought the winery. Things are just-- my wife is one of these people, you have to understand, who believes that things happen for a reason. Me, I take a situation and assess it, and I'm a pessimistic pessimist, and she's an optimistic optimist. So we have two diametrically opposed schools of thought. So I'm always looking at, "Yeah, but, but, but, and you can't do it, and this is why," although I'll do things once I feel comfortable with it. When it's usually first presented to me, unfortunately the first word out of my mouth is usually, "No, won't do it, won't work," whatever. But she says things happen for a reason, and frankly I think she's probably right. This Arrowood Winery came about because of the fact that the Merzoians eventually had to sell Chateau St. Jean! Hicke: They basically had to sell it because of their own financial problems? Arrowood: Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood : Hicke: Arrowood: Exactly. They were just losing vast amounts of money in their table grape operation and the bank was putting phenomenal pressure on them to pay off some loans, and they didn't have the money to do it. So they had to generate cash. So they got into a--we had several people- was the Chateau St. Jean Let me ask you one other thing: profit-making by that time? Very much so, very profitable. But not enough to cover their other- -okay. Yes. And if they'd have drawn--! mean, it was profitable, but it had a lot of debt, like most other operations. So they were paying--yes, okay, I see. So what happened essentially was that they put it on the market, and we had a lot of people coming and kick on the doors. And of course, when you help build a place from top to bottom, you're very jealous of any and you jealously guard it. So I wasn't too crazy about having all these people coming through kicking tires, thinking, This might be my new employer, or who's it going to be? So eventually, they had Nestle looking at it, and I made some good contacts and friends there from Switzerland. A lot of things were happening, but Allan Hemphill kind of kept me apprised of what was going on, and of course, they'd always want me to take them through the winery, so that's what I did. "Does the winemaker go?" "Oh, yes." Well, no, I'm my ownI'm nobody's slave, so if this place sells, we'll talk. "But I don't know what I'm going to do at this particular point." Because I was sure enough of myself then because we'd made enough successes that, and although I don't think I was cocky, I felt that I could write my own ticket for myself the way I wanted it to be. In July of 1984, Suntory International of Japan came out and did their dog-and-pony show. And my problem was and still is that my grandfather fought in the war in the Pacific, I wasn't too crazy about the Japanese, and I really wasn't interested in the Japanese coming in and taking over the operation. So we had the dog-and-pony show, had them in and out of the operation for a long time. I was surprised that I met some very interesting people, a couple of whom have become good friends, from Suntory. But I Just felt like I had gone to a proctologist ' s office and had everybody poking me from every different angle in the world, and just the same questions over 43 and over again. They brought their winemakers over. They wanted to ask all these questions. I wasn't crazy about sharing some of the real detailed information, only becausenot that there 's--there really are no secrets in this business, because it's the grape source, and frankly they never could understand that. So I always could tell them however we do it", and they'd go back to Japan and they still couldn't even come close to duplicating it. But the Japanese love to copy things, so 1 didn't want to give them morebecause there were some things that we had discovered that, although again I don't necessarily agree with Jess Jackson that there are proprietary things in the wine business as far as making table wine, 1 just don't agree with that, and Jess is a good friend so he knows how I feel about it, but the fact of the matter is, we had discovered some things that were shortcuts, sidesteps, quick and easy processes, or processes that made a wine a little different than what everybody else's were, and that's why we were doing so well. I knew that, besides the grapes being 99 percent of it, there was still 1 percent that could actually get you over the edge, if you want to percentile it. Hicke: I think they owned Firestone by this time, didn't they? Arrowood: As I understand it, they had a third interest in Firestone. Actually, Suntory didn't, but Keizo Saji, who was the primary stockholder in Suntory, had a one-third interest. Hicke: Oh, yes, it was not the company- - Arrowood: Right. He's the head man, he's the chairman of the board of Suntory Limited, and again he had the majority interest in Suntory. But the sale finally went through in October of 1984, finally closed, and I was there to sign all the documents as a new officer in the new corporation and became executive vice president and winemaster at that point. Every year I had gone to, as 1 still do now, to Alaska and fly fish. For hobbies, I'm a fly fisherman and sporting clays shooter, I like outdoor sports. I'd gone up to Alaska and was out of the lodge, and no phones- -they have a radio phone, but no phones. So I had been out fishing. I had arrived there on a Sunday and this was like a Wednesday afternoon, I had been fishing. I was going to be there for ten days. 44 I motored up to the lodge and the dock, and this guy comes and says, "Mr. Arrowood, there's a phone call for you." I said, "Yeah, right." II Arrowood: "There's a phone call for you." I said, "I know you don't have a phone," because I knew it was broken. He said, "No, we've got the radio phone fixed." I said, "Aw, you're just kidding." So 1 go in and take the call. It was Allan on the radio phone. Of course, we're transmitting back and forth. This was the days before cellular phones, so it was an interesting call. He said, "You've got to get back. The Japanese company is buying Chateau St. Jean, the deal's going through and they want everybody here for a very important meeting. Can you get back?" I said, "Sure, I'll do whatever's necessary." He said, "I'm sorry to do that to you." I said, "No, it's not your fault. They're asking." "They want you here." So I said, "Fine." So I had to get the first plane out, took it from the lodge in Anchorage and flew from Anchorage back home. All this to go to a goddamn tea party, a cocktail party that they had just to introduce everybody, and that's all it was. I didn't say anything to them at the time, but I was just furious. Fortunately, because if you leave early usually you lose everything at the lodge, fortunately the guy at the lodge said, "Look, you've got five days' credit coming next year, we'll give you five days' credit if you come back." I said, "I'll be back, you know that." So it worked out where the guy credited the time; I didn't lose the money. So we had to be back, and we did this thing. The deal finally closed in October of '84. The Merzoians--we went to the law offices of Cooley, Godward [Castro, Huddleson & Tatum] , I think, in San Francisco, and all the documents were signed. Had representatives from the Bank of America there. And I can't say that I blame the bank for wanting to get their money, but it was one of these deals where, as an officer of the company, I'm signing the checks over the Merzoians, and I give one to the Merzoians, and the guy from B of A says, "Thank you very much," takes the check. It was that terrible. Now, they did have some money, fortunately. They [the bank] didn't just get it all. But they paid the bank off immediately right then and there. We had a meeting afterwards, and the Merzoians brought me over to their attorney's office, and they saidthis is Bob, Ken, and Ed--"You really helped us get $40 million-plus for this operation, and we want to thank you somehow." I said, "Well, you already have." "What do we owe you?" I said, "You don't owe me anything. You've given me an opportunity; I really appreciate it." "No, we'd like to give you something. What would you like?" I said, "You don't owe me anything. If you want to do something, that's up to you. I really don't feel you owe me anything." I know they did it with a couple of other people, but I guess I kind of surprised them, because everybody else had some numbers in mind, and they did what they wanted to do for them. But for me, they took care of me extremely well, and not only gave me additional dollars in salary, but they gave me a gift which helped Alis and I buy this place. So they were very, very kind to me, and I will never forget them for that. THE FOLLOWING SEVEN PAGES (46-52) ARE SEALED UNTIL 2020 PER NARRATOR'S REQUEST 53 V ARROWOOD VINEYARDS & WINERY Finding the Site Hicke: Arrowood; Let's go back to starting the winery, and find something to buy? How did you look around Well, we wanted to get something that was in close proximity to Chateau St. Jean, because I figured I was going to be running both operations. Had a contract with them, everything was going to be fine. Little did I know they would decide to breach the contract and hire somebody else and play all those little games. So once that happened, it became clear what I had to do. But we had found this piece of property, a fifteen-acre parcel here. Alis and I bought this in August of '86. Alis Arrowood Hicke: Let's go back, and I'd like to ask you to tell me about Alis-- when you married her, and what her background is. Arrowood: I met her at Chateau St. Jean. She's French-Canadian, a Canadian citizen, and still remains a Canadian citizen. I don't want her to change her citizenship. She's talked about it. "Oh, no, you've got to be proud. I wouldn't change my citizenship; I'm proud of the United States, and I'm not going to become something else, and you ought to be proud of your heritage," which she is. She is a French-speaking Canadian, also fluent in English, but her mother tongue is French. I met her through a friend. She used to work for Callaway [Vineyard and] Winery, and one of my old classmates at Fresno decided to bring up the sales manager and assistant winemaker to 54 visit the wine country. So I met Alis the first time at the California Wine Experience, November of 1981. I had another date at the time. I had divorced from my first wife. I met her, didn't pay much attention, because she was pouring for Callaway, and I was out to see my friend at Callaway, so I was chatting with him and chatting with her boss [Eileen Lloyd] , whom 1 knew quite well. So to make the story go on, they wanted to come up to visit Chateau St. Jean, and they made an arrangement to come up. So 1 said, "I'll take you through," because I knew Eileen- -at that time was Eileen McLemore, now Eileen Lloyd- -she was the sales manager for Callaway, and knew people at Callaway and the winemaker there, Steve O'Donnell. His assistant there was Dwayne Helmuth, and Dwayne came up with the two ladies. Took them on a tour, and I kept looking at Alis thinking, That's a pretty woman, really attractive lady. She had never figured that out because she could never see I was watching her, but I guess--this is what she said; I didn't realize I was that un-obvious. But she just was very interesting. So I called Dwayne up the day after they left when he had gotten back to Callaway, and I said, "Who was that with Eileen?" He said, "That's a lady by the name Alis Demers." I said, "Oh, is she married?" He said, "No, but I think she's engaged." I said, "Ah, it figures." Okay, well, that's fine. But he said, "I don't know, you ought to- -do you like her? She's a nice lady." I said, "Well, yes, she seems to be a pleasant person." He said, "Well, you ought to ask her out." I said, "Well, if she's engaged, I don't want to get in the middle of one of these." "Oh, no, you ought to ask her out." So a couple of days lateryou see, I get to work here at six-thirty every morning so I forget what time it is. So about quarter to eight, I pick up the phone and give her a call. Well, she's in sales, and they don't even get on the street until ten-thirty, eleven o'clock, so she's still sound asleep. I said, "Hi, Alis?" She said, "Yeah?" I said, "This is Dick Arrowood." [pause] "Oh! Yeah, how are you?" [laughter] It was one of those deals. I said, "I'm going to be doing a wine tasting at a winemaker 's dinner in Los Angeles. Would you like to join me?" She said, "I guess. What's a winemaker's dinner?" She'd just joined Callaway. I said, "Well, you taste Arrowood wines." So she said, "Okay, well, that should be fine." 55 So she hung up and she told me she said to herself, "Jesus, why did I say yes?" So she called up Eileen and she said, "Who the hell is this guy?" To make a long story even longer, that's how we met. I flew down and met her in Los Angeles, she picked me up at the airport, we went to dinner, and the rest is history. It was just one of those crazy, crazy things. Hicke: And when did you get married? Arrowood: She moved up to Sonoma County, we lived together for several years before we got married. She moved up in '82--was it "82? Yes. We lived together for about three years, and we got married in '85, March in '85. Hicke: And what was she doing, did she work up here? Arrowood: She stayed at Callaway all that time until she moved up here, and then when she moved up here, because she's fluent in French, I got her an interview for a job as the director of the visitors' center at Piper Sonoma. I called Rod Strong up, and Rod interviewed her and said, "I want her," so she got the job there. She stayed with Piper Sonoma until we closed this deal in August of '86, and she left Piper Sonoma then. Hicke: Pretty clever of you to find somebody with a marketing and sales background. [laughter] Arrowood: Yes, I know. Of course, I didn't know about that at the time, but that was something that worked out very well. She works with our sales manager, and Alis also spends a lot of time on the road, loves it, and is great in promotion and things like that. She's a real happy-type person, as I said, very much an optimist. Very much an optimist. You see, I have a very short fuse; my fuse you can light very easily, but I get it out of my system. But with Alis--very long fuse. You really have to work at getting her mad, but if you get her mad, you'd better get the heck out of the way. I've only gotten her mad a couple of times, and I didn't like what I saw. But really, she doesn't get offended easily. She's pretty easygoing, very self-assured without being--. Put it this way: anybody that can be married to me can't be all bad, so she has some very, very good traits. And she helped me through this interim period with the Chateau St. Jean thing. But it was nice, when it finally all 56 was said and done and worked out, it was great. I put sixteen years in there, of which twelve were pretty pleasant years. Hicke: You certainly made some excellent, outstanding wines. Arrowood: Yes, and that was the thing. To this day, although I still have many friends there in production, sales, people that I still consider my friends, the place has changed very much. I really don't have any animosity towards Chateau St. Jean. First of all, they've moved the Japanese off the premise; they don't have anybody there. They still are owned by Suntory, and they've got some nice people, good people that I've known for a long time running the operation. The fellow who worked for me for fourteen years at Chateau St. Jean is the winemaster, Don Von Staaveren, very capable fellow, very knowledgeable, doing a heck of a job for them, and God bless him. We still get along very, very well. Only the years that I had to deal with some of the board of directors and a lot of other things that had to be done at Chateau St. Jean through Suntory were very unpleasant. Very different. Just a different type of ethics, I guess? My father taught me a long time ago that my word and my handshake were the two most important valuable bonds that I've ever had. My dad never had to use an attorney for any contracted deals. I think the only time he ever used an attorney was to draw up his will. I mean, my dad just felt that you didn't sue people. If you told somebody you'd do something, you did it. If you said, "Hey, I'll pay you for this," you did. I've always tried to remember that. Again I'm not trying to say that I'm close to perfect, but I've always felt that I had reasonable work ethics, reasonable business ethics. It just incensed me. More than anything, I think I was probably so naive to think that people don't do these kinds of things. And it's not specific to Japanese business people, but they in themselves have a way of doing things in that regard. Different. But experience that was certainly worth the time, to go through it and see it. Hicke: Speaking of time, how's your time? Arrowood: Yes, actually, I'm going to have to scoot here pretty quick because I've got some people coming at twelve-thirty that I've got to meet up at the house and have a sandwich with. Hicke: Well, thanks very much for this interview. 57 The Winery Property [Interview 2: November 13, 1995 ]tt Hicke: You remember that we got just about up to your establishment of this winery last time. So, where I'd like to start is, you had just mentioned that you were looking around for property near Chateau St. Jean. How did you settle on this property here, and what was good about it? Arrowood: What we did was have a real estate agent looking for property for us in close proximity to Chateau St. Jean, so that we could find something that would allow us to build our winery, run this operation, and continue to run the operation at Chateau St. Jean. Hicke: Can I just ask if these real estate agents specialize in vineyards? Arrowood: Some did, but this just happened to be a friend of the family. As a matter of fact, she now runs the visitors center at Piper Sonoma. Jo Gibson is her name; nice lady. She's the sister-in- law of Allan Hemphill. This is how incestuous this industry is; we're all tied together somehow. In any event, she found the property for us, and it was one of those things- -we had made a bid on a property which was only about a mile away from Chateau St. Jean in the town of Kenwood, and we looked at the property, and thought we'd made them a very handsome offer. They kind of laughed in our face. I was a little depressed about it, to be honest with you, but then Alis got the phone call from Jo Gibson saying she'd found a piece of property that was still in the multiple listing book, but it was an old book, and she didn't know if the property was still for sale or had been sold. So she said, "Well, let's go take a look at it." Alis asked me if I wanted to go, and I kind of said, "You know, I don't really feel like looking at property right now." I was Just still a little bit depressed about the fact that we lost the first deal. I really wanted that property because of its close proximity to Chateau St. Jean. Basically I said I didn't want to go, so Jo Gibson came over to pick up Alis, and said, "Oh, come on, come on," and she tried to persuade me. I said, "All right," so I went out with both Alis and Jo. We drove up the driveway to this place, and of course, there was nothing here; it was an open field and oak trees. We got up to the house up on top, which was built where 58 Alls and I live now. We just drove up and we said, "God, this is it. If this is really still for sale, this is it." This was what we wanted; it looked good, it was a very pleasant-looking place, and it just knocked our socks off. We went up to the door, and she had already made arrangements to see the fellow who had it for sale, who happened to be a real estate agent also. He said he'd taken it off the market, but if we really wanted to take a look at it, he'd be happy to show us. We looked at it, decided it was what we wanted, made an offer he couldn't refuse, and he accepted. It was contingent upon the approval of a use permit for the winery, but we gave him enough nonrefundable deposit where he felt pretty comfortable with it. Hicke: There was no winery here? Arrowood: There was nothing here, just the house, and fifteen acres of property. Just the house. Hicke: And no vineyards? Arrowood: No. It was bare land. Hicke: Had you planned to plant vineyards, or just build the winery? Arrowood: Both. So in "86, when the offer was accepted, we had the engineers come out before the final closing of escrow, and we looked at potential winery sites. We found the site where we're sitting right now, and started drawing plans up. Once the sale went through, we started planting vineyards in late August and early September of '86. Things were already working the way we wanted them to work. When the sale finally went through, the vineyard construction as far as cross ripping the land was all being done. We started the site work on the winery, and if you recall, '86 was one of the drought years, so we didn't have any bad weather really until December, so we continued to do site work. We had the site all prepared as far as the foundation base, and all this to be laid before the end of '86. Hicke: Let me back up just a minute here. Did you look at the direction of the exposure? Arrowood: Oh, sure. Hicke: I think it's southern exposure here, right? Arrowood: Yes, exactly. We wanted to get that. Hicke: What else did you look at in the way of-- 59 Arrowood: Well, more than anything, we were concerned about soil type, but as you can see out there, there's very little soil. It's almost all solid volcanic rock and ash, so in what little soil there was, the vines that grew struggled like the dickens. We thought it would be the case that, if we could get water to them, the fruit would turn out to produce great wines. It all worked out. Our major concern was being able to get the winery in, and then again, the proximity to Chateau St. Jean. Our own vineyards at that time only provided about 5 percent of our needs . So its production was a tiny, tiny portion of what we had planned. Building the Winery Hicke: Now, for the plans for the winery, how did you go about designing those? Arrowood: What we did was real easy. [tape interruption] The scenario was that we liked the design of our house. (If you went and looked at our house, it looks like a very similar but smaller design of this building.) Hicke: It's frame and-- Arrowood: Same. Big porch, New England-style farmhouse. So when we got Summit Engineering involved with the architect, Richard McCrea, he took a look at what we had in mind and said, "Well, what do you really want?" I said, "I really don't want you to get too crazy with the architecture. I want you to build it very similar to the house that we already have, so we keep the architecture in those same lines and the same design." That's essentially what he did; he took the design of the house and then scaled it up for a winery, and had it so it actually looks a little bit like a big residence from the road. That made the county planners happy. We put all the winemaking equipment behind the winery. As a matter of fact, I think the Sonoma Valley Society for Historic Preservation gave us an award of excellence just for the building being put together properly. Hicke: I read that, yes. And for fitting into the environment or something like that. Arrowood: Yes, and that's what we wanted to dokind of tuck it into the hillside and make it look like it was part of the surrounding area, not just something that stuck out as a sore thumb. 60 It didn't take very long to actually have everything fall into place. The architectural renderings were done, our use permits were issued, and we started actual construction of the winery in June of "87, and the structure was finished in its entirety, basically as you see it today, in November of '87. So really about a year from the time that we got the property to the time that the building was actually up was all it took, which is amazing that it could be that way, but that's how fast it went up. BDM Construction built this for us, out of Santa Rosa, and they did it very well. It took them about three and a half months to get the structure up and everything internally done. I mean, it was quick, it was really quick. We started a little later on the site preparation, because it's typical with Sonoma County planning department, they just delayed us left and right continually, but they never d