University of California Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series

John H. Wright

DOMAINE CHANDON: THE FIRST FRENCH -OWNED
CALIFORNIA SPARKLING WINE CELLAR

With an Introduction by
Maynard A. Amerine

Includes an interview with Edmond Maudiere

Interviews Conducted by

Carole Hicke

in 1991

Copyright 1992 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 modern research
technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous
conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity
and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed
in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and
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 John H.
Wright dated January 20, 1992. 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 John H. Wright 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:

John H. Wright, "Domaine Chandon: The
First French-owned California Sparkling
Wine Cellar," an oral history conducted in
1991 by Carole Hicke , Regional Oral
History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1992.

Copy no .

John Wright, circa 1991

Cataloging Information

WRIGHT, John H. (b. 1933) Winery executive

Domaine Chandon: The First French-owned California Sparkling Wine Cellar.
1992, x, 151 pp.

Establishing winery: Moet-Hennessey names Wright to head operation,
building winery, staffing, choosing grape varieties; role of Moet &
Chandon' s Maudiere in advising on blending, winery; growth of sparkling
wine sales; marketing innovations; mechanical riddling and harvesting;
present operations; opening of restaurant; methods of working with French
owners; founding Domaine Chandon Australia; expansion into offshore sales;
future of sparkling wine. Includes an interview with winemaker Edmond
Maudiere (b. 1927).

Introduction by Dr. Maynard A. Amerine, professor emeritus, Department of
Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis.

Interviewed in 1991 by Carole Hicke for the Wine Spectator California
Winemen Oral History Series, The Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.

TABLE OF CONTENTS --John H. Wright

PREFACE i

INTRODUCTION --by Maynard Amerine vi

INTERVIEW HISTORY viii

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION x

I EARLY DAYS 1

II MILITARY SERVICE AND EARLY WORK EXPERIENCE 3

U.S. Army, 1954: Germany and German Wines 3

Working for American Viscose Company 4

Arthur D. Little, Inc. ; Developing an Interest in Wine 7

Moving to Brussels, Belgium, 1965 11

In California, 1969 14

Growing Grapes in the Napa Valley 14

Drip Irrigation 18

Arthur D. Little: Investigation a Project in Brazil 22

A Study of the Wine Industry, 1970 24

III MOET-HENNESSY 31

Exploring the Possibilities 31

Further Conferences with the French 33

M. Poirier Tastes California Wines 37

IV DOMAINE CHANDON 41

Starting Up, 1972 41

A French Company in Napa Valley 42

Working With the Trefethens 45

Choosing the Grape Varieties 48

Support and Involvement of the French Owners 50

Taxes 52

Champagne or Sparkling Wine? 54

Marketing 56

V GROWTH OF DOMAINE CHANDON 62

Winemaking 62

Building and Equipping the Winery 66

The Decision to Use the M6thode Champenoise 68

Horizontal Tanks 70

Some Aspects of Harvesting 71

Presses 72

Viticulture 74

The Cuvees 76

More on Presses 79

The Domaine Chandon Restaurant 81

The Visitors' Center and Museum 84

Riddling and the Very Large Machines 85

Fred's Friends 89

More on Marketing 90

Domaine Chandon in Australia 98

Managing a Winery 100

The Debut of Panache 102

Buying the Shadow Creek Winery 103

Viticulture Experiments 105

Classic Methods/Classic Varieties Society 107

Difference in Perspective of Large and Small Wineries 111

Gazing Into the Crystal Ball 113

INTERVIEW WITH EDMOND MAUDIERE, ENOLOGIST

I BACKGROUND 116

II DOMAINE CHANDON 118

First Responsibilities 118

Grape Varieties 119

Yeast 120

Building the winery 121

In the Winery 123

Winemaking 130

The Very Large Machines: Riddling 133

The Wines 139

TAPE GUIDE 145

INDEX 146

PREFACE

The California wine industry oral history series, a project of the
Regional Oral History Office, was initiated 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 is 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; Ruth Teiser, series project
director; and Marvin R. Shanken, trustee of The Wine Spectator
Scholarship Foundation.

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 (as yet treated analytically in few writings) 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 own point of view.

Research underlying the interviews has been conducted principally in
the University libraries at Berkeley and Davis, the California State
Library, and in the library of the Wine Institute, which has made its
collection of in many cases unique materials readily available for the
purpose .

11

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. Baura and is under the administrative supervision of The Bancroft
Library.

Ruth Teiser
Project Director

The Wine Spectator California Winemen
Oral History Series

July 1992

Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley

Ill

CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY INTERVIEWS
Interviews Completed July 1992

Leon D. Adams, Revitalizing the California Wine Industry. 1974

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

Philo Biane, Wine Making in Southern California and Recollections of Fruit
Industries . Inc . . 1972

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 Mv Life. 1985

Making California Port Wine: Ficklin Vineyards from 1948 to 1992. interviews
with David, Jean, Peter, and Steven Ficklin, 1992

Alfred Fromm, Marketing California Wine and Brandy. 1984

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

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

iv

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

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

Andre Tchelistcheff , Grapes. Wine, and Ecoloev. 1983

Brother Timothy, The Christian Brothers as Wine Makers. 1974

Louis (Bob) Trinchero, California Zinfandels. a Success Story. 1992

The Wente Family and the California Wine Industry, interviews with Jean,
Carolyn, Philip, and Eric Wente, 1992.

Ernest A. Wente, Wine Making in the Livermore Valley. 1971

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

INTRODUCTION --by Maynard A. Amerine

The interview with John Wright gives the pertinent facts of his early
history: schooling, a period in the army, and early positions with several
companies, ending with Arthur D. Little, an important "think-tank" company.
But most of the text covers how Wright got into planning, building, and
operating a sparkling wine plant in Yountville in Napa County. It is a succes
d'estime, and Wright tells the story with a flourish and justifiable pride.

Fortunately for Wright, the start of the sparkling winery in 1972 was
preceded by a 1968-1970 study of the California wine industry. An interview
arranged by Arthur D. Little in Paris in March 1972 with Moet-Hennessy led to
further meetings with executives of Moet & Chandon (the Champagne company) in
August 1972. By the end of the year, planning had begun on a sparkling wine
plant to be built in Yountville in the Napa Valley. The actual final contract
is dated March 25, 1973. One concludes that Moet was lucky to get Wright, and
that he was lucky to have such intelligent executives at Moet & Chandon in
France .

He tells the story with gusto and pride from the early years at the
Trefethen winery to the planning and construction of the Domaine Chandon
winery and restaurant. There were many problems, which Wright took in his
stride. It is important that his French enologists were so careful in
selection of the varieties of grapes to be used. However, it is clear that
after the start, Wright was running the show, though with an ear to his bosses
in France and with due attention to the advice of the two French enologists
who periodically came from France for tasting and making the blends. It is
significant that many new procedures and equipment were developed at
Yountville under Wright's enthusiastic direction and with the cooperation of
his staff. He gives specific praise to several of his staff.

One concludes that Wright was a canny executive but a joy to work for.
Managing a French- owned company in California must at times have been a
headache, but you would not discover this from Wright's text. This tells one
something important about the enthusiastic and thoughtful way Wright directed
the whole affair.

The second interview in this volume on the history of Domaine Chandon
is with Edmond Maudiere. Maudiere is a French- trained enologist at Moet &
Chandon who came to Domaine Chandon from time to time as an advisor after
1972. He tells us about the climatic, varietal, and operational problems here
from the point of view of a French- trained enologist primarily interested in
the production of sparkling wines.

vii

Since Maudiere was in charge of making the blend, he had a very large
influence on the character of the wines. As he frankly says, Domaine Chandon
wines are not the same as the Moet & Chandon wines produced in France. And,
as he says, they shouldn't be. Amen.

During the interview, Maudiere discusses many aspects of grape growing
and sparkling wine production methods in California and how they differ from
those in France. He is obviously proud of his work at Domaine Chandon and of
the changes in procedures that he has been responsible for. And he should be

Domaine Chandon was the first large-scale investment in the California
wine industry by a foreign company after Repeal. It did not cause any great
excitement in the Napa Valley, as I recall. But it did attract a great deal
of interest in France and Spain. Within a few years, at least four French
sparkling wine producers had invested in wineries making sparkling wines in
California. They were followed by two Spanish-owned sparkling wineries. All
are still operating.

It would not be easy to determine what specific influence Domaine
Chandon had on each of these companies, but it surely cannot have been small,
as far as their inception is concerned.

Maynard A. Amerine

St. Helena, California
March 1992

viii

INTERVIEW HISTORY- -John H. Wright and Edmond Maudiere

Domaine Chandon, Napa Valley maker of sparkling wine, lists an
impressive number of California winemakers "firsts": first French-owned
sparkling winery; first North Coast winery to use mechanical harvesting
at night; first to use reserve wines for consistency of style and
quality; first to develop mechanical riddling. The list goes on. In
order to document the advent of this sparkling wine house in California,
John H. Wright, president and chairman of the board of M & H Vineyards,
Inc. (Domaine Chandon), and Edmond Maudiere, consulting winemaker to the
Napa Valley winery and chef de caves of parent company Moet-Hennessy ,
were interviewed as part of the Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral
History Series.

Wright, an energetic man whose zeal and dedication to his work show
clearly in his oral history, began his career as a market development
specialist, later becoming a management consultant for Arthur D. Little,
Inc. He grew a few grapevines and made a little wine as a hobby. His
three -volume marketing study on the future of the wine industry attracted
the attention of Moet-Hennessey in the early 1970s, and Wright was asked
to head the company's new venture in Napa Valley, a sparkling winery (as
it calls itself), which would open in 1977 as Domaine Chandon.

The project was built literally from the ground up, with Wright
overseeing the purchase of grapes and vineyards, the wine production, and
the construction of the winery. Wright was everywhere; the president
thought nothing of working on the bottling line, packing down cardboard
in the dumpster, or waiting tables at the Domaine Chandon restaurant, in
addition to his duties as host to visiting titled Frenchmen from the
parent company. He himself characterizes his style of management as more
one of leadership than of management, less structured as to organization,
but with an emphasis on the importance of the people employed at the
winery.

Help in abundance came from Moet's Edmond Maudiere, not only a
chemist, microbiologist , and master blender but an architect as well.
His contribution to the development of the winery proved crucial in many
areas, from the building of the winery to blending the cuvees , and he
continues to advise winemaker Dawnine Dyer in the blending of the wines,
which are made in the traditional methods champenoise. Their latest
effort resulted in the creation of the grande cuvee, etoile, which made
its debut in late 1991.

IX

Wright was interviewed on two days, April 10 and May 6, 1991. The
first interview took place in a conference room that was serving as his
office during a renovation. The second was in the winery itself, where
there was a small office on the second floor.

The interview with Maudiere was conducted on September 11, 1991,
when he was in California for the crush. It began in an office and
continued on a tour of the winery, during which he discussed the history
of the winery as it affected the present operations. For example, he
described the method of tracking the shipments and, in the bottling room,
told of the development of the VLMs (Very Large Machines) for riddling
automatically nearly 4,000 bottles at a time. He offered some
observations about the differences between the Napa Valley and the
Champagne area of Epernay, France, in viticulture and winemaking. At
every step, M. Maudiere demonstrated his total immersion in the art of
making sparkling wine and his enthusiasm for finding the right ways of
doing it in California. The innovative spirit he brought to Moet &
Chandon Champagne -making has contributed to the development of Domaine
Chandon's distinctive sparkling wines.

Wright and Maudiere reviewed their transcripts and made minor
changes. Grateful thanks go to Diane Sol, Director of Communications at
Domaine Chandon, who coordinated interview plans and provided tours and
background information to orient the interviewer. She and Virginia Davis
found photographs to illustrate the volumes.

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
Interviewer -Editor

May 1992

Regional Oral History Office

Berkeley, California

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library

University of California
Berkeley, California 94720

Your full name

Date of birth_

Father's full name

Occupation
Mother's full name

Occupation ,

Your spouse

Your children

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

(Please write clearly. Use black ink.)

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INTERVIEW WITH JOHN WRIGHT

I EARLY DAYS

[Interview 1: April 10, 1991 ]#// !

Hicke: I'd like to start this morning by asking you when you were
born.

Wright: I was born on July 28, 1933.

Hicke: Where?

Wright: In Buffalo, New York, at Children's Hospital.

Hicke: Were you raised in the Buffalo area?

Wright: No, I was fortunate to have spent only four cold winters there
[laughs]. Then we moved to Illinois. We lived outside of
Chicago for about seven years, and then we moved to Virginia.
My father I call laughingly an itinerant chemical engineer.
He was a chemical engineer who worked mainly in viscose
processes, at one time with the DuPont Company, and they
tended to switch people around, so he lived in a few different
places .

Afterwards he worked for American Viscose Corporation.
I was about eleven or twelve when we moved to Fredericksburg,
Virginia, so my formative high school years were spent there.
Then I went to Middletown, Connecticut, to Wesleyan
University, where I got my Bachelor of Arts; my major was in
chemistry. Wesleyan had at that time- -and probably still- -

] This symbol (////) indicates that a tape or segment of a
tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes, see p. 145.

such a devout liberal arts philosophy that they never even
gave a B.S. in those days; you got a Bachelor of Arts even if
you majored in sciences.

II MILITARY SERVICE AND EARLY WORK EXPERIENCE

U.S. Army. 1954: Germany and German Wines

Wright

Hicke:

Wright

Hicke:
Wright
Hicke:

I got out of Wesleyan in 1954, and since that was pretty much
during the Korean War, I decided to volunteer for the draft to
get it over with quickly. I had the very good fortune of not
going to Korea but going to Germany and being stationed right
in the Rhinegau district in the Mainz.

What base?

It was in Geinsenheim, a little town up the river from Mainz.
At that time the 2nd Armored Division was stationed there. I
wound up as a medic when I got into the army, and it was the
medical battalion that was in Mainz. It was probably one of
the earliest times that I really started to get interested in
wines as a hobby. My oldest brother, who was in the Second
World War and then took his discharge in Vienna for about
three or four years, came back with a rather avid interest in
wines, primarily Austrian wines. That perhaps had an
influence on me, but when I got over to Germany and was
stationed right by the vineyards, it really sparked my
interest and I guess made wine a hobby.

Mostly just tasting at that point?
Yes, mostly just tasting. [laughs

I didn't make any then.

We were stationed there, too, for a while, and I very well
remember that the fall came around, and they would have wine
festivals up and down the "weinstrasse . "

4

Wright: Yes, up in Rudesheim and that area. I was there about '55,

'56. I can remember you'd get about five marks to the dollar,
and I lived like a king on a corporal's pay. [laughs] I used
to play a fair amount of golf; I played on the college team.
Shortly after I got to Germany, I had the good fortune to get
on the division golf team; so I spent that first summer really
not as a soldier but as a golfer, which was quite marvelous.
We went down to Garmisch, over to Berlin and Frankfurt and
places like that. That was great.

By the time I had come back from the "circuit," my whole
battalion was transferred to a place called Baumholder, which
is in the middle of nowhere. It's one of the few places in
Germany where they can run tanks around without destroying
everything. I unfortunately had to move out there, and that
was not too pleasant, other than the fact that it wasn't too
far from Bernkastel, so when I could I would get over to
Bernkastel and got to know the Mosel a little bit. But that
was certainly not as nice as being in Mainz /Wiesbaden, where
there were a lot more things to do. I took in the Wiesbaden
opera.

Hicke: Wiesbaden is a lovely town.

Wright: Yes, and it wasn't damaged like Mainz was. You go back today,
and Mainz is almost unrecognizable.

Hicke: Yes, Mainz was pretty well flattened. Have you been back?

Wright: Yes. One of our cousin companies is Sichel Sohne, Peter

Sichel's company, which makes Blue Nun and also quite a number
of regional Rhine and Mosel estate wines. Their main facility
is outside of Mainz, so I've been there two or three times.

Working for American Viscose Company

Wright: When I got out of the army, I got back to the States and
fairly soon found a job in the packaging business in
cellophane.

Hicke: This was American Viscose Corporation?

Wright: Yes, working out of Philadelphia. That was quite exciting and
interesting, because it was just at the point when

supermarkets were really growing, and the whole concept of
self-service merchandising was coming into its own. People
were recognizing that packaging was a very integral part of
marketing. American Viscose was subsequently bought by FMC
[Corporation] .

Hicke: But this was before that?

Wright: Yes. It was interesting, too, in that it taught me a little
bit about technical obsolescence. Cellophane was basically
invented by a Frenchman, whose name I forget right nowthe
whole viscose process, but I think principally cellophane- -in
the twenties. It came to the States, and in fact my father I
think was at the first plant that was built at Niagara Falls
and Buffalo with French technology. It was a DuPont plant.

Cellophane sort of got its origins in the Depression.
Of course, during the Second World War not much happened
industrially with a lot of things, but it really boomed after
the war. American Viscose was then called Sylvania Industrial
Corporation, located in Fredericksburg. They asked my father
to come down to be the technical director. They were the
second producer of cellophane after DuPont. Business was
really booming when I started coming into the thing because of
all the supermarket packaging requirements. But looming out
on the horizon was the whole area of petrochemicals- -
polyethylene, polypropylene, high- density polyethylene, all
the polymers.

It was one of those cases where it was pretty darned
evident, if you really sat back and looked at it, that the
days of cellophane were numbered, just because of the
fundamental costs of regenerated cellulose versus
petrochemicals. The company, rather than really understanding
this and doing what they could probably have done at that
point, particularly with polypropylenes , just decided, "Well,
economics- -we can't make the same return on investment in
plastics that we can in cellophane," so they just put their
heads in the sand. And that company doesn't exist anymore.
It literally went out of business; the plants all shut down.
That was the major employer in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Fortunately- -I guess it's fortunately; it depends --
Fredericksburg has now become a bedroom community for
Washington, so the economy of Fredericksburg is actually
significantly better today than it was when American Viscose
was there.

It was really kind of interesting, and I realized how
quickly, through technical obsolescence, a booming industry
all of a sudden, poof, went nowhere, which made me feel a
little bit better about wine, because I don't think wine is
going to be obsoleted very soon by something else. [laughs]

Hicke: I love that display down there in your waiting room that shows
that wine goes back a long, long way.

Wright: In some ways it might not be quite as glamorous as a high-
tech, very fast-changing industry, but it has its advantages.

Hicke: Did your chemical background provide you any help in this
cellophane business?

Wright: Oh, absolutely. I was in the market development group, which
I later found out was supposed to have been a sales training
program. I was one of the first people. They were thinking
at that time that rather than hiring sales people- -people who
had a knack for sales but no real technical background- -they
would see what happened if they could get some people who had
some technical background and put them into sales. There were
two of us, actually- -the other fellow was Bob Ridgeway- -who
started at the same time and had our degrees with chemistry
maj ors .

Hicke: I would say that was probably a good idea.

Wright: I think so. Actually, though, for me, I got so interested in
market development because I felt it was so much more creative
to come up with ideas new ideas for packaging and new
products within the spectrum, and helping potential customers
work on package concepts- -that finally I declined going into
sales, because I didn't think I ' d be a very good salesman
anyway. I don't know if it was that as much as it was that I
was more interested in marketing and market development than I
was, really, in the sales.

I stayed at Avisco [American Viscose Company] about four
years. I started in '56, and I guess I left in '60 or '61.
As I said, it was quite fascinating, because the packaging
industry is fascinating, particularly in those days.

Hicke: It was kind of a new concept, wasn't it?

Wright: Yes, it really was --the importance of packaging as part of a
marketing-merchandising spectrum. But I also liked the

technical parts --the protection part: water vapor
transmission rates, oxygen transmission rates, and all this
was kind of fun.

Hicke: Was radiated food--?

Wright: Just starting. In fact, in Natick, Massachusetts, the army

was really starting to get into that. Radiated food was very
interesting because it could use flexible packaging as opposed
to metal cans and that sort of thing, and basically that's
what we were in, the flexible packaging business. So we
started to do some things there.

Arthur D. Little. Inc.: Developing an Interest in Vinemaking

Wright: What happened, I guess, was that I was getting a little bit
bored and looking potentially for change. I guess I saw an
ad- -I forget what happened, but it must have been an ad- -from
Arthur D. Little, which is a consulting company in Cambridge,
Mass., for somebody who had a good background in packaging,
particularly flexible packaging, and a technical education. I
went and interviewed for that and was very fortunate in being
hired by Arthur D. Little. The fellow who actually hired me,
Peter Baker, had decided to move from headquarters in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, down to New York to start a group.
He felt he could start a kind of package -oriented group with a
bit more freedom being away from headquarters than he could
being at headquarters.

They really gave me the choice of either going into what
they called the industrial management division of Arthur D.
Little in Cambridge, which was primarily a group of people who
were chemical engineers and worked primarily in the chemical,
plastics, paper, packaging industries, or going to New York.
Since I really felt that Peter was pretty much my mentor in
many ways, I went to New York. We just had a small group, and
I worked in New York for about four years for a lot of
different clients, mostly pulp and paper, glass, metal,
flexible packaging, et cetera.

Hicke: What were you doing?

Wright: Some of it was fairly straightforward. Market research:
we've got a new product; is there a market for it? In

retrospect, it was interesting because it also taught me
something. We took a rather interesting approach to doing
"market research" for technical products. Rather than just
saying, "Well, demand is this, growth is this; therefore this
is what the future is going to be," we really worked pretty
hard on developing what the properties were of a potential new
product or an existing one- -polyethylene , we'll say- -and then
trying to match it up with potential end uses. We did our
forecast more on the basis of seeing where new end uses could
come in, which were not predictable based upon the past. It
certainly taught me that trying to predict the future based
purely on the past isn't always that accurate. In fact, if
changes occur on the supply side of a particular industry,
demand could be very, very much affected.

Hicke: Are you sort of saying that you were not just looking at
whether the market is there, but the possibilities for
developing the market?

Wright: Possibilities for developing the market. I'd say, really, if
you go into consumer type products, try to look at what I call
consumer need rather than want. You ask, "What would you
buy?" "Well, I want this, and I want that." But they can't
tell you what they want if it isn't there. Whereas if you can
understand what their needs are, then conceptually you can
come up with a product that they could never tell you they
wanted, because it didn't exist. But you come up with it, and
you create a new market, if you will, or an extension of a
market. None of that is generally picked up in what I call
conventional market research.

Hicke: You must have been on the cutting edge of that type of thing.

Wright: Oh, it was kind of fun. I enjoyed it. Actually, it carried

forward into Domaine Chandon, which I'll maybe get to a little
bit later.

Hicke: Yes, I'd like to hear about that.

Wright: Quite a bit later on I did more feasibility studies and

strategic studies, and then I was transferred to the European
office, in part because I wanted to go to Europe- -I'd done
some projects over there --in part because I spoke pretty good
German in those days, so I had some language capability.

Hicke: Before we get to Europe, though- -you planted some grapes?

Wright: Oh, yes, that's true. My gosh, I can't overlook that. My

actual winemaking follies [laughs] or whatever, really kind of
got started when I lived in Philadelphia and was working for
Avisco. I was browsing through the public library, called the
Free Library in Philadelphia, which is a lovely library. I
was really in the cookbook section; I was sort of interested
in looking at things, because 1 like to cook. Lo and behold,
1 came across, in that same area- -in fact, 1 almost remember
the Dewey decimal number a book on home winemaking by a
fellow named Hedrick [professor at Cornell] or something like
that. I devoured that, took it home, and started saying,
"Well, this is great stuff," and I decided I would make some
wine.

That fall I managed to convince two of my colleagues at
Avisco to join me in this adventure. I located some grapes
out near Atlantic City, New Jersey, and with, I must confess,
virtually no prior planning in terms of equipment or how we
were going to do all this, we charged off in Jim's station
wagon to this vineyard. They were picked grapes; we had
ordered them ahead. They were called supposedly champagne
grapes. I think they were the Adams grape, fairly foxy, but
not as foxy as a Concord or a Niagara. It was a pink grape.

We loaded them onto the station wagon- -with fruit flies
all around- -and we got to Jim's house. He was the only one
with a house; I lived in an apartment, and Bob lived in an
apartment, so Jim was the victim. He had a house with a
cellar, and we got the stuff down there. Literally, we didn't
even have a crusher, but we found a neighbor who, lo and
behold, had a crusher. So we crushed the stuff into a barrel.
We didn't have a press. I mean, we were trying to make white
wine with no press. I said, "What we'll do it's not the
ideal, but I think I can design a press and get the stuff
done, but let's ferment it on the skins, and then we'll press;
it'll have less pectin."

We got it started, and Jim went off on a business trip.
I told his wife, Nancy, "Look, what you've got to do is knock
the cap down at least twice and maybe three or four times a
day." She said, "Oh, yeah, yeah." Well, about three days
later she called me in the office and said, "John Wright?"
[bright and bubbly] "Hi, Nancy, how's it going?" "You get
over here right away. My whole house smells of vinegar." So
I went out, and, oh, the house reeked of vinegar. I said,
"Gee, this is great. Let's decant it and bottle it up." She
said, "I want it out of here!" So I took it out in the yard
and dumped it. That was my first experience, which wasn't too
good.

Hicke:
Wright

Hicke:
Wright
Hicke:
Wright
Hicke:

Wright
Hicke:

In the next two or three years I would go down to the
market; we used to call it the Italian market in Philadelphia.
They had grapes coming in from California. The real premium
grape was the Cucamonga Zinfandel; that's what you paid a
little bit more for. I made some pretty good wine from those
grapes. It was kind of fun.

When I moved to Arthur D. Little, I moved from
Philadelphia to Wilton, Connecticut, and bought a place with a
couple of acres of land. In between all this I was reading
every wine book I could find. I picked up this book by Philip
Wagner, who was really the father of the Franco -American
hybrids; he was the one to promote hybrids in this country. I
thought, "This is really interesting. I can grow some
grapes." From his nursery, Boordy Vineyard, which was in
Maryland- -he had both a winery and a nursery--! bought some
Seyve Villard and Baco [noir] , I guess, and proceeded to plant
those. Oh, I had three or four hundred vines, I guess.

The year that they would have borne fruit, I was
transferred to Brussels, so I never did- -actually , a friend of
mine did go in one year and make wine from it, so I did have
that wine when I got back from Brussels.

Did you have a press?

Oh, by that time I had everything. Yes, I finally got smart
[laugh] and bought the right kind of equipment. It was only
the first year that was as disastrous as it was.

How much wine would you make?

Oh, a hundred or a hundred and fifty gallons.

That's a lot for a home.

Two or three barrels.

Meanwhile, were you drinking wine for dinner and other
occasions?

Oh, yes.

What kinds of wines were you drinking?

11

Wright: [laughs] That's interesting. In Philadelphia, which is a

state-store situation, there wasn't an enormous variety, by
any means. My house wine was a Zinfandel from the East Side
Winery in Lodi , California, an independent co-op winery. My
recollection is that it was a very good wine, and it was about
sixty -five cents a quart. Probably if I had that same wine
today, I would have a somewhat different view of it, but at
that point in time it was a quite acceptable wine. In terms
of acceptability, if it were duplicated today it probably
still would be; it's just that I don't think I would probably
like it quite as well as I did.

Hicke: Most of these wines were sweet wines?

Wright: Yes, I was considered a bit of an oddball. I did a lot of
proselytizing, and very soon it became a habit; you get
interested in and like wine, and all of a sudden you become
the expert. Colleagues at work would come around and say,
"We're going to have a dinner, and we're going to have wine.
What would you suggest?"

Hicke: You developed your market. [laughter]

Wright: I would say that more often than not we would have wine with
dinner.

Hicke: Okay, you're about to move to Brussels.

Wright: It was originally going to be Zurich, Switzerland, but then
the Swiss really, started cracking down on work permits for
foreigners, so Arthur D. Little's European headquarters moved
from Zurich to Brussels.

Moving to Brussels. Belgium. 1965

Hicke: What year was this?

Wright: This was 1965.

Hicke: What were you doing when you went over there?

12

all my clients were European; they were not generally American
companies. That kind of gave me an insight into both
similarities and differences that exist between European and
American companies, and even within Europe there are some big
differences between British companies, French companies, Dutch
companies, German companies.

Hicke: Did you have all those as clients?

Wright: Oh, yes. Italian, Swiss, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish,
British, French, Belgian. No Spanish; I never had a Spanish
client or Portuguese --oh, I did a little bit, but not very
much. I was in a sense doing sort of the same stuff, but I
was doing it in a different environment. That was really
quite interesting.

Hicke: You were still bottling wines?

Wright: There are grapes grown in Belgium in hothouses, beautiful

table grapes --these huge Royales , they call them, big, black
grapes that they packaged sort of like the Japanese package in
styrofoam and beautiful sorts of things and sold them for a
fortune. They obviously didn't make very good wine, but the
table grape business was fairly large; that and endive were
two rather important agricultural activities on the outskirts
of Brussels.

Hicke: Belgian endive, of course.

Wright: Yes, which the French call chicon, and the Flems call it
witloof, meaning white leaf.

But up in the northern end of Brussels, by the Card du
Nord station, there were two or three companies that brought
in wine in barrels from Bordeaux and Burgundy mainly. There
were really some good ones, like Vosne-Romanee; I remember
that Vosne-Romanee was great. So I'd go there and buy barrels
and take them home and bottle them. I saved a lot of money by
doing that. Besides, it was fun. I guess I got rid of my
winemaking urge by bottling barrels that I bought.

After about five years in Brussels, even though I was
traveling all over the place, I really got fed up with the
climate. The climate in Northern Europe is dismal, as you
well know. Just day after day of--

13

Wright: --clouds and worse. The chairman of the board of Arthur D.
Little at that time was General James Gavin, who died only a
year ago. He was a really incredible man, who had been the
head of the 82nd Airborne Division in the Second World War at
the age of twenty- five. Jumping Jim, they called him. He
basically got into West Point by having gone into the army
first. He came from a family that was not at all well-to-do
and managed to work his way through the army into West Point.

He became under [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower the
head of research and development for the army and had a major,
major falling out with Eisenhower and [Secretary of State John
Foster] Dulles, claiming in his mind that wars of the future
were really not going to be nuclear, and the amount of money
and time we were spending on building up this whole nuclear
concept should be reassessed, and that wars of the future were
going to require highly mobile forces. [laughs] He was dead
on! He was absolutely correct.

He became quite outspoken about this, and as a result
Eisenhower, I guess, demoted him. He resigned and left the
army, and Arthur D. Little hired him to be the chairman. The
guy was not only a great figurehead but actually was a very,
very brilliant man, not only in terms of military things but
in other things, too. In fact, I well remember that after I
moved out here to California, during the Vietnam War, we were
all in a meeting in a conference room, and one of us asked
him, "Jim, what do you think of the war?" God, he went to the
blackboard and laid it out, and you could see we were in the
craziest thing we could ever be in. Really, in about a half
an hour he turned me from being either somewhat pro-Vietnam or
at least neutral to being vehemently anti-the war, just
listening to him. It was incredible how he could succinctly
boil all this down and explain it to you.

Hicke: And nobody was listening.

Wright: Nobody was listening, that's right. [General Matthew]

Ridgeway was on his side; I think there were three or four ex-
generals .

In the meantime, though, he was ambassador to France
under [President John F. ] Kennedy and really came back to
Arthur D. Little in part because he couldn't afford to be
ambassador to France. Being ambassador to France or the U.K.

14

normally requires a lot of private money, and Jim didn't have
that.

Anyway, Jim was over in Brussels for a trip, and I went
to him and said, "Look, Jim, I'm really fed up with the
climate, and I'm kind of getting bored, so I think I'll just
call it quits." I didn't have any idea what I was going to
do. He said, "No, no, don't do that. Why leave Arthur D.
Little?" I said, "Well, I don't know; I guess maybe you're
right." He said, "You want to go to London?" I said, "I'll
take a look at that." I did, and I sort of looked around and
decided I really didn't want to go to London; even though it
had certain aspects that Brussels didn't have, it still had
the same climate. Also, London has always been horrendously
expensive in housing, even then, relative to what people
earned.

Putting it all together, one of the options was San
Francisco, and I figured, "Ah! That will get me out here [to
California], and I can start to pursue what I've always wanted
to do, and that's buy a few little acres of land and start
growing grapes." So that's what I did; I transferred to San
Francisco.

Hicke: Was this in '72?

Wright: No, this was 1969. I was in Brussels from
No, '72 is another sort of a landmark.

65 until late '69.

In California. 1969

Growing Grapes in the Napa Valley

Wright: While I was still in Brussels I had taken a trip to San

Francisco prior to the formal acceptance of me in the San
Francisco office and my decision as to whether I wanted to
really do it or not. One of the senior staff members in the
San Francisco office, a fellow named Dick Lynn, was
negotiating to buy a piece of property up in the mountains of
St. Helena from a fellow named Al Menasco. Al had a vineyard
there with a bunch of different varieties- -Grenache , even some
old Alicante, and he was getting into Cabernet and Pinot noir,
and he had Pinot blanc and Camay. A beautiful, beautiful

15

property, very hilly and tough to grow grapes on, particularly
in those days before drip irrigation and so forth.

Al was fairly elderly then- -I think he was in his late
seventies --and was a pioneer in the aircraft industry; there's
a Menasco engine that is very famous . He was a real buddy of
Clark Gable and a lot of Hollywood people. Clark used to
spend time up there at the Menasco ranch.

Dick managed to get enough partners together, and I
became one of those partners, to purchase the property from
Al. That started me off right away being at least partially
involved in vineyards. We'd go up on the weekends.

Hicke: Is this Pickle Canyon?

Wright: No, this was called Lyncrest Vineyards, which is now owned by
a friend of mine who was a partner even then, Mike Mars ton,
and it's now called Marston Vineyards. It's up on Sulphur
Springs Road going all the way up the mountain.

I guess I still had itchy feet, partly because Dick was
somewhat autocratic about who could do what in the vineyard;
so I decided I really wanted also a piece of property myself.
In fact, I did sell my partnership to Dick in order to get
some money to buy my own property.

Hicke: If you're in a partnership like that, can you pick the grapes?
You say he was somewhat autocratic; are you talking about
running the vineyard?

Wright: I wanted to do certain things, and I guess I felt I didn't

have as much involvement as I would have liked to have. Also
it was a bit farther to go from Mill Valley, and I thought I
would like to find something down valley a little bit but
still in the mountains. I was convinced that mountain
vineyards really did have an edge on quality.

Meanwhile I had- -according to him- -lured out to Napa an
old school friend of mine. We went to college together, and
he went on to McGill University and went into psychiatry. His
name is Herb McGrew. I convinced Herb to come out and be a
partner with me in the vineyard. Herb was at that point
practicing in New York and kind of thinking of going to New
Mexico and maybe growing grapes, among other things. So I
steered him away from New Mexico, and he came out and had no
problem becoming a staff physician at Napa State Hospital.

16

Herb and I got together, and we bought this property in
Pickle Canyon in the spring of 1970, so it didn't take very
long. I remember I was in Brazil, and we were bidding on
something else in a probate court, and we lost that, which in
retrospect was good that we did. Then this came up.

Hicke: Were there vines there?

Wright: No, it was an old prune orchard, and we proceeded to get about
ten acres cleared. We might have even planted it in 1970, we
moved so fast. If not, we planted in '71; I can't recollect
right now. We managed to find some roots tock at the last
minute, which was the wrong kind, but that's all right,
[laughs] In those days St. George was always recommended for
hillside vineyards because the St. George has a root structure
that goes right down. Hillside vineyards in those days were
notable for being stressed during bloom period because there
was no water, no irrigation. Therefore the St. George was
deemed to be better in this drought condition. As it turns
out, St. George is a pretty lousy rootstock in terms of bloom;
because it's so vigorous at bloom time, you do tend to get a
set that's much less regular than with A x R or some of the
other rootstocks now--S04, et cetera.

Hicke: Did you go to somebody at Davis?

Wright: More the county farm advisor, which is connected, obviously.

When we first came here it was Jim Lider, and then Keith Bower
came after that. We were pretty rank amateurs, but we managed
to get five thousand roots planted, about ten acres worth.

Hicke: Who is "we"?

Wright: Oh, Herb and his wife, my wife then, and some other friends.

Particularly important, up the hill --up Mt. Veeder, sort of on
the top, past Mayacamas and Lokoya Road, there was what was
really a commune of what would then be called hippies, and a
little farther on was a place called The Farm. I met somebody
who met somebody, and basically folks from The Farm helped us
out a lot, too, on our payroll. They were primarily
responsible, along with us, for getting the vineyard planted.

Hicke: Did they have any experience- -or did you, for that matter?

17

Wright: No, rank amateurs. The soil conservation service came and
helped us lay out the contours , but other than that it was
pretty much reading the book and doing it. It worked,
[laughs] I'd do it differently today, but it worked.
Actually, one or two of those people still work for Chandon
now. Count Robert Jean de Vogue, when he came over for his
first visit and saw them working- -this was when [Moet &]
Chandon was looking- - "You know, I think they are retired
'ippies." [laughs].

Hicke: What did you plant?

Wright: My initial plan was to plant Cabernet and Merlot. I thought
Merlot was going to be a hot grape. It was hardly ever
planted then, so there wasn't much around. I was right, and I
wish I had planted more. My next door neighbors at that time,
Mike and Arlene Bernstein, had bought and had planted a
vineyard which today is Mt. Veeder Winery. Mike had planted
primarily Cabernet. We were talking, and he says, "Why plant
Cabernet?" The curious thing is that Mike was an antitrust
lawyer [laughs], and there he was trying to say "Don't plant
Cabernet; we'll be too competitive." Basically that's what he
was saying. I thought that was really wonderful.

He convinced us, or basically we convinced ourselves
that maybe we would just do- -what we wound up doing was
Zinfandel and Merlot, and we did a little bit of Chenin blanc,
which I subsequently grafted over with Chardonnay. To this
day I don't know why I decided I ' d do any Chenin blanc. Then
in what was supposed to be all Zinfandel, 10 or 12 percent of
the cuttings turned out to be the Camay beaujolais clone of
Pinot noir. To this day we have to go through the vineyard
twice and pick that out.

Hicke: They were just mixed in with the rest?

Wright: Yes, supposedly certified Zinfandel. I won't tell you where
they came from. They didn't come from Davis. They came from
a winery that had a supposedly good certification program.

Hicke: Other than advice from your neighbor, how else did you decide
what to plant?

Wright: Basically I planted what I liked. [laughs] That's about as
scientific as you can get. I planted what I liked as wine.

Hicke: You knew Zinfandel from way back.

18

Wright: Yes. I thought Mountain Zin would be really good, and it is.
It's just that up until the White Zin boom it would have been
more profitable had I planted everything in Merlot, or if I
had planted half Cabernet and half Merlot, or if I had planted
Chardonnay earlier. But that's hindsight.

The Merlot at Pickle Canyon Vineyards has always been in
great demand. The problem with Merlot is that everywhere, but
particularly, it seems like, in hillsides --and maybe it's
partly the St. George rootstock, too- -it doesn't set very
well; it has very loose clusters. I don't think I ever got
more than two and a half tons to the acre.

Drip Irrigation

Wright: At that time there was a really interesting technological
development taking place, and that was drip irrigation. I
immediately got interested in that and fascinated with it, and
I think I was probably one of the first to put in drip
irrigation for vineyards. Drip irrigation, more than any
other single thing in my opinion, has revolutionized the
economics of growing grapes in places like on a mountainside
or down at Carneros , where you've got very shallow soil and
you don't have the holding capacity of water like you have in
the mid Napa Valley.

In those days Rene di Rosa was the pioneer in Carneros
at Winery Lake [Vineyard] . Rene was lucky to get a ton to an
acre in those days in Carneros, and a couple of others- -Buena
Vista was a little later and were getting very low yields in
Carneros. Typical yields on the hillsides would be a ton and
a half or two tons to the acre, but with drip irrigation we at
Chandon are now getting five, five and a half, sometimes six
tons to the acre in Carneros, and we're getting, oh, four or
four and a half tons up in the mountains .

Hicke: Can you explain that a little bit?

Wright: It's really because drip irrigation, if you do it at the right
time, prevents stress on the vine in May. If the vine gets
stressed just about flowering time, it tells itself, "Hey, I
don't want to propagate myself, so I've got to watch myself
and not set too much seed." Being able to keep the vine

19

unstressed during bloom and into set makes an enormous
difference on final yield. Once the crop is set, then you
want the vine to go into some stress; you don't want to over-
irrigate.

On a hillside, drip irrigation is about the only
practical way of irrigation; because of the contours and all
that, overheads don't really work, and of course flood
irrigation wouldn't work. In Carneros, in theory overhead
would work, but the water requirements of overhead are five,
six, seven times as much as drip, and we don't have much water
in Carneros. You really need to conserve on water, and of
course drip really does that. Plus the beauty of drip
irrigation is that it puts the water where you want it; it
doesn't create extra humidity, so you don't have the same
mildew and insect problems and that kind of thing. It's a lot
more efficient, but it also puts it where you want it.
Really, you can control everything so much better with drip
irrigation.

For young vineyards, it's like night and day. If you
start a brand-new vineyard, even in mid Napa Valley here,
where you've got rich soils and so forth, and you say, "I'll
just sort of hand water, or I won't water," it's going to take
you at least a year or two years more to bring that vineyard
into production. Whereas with drip it would really save you
at least a year.

Hicke : How did you learn about it?

Wright: I just got fascinated. I guess I was at some agricultural

thing that had nothing to do with vineyards. I think it was
related to orchards or orange groves or something like that,
and I saw this thing. It was like, "Wow, this is really
interesting!" The original company was down in San Diego that
brought the Israeli technology here; basically it was an
Israeli invention. Of course, it's gone through enormous
improvements in terms of the economics of the performance and
all that.

Hicke: Do you recall the name of chat company?

Wright: Dripeze was the name of it. It just came into my mind. Those

original emitters, which I bought in '70 or '71, still work.

Everybody thought they were going to get clogged up in a
matter of four or five years .

20

Hicke: What are they made out of?

Wright: Those I think were ejection-molded out of polypropylene,

attached to polyethylene tubing. The tubings held up, too,
for twenty years.

Hicke: Were other growers getting into this?

Wright: They were starting, yes. It was all about the same time, but
I think I was one of the first to have a drip system.

Hicke: You installed those in '71?

Wright: Yes. I think even today, in going to other projects, it seems
to me that with all the water that's used in the Central
Valley, if somebody at some time or even now would come up
with a plan that would really motivate growers to use drip
irrigation rather than flood and overhead, lots of acre feet
of water could be saved. But that's another issue.

Hicke: Yes, that's a big part of what drip irrigation is about from
the standpoint of the rest of the state. You didn't have any
irrigation system before you put this in, right?

Wright: No. What people did in those days, particularly if they were
in the hills, you'd go by with a water trailer on the tractor,
and by hand- -oh, it was really a pain. It wasn't very
effective; it was very labor-intensive, and not nearly as
precise as drip. As I say, without drip irrigation, some of
these hillside vineyards and Carneros vineyards just wouldn't
exist because the economics wouldn't be there. So it has
really revolutionized that and in turn has opened up
viticultural sites that have tremendous quality that wouldn't
have been opened up.

Hicke: Such as?

Wright: I just think that hillsides do produce wines of greater

elegance than vines grown in very rich alluvial soils like
much of the Napa Valley itself. And we see that at Chandon.
Without a doubt, year in and year out our best Char donnay- -and
this is for sparkling wine, of course- -comes from our Mt.
Veeder property. It just has more elegance. The Chardonnays
that we grow in Carneros have much fruitier character, which
for us is a bit of a problem for sparkling wine, because it's
a little too fruity, whereas the mountain grapes don't show
that at all. In fact, mountain Chardonnay as a table wine,
when it's young and hasn't had much bottle -aging, to most

21

people isn't as attractive as, say, a Carneros Chardonnay,
which has all that fruity content to it.

But when the vines age , the mountain Chardonnay that is
five or six years old really has an elegance that's very, very
intriguing. It's beautiful.

Hicke: Do you associate elegance with dryness and aging
characteristics? Can I pin you down on that?

Wright: I think I associate it with enough fruit to have flavor, but
not over-fruitiness; you're not bowled over from the
fruitiness. Maybe elegance is the wrong word.

Hicke: It's a good word, but it's a little hard to pin down.

Wright: It's more subtle; let's put it that way. You're not bowled
over by the fruit. It's there, but it's laid back, and
because it is laid back other elements come into play as well,
so it's more subtle and more complex. That's been my own
experience. I don't know about others. I do think there is
something to be said for qualities you get with shallower
soils and drainage. I think in mountainside vineyards it's
mainly a question of shallow soils plus drainage. I think in
the Carneros area it's a combination of the cooler climate
plus shallow soils that produce a different sort of grape, a
different wine from the same grape variety. The number of
acres planted in Carneros and on the hillsides- -although the
hillsides are still pretty small- -wouldn' t be there without
drip irrigation. It just wouldn't have been economic.

Of course, what it does to land values is pretty
amazing, too. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Hicke: In the discussion about soil versus climate as the most
important factor, where do you stand?

Wright: I am really honestly convinced that it's totally synergistic;
it's not one or the other. They're both working. Therefore,
if you say, "Champagne has chalk soil; Champagne is a
wonderful wine. Therefore, to make a wine like Champagne you
should look for chalk soil," doesn't make any sense, because
the chalk in Champagne works because of the climate. The
climate is very severe in the Champagne region, very cold and
rather rainy, and the chalk is like a sponge and is taking all
that down. The chalk is acting not only in its mineral sense
but is creating a climate; so it's a very synergistic

22

relationship. Chalk soil here wouldn't necessarily be
beneficial, because we don't have the same conditions of
climate. And there are other examples.

The people who are totally concerned about terroLr or
soil, if I were to be a little cynical- -certainly
mezzoclimates can be if not duplicated rather closely
simulated. Let's say there are other places in the world that
have climates virtually identical to Bordeaux- -some parts of
California, some parts of Australia, et cetera. It's to one's
advantage, if one were in the lead, like if you were a French
appellation committee, to say it's really soil, because soil
is really urtduplicable, it's so unique. You can get this
wonderful taste, and the soil is what makes the best.

Wright: Therefore, by making it virtually unique, or making it seem
unique, you can command a higher price for your grapes.
That's really what a lot of that is all about. Some people
think that the appellation contr61ee rules were made by some
sort of generous group of people who decided that the consumer
deserves some guaranteed quality, but that had nothing to do
with it. The appellation contrdlee laws were set up to
restrict the planting of grapes in order to keep the prices
up. It's just as simple as that.

Arthur D. Little: Investigating a Project in Brazil

Hicke : Let's get back to your work for Arthur D. Little in San

Francisco. When you came out here were you still working with
packaging?

Wright: Yes. I came out, and there wasn't any real obvious client

base out here, although there was a forest products industry,
so actually there was some base there. I guess in a sense it
was a somewhat risky move, because I pretty much had my own
quasi specialty and no real resources around me to speak of.
But that didn't bother me, because I was really interested in
growing grapes .

Hicke: You just had to support your habit.

23

Wright: That's right. Shortly after I got to San Francisco a client,
International Paper Company, which was one of the few American
companies that 1 did work for in Europe, had reorganized
itself, having been "McKinsied, " we called it- -a consulting
company called McKinsey did a lot of reorganization work
(Arthur D. Little in those days didn't do much of that; we
were more technology-based) - -and they decided that they should
become internationalized. Even though their name was
International Paper, it started originally because they had
newsprint mills up in Canada.

So they bought a couple of companies in Europe, and then
they formed a whole international division on it's own and
started to look for opportunities to grow internationally.
That was some of the work I did for them in Europe; they were
looking for a couple of acquisitions, so I got that work.

They tracked me down here in San Francisco, and they
wanted to look at South America. I was quite flattered that
they really wanted me to be the project leader, even though I
wasn't geographically ideally located for that.

Hicke: Where was their headquarters?
Wright: They were in New York.

I started work there, and it quickly boiled down- -we
took a quick look at Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, and wound
up with Brazil as being the most interesting to start. So I
started traveling a lot to Brazil, pursuing this project. The
project got kind of dragged out, because they kept changing
what they wanted to do. Well, actually the way they wanted to
enter Brazil was in a very low investment and low profile, but
there was no opportunity. We started there, and we worked our
way back.

About a year and a half or close to two years later--!
wasn't working full time but sort of off and on- -we got all
the way to reforestation as the way to approach Brazil in
terms of the pulp paper and packaging industries. It started
out in terms of printing paper for packaging materials, and
that was a low investment, but everybody was in it; there
wasn't much opportunity.

We started following the whole chain backwards. Because
of Brazil's economic structure, et cetera, low-capital
investments were more attractive and easier than high-capital

investments. Yet the need was for industries that needed
high-capital investment, and that certainly is the pulp and
paper industry, so in terms of an opportunity, that's where it
was. But even going in and, say, producing pulp, in order to
produce pulp you had to have the trees , and the trees were not
there in all that great an abundance. There was a tremendous
amount of trees up in the Amazon, but that's a whole other
different problem.

It just so happened that at that time the Brazilian
government had these fantastic tax incentives to go in for
reforestation, and eucalyptus grows incredibly there; you can
take your first cut of eucalyptus in six years. So we finally
wound up recommending that they go into forest management and
use other companies' tax money to plant the trees. Once those
trees started growing, then they could put up a pulp mill with
some other investors and all that.

It was great; it was just wonderful! Except that by the
time we finished the study there had been a total upheaval in
the top management of IP [laughs]; they had thrown out the old
president, they'd gotten in a new one, and everything had
changed. So they never pursued that, but another company did
later on with great success.

It was a lot of fun. It was a very interesting project,
because, among other things, I really had a very distorted
view of South America and what it was like. Working in Brazil
and working with a lot of Brazilians --in fact, I did spend
some other time down there teaching in Belo Horizonte as a
part of the contract, teaching engineers and economists how to
do project management. I guess it's fair to say I fell in
love with the country. It's a very dynamic, interesting
country.

A Study of the Wine Industry. 1970

Wright: So that was fun. The only problem is that it kept me out of
the mainstream of activities in San Francisco, and when that
project was finally over --and I had done a couple of others --
and I got back sort of full time in the San Francisco office,
I really didn't have much work to do. As a consultant this
kind of bothers you. It doesn't affect your pay, but you know
that you want to be billable; that was my role in life. So I

25

Hicke:
Wright

Hicke:
Wright

Hicke :
Wright

decided to do a multi-client study of the wine industry,
because that was really my hobby. This was around mid- 1970,
and it was pretty obvious that wine was changing, that there
was a definite shift over to table wine from fortified wines,
wine consumption was increasing in the table wine category,
and situations like that.

I managed to design an outline of a study and a proposal
and managed to get enough clients; I think there were about
six clients to support the study, and we went ahead with the
study, which was called Wine America.

Who were the clients that supported it?

I'm trying to remember. I guess it's not a secret anymore.
Robert Mondavi was one; H.J. Heinz ; Philip Morris; Schlitz;
Coca-Cola Bottling company of New York, which at that time
owned Mogen David [winery] and Tribuno [vermouth] , which is
now owned by The Wine Group ; and Quaker Oats . The larger food
companies were saying, "Let's take a look at this to see if
it's for us . "

You've got a couple of wineries, a cigarette company, a beer--

Well, Philip Morris in those days was diversifying; they were
in the beer business already. But, yes, it was larger
companies who figured they'd better have a look at this.

The findings of that study were that we felt that what
we called the premium- -in those days we kind of broke up the
wine into premium, standard, and nontraditional . The
nontraditional wines were Cold Duck and Boone's Farm Apple;
they were called pop wines at that time. They were the
booming ones as well as the premium, both premium California
and imported wines , but not moving nearly to the same extent
as the pop wines were.

And in between were the standards?

And the standards; they were fairly steady. Even in those
days they were fairly steady, even in the table wine category.
Later the white jug wine started to grow, but at that point it
wasn't growing all that much.

Hicke: What was in the standard category?

26

Wright: Oh, hearty burgundy, Carlo Rossi, genericwe call them jug
vines today, but in those days 1 guess there were a fair
number in half gallons, et cetera, but a lot were in bottles.

Hicke : How did you do the research?

Wright: There were three parts to the study. One was to assess the
market, and some of that was looking at numbers, and some of
it was talking to the trade- -retailers , restaurateurs, et
cetera, and to the wine folks themselves.

Hicke: Somebody like Darrell Corti?

Wright: Yes. I don't remember if I talked to Darrell specifically,
but sure. Another part we did, we commissioned an outside
consumer research corporation called Family Opinion, Inc.- -I
believe they were called that in those days. They have, you
know, panels of eight thousand. Basically we did some
consumer research on wine buying and consumption behavior. We
did a first screen of about eight thousand households, and
then got down to a couple thousand households in a longer
questionnaire.

Hicke: In California?

Wright: Oh, no, throughout the country. Then there was a third part,
what we called the economics. One whole part of the study was
examining the cost of developing vineyards. We had actual
cost models, and I think we were one of the first to do those.
It was just about the time that computers were starting to be
able to do some of this stuff at a reasonable cost. Of
course, the desktop computer wasn't even around then, but
there were time-share terminals. We had a pretty sharp guy at
the Arthur D. Little office in San Francisco who was pretty
good at this stuff, so he chunked out a whole lot of financial
models .

Hicke: Again, was this nationwide?

Wright: We were really looking at establishing a winery in California.
Then we had different kinds: we had a standard winery, a
nontraditional winery, a premium winery, and in each case
different levels in production and sales and so forth. Our
final conclusions were --and this was by '71, based maybe on
'69 and '70 data; I think '70 was our last data- -that the
growth prospects for the premium table wine sector were both
good and rather predictable; that the standard wine business

27

was maybe on the order of 3 or 4 percent a year. Not as much.
The other, we thought, was 15 to 20 percent over the
subsequent five years, say.

And that the nontraditional business, or the pop wine
business, was completely unpredictable. Even though every
indication at that point was that these wines were going up
and up and up, there was Just enough feeling, about as
intuitive as anything else, that they really weren't going to
last. We were correct in that, because they really took a
nose dive shortly thereafter. In those days, out of eleven
million cases of sparkling wine, seven or eight million were
Cold Duck.

Hicke: So sparkling wine was something you looked at?

Wright: Looked at, but it wasn't the focus of the study. Partly it
wasn't a focus because once you got out of Cold Duck there
wasn't much. So really Cold Duck was part of the
nontraditional segment. No, sparkling wine wasn't a big issue
in that study.

I guess it turned out that our projections of growth
were pretty much correct quite accurate, actually. I think
where we made a mistake was that we felt that because of the
capital investment involved, new entries into the market would
not be that prevalent. What we totally missed was the romance
factor of people getting into the business despite the heavy,
up -front investment, that there are just enough people out
there, some individuals and some companies, who have talked
themselves into getting into the business because of, in many
cases, what I think is the romance factor. It's a great
business, you know. It's got a lot of romance to it. It is!
It's a fun business.

Hicke: That's interesting, because you essentially got into it
because you liked it.

Wright: [laughs] I know. Yes, I was one of the guilty ones.

Hicke: It's interesting that you didn't realize there were that many
others like you.

Wright: I must say that we advised our clients- -basically the ones who
were in the business, like Mondavi as I recall, our main
recommendation to them was to develop more vineyards, because
we thought vineyards were going to get in short supply. For a

28

while we were incorrect, but then we became correct, so I
think generally we gave them fairly good advice.

Hicke: Is that why Mondavi was in it- -to see what the projections
were for his own growers?

Wright: I think so. Yes, I think Bob's main interest was- -I don't

know; I should ask him one of these days. I kind of suspect
that was about the time he had taken on some new partners- -the
Sick's Rainier [Brewing] Company. 1 think they wanted some
outside opinion about this business. Essentially our
conclusions were that "If you are in the business today,
particularly if you are in the upper end of the business" --
which Mondavi was- -"it's got a lot of future to it. It's
going to require a lot of money, but it's a good business to
be in competitively." I'd say the only surprise in that --and
I don't know to what extent it has really hurt Mondavi; I
don't think it has- -is that today there are a good many more
competitors in the same price range as Mondavi than I would
have ever believed in those days; just because of the
economics I felt they wouldn't do that.

Those companies who were not in the business, we
basically advised not to get in because we didn't think the
economics of starting from scratch would make a lot of sense.
On the other hand, there were many opportunities. If they
found a winery or two that were large enough to be interesting
to these large companies, then an acquisition might not be a
bad idea.

Hicke: So not to really start from scratch, but if they could go in
and acquire a going concern it would be okay?

Wright: Yes.

Hicke: Did you also work with Lou [Louis R. ] Gomberg?

Wright: Very much, yes. In fact, Lou worked on that study with me as
an outside consultant. Oh, yes, I forgot about Lou; I
shouldn't have done that. Lou did quite a bit of work with
me.

Hicke: What types of things did he do?

Wright: He dug up a lot of numbers because he had access to them, and
of course he'd been very active in negotiating and buying and
selling wineries, so he had some input on that. That's right,

29

Lou was really a member of the team. A great guy.
enjoyed my friendship with Lou and his wife.

Hicke: Did you come out with a one-volume report?

I always

Wright: Well, three volumes; they were pretty big. [laughter] So
what do you want for $20,000? Of course, $20,000 in those
days was a lot of money.

That report was printed in about March of '72, and just
about that time I got a call from Paris. Having done the
study, it's a classic consultant situation: you become an
expert by doing something, right? Educate yourself on your
clients' money [laughs]. I'm being a little cynical. But by
having been the project leader for this, then I was recognized
within Arthur D. Little, at least, as being the wine industry
expert. I guess, in all fairness, I probably deserved it.

I got a call from Paris from Michel d'Halluin, who was
the manager of the Arthur D. Little office there. Michel I
had known because of my work in Brussels, and he said that
Arthur D. Little had been engaged by the Banque Nationale de
Paris, the BNP, the biggest bank in France, to look at
investment areas of interest for French companies. They
decided to structure this project by going to an input-output
computer model. Lo and behold, the wine industry was one of
the industries that the input -output model had preliminarily
tagged as potentially being of interest to a French company.
I said, "I don't think you need a computer input-output model
to determine that, but what the hell, that's all right. So
what do you want from me?"

He said, "Well, I'd like you to write a little report
on--." He says [with French accent], "Now, John, only three
days of your time, because I do not have a very big budget."
I said, "For $20,000 you can buy the whole thing." "No, no,
John, you must remember our old friendship." I said, "All
right, Michel, I guess in good conscience I can write a very
general overview without prejudicing the clients who paid good
money for this. I can't get into the details, because that
would not be ethical, but I feel confidant that I can write an
overview generally." I wrote a fairly general overview of the
situation as I saw it.

At that time I was pretty heavily engaged in a project
for one of the Unilever companies in Europe. They had a
packaging division, several companies located in many

30

different countries of Europe that produced packaging
materials. The whole project was really what were they going
to do with these companies in the future in terms of direction
and organization and all that? It was a fun study.

31

III MOfiT-HENNESSY
Exploring the Possibilities

Wright: So I was going over to Europe quite frequently. That July, on
my trip over, Michel called and said, "Look, while you're here
I've set up appointments in Paris with some potential
investors." The reason the BNP, by the way, had commissioned
the study was that they were developing branch banking
facilities in the U.S. They later bought the Bank of the West
here in California. There is a BNP bureau here in San
Francisco as well, but they really finally enlarged by buying
the Bank of the West. They figured that if they were going to
have these operations in the state- -branch banking; I guess
that's the right word- -if French companies were there, they'd
naturally be attracted to the BNP as a primary lender.

In July they set me up with meetings, and there were BNP
people there. I guess there were two or three meetings. One
was with a fellow named Guy de la Serre, who was then and
still is secretary general of Moet-Hennessy . Guy actually is
from the family Mercier, which is a company that is part of
the Moet [Hennessy Louis Vuitton] group. I spent a couple of
hours with Guy going over what I'd written and answering his
questions .

-Then I met with two other groups. I met with Pernod
Ricard, the pastis people. Pernod Ricard had just merged, and
they were looking to expand their activities and possibly get
into the wine business. They subsequently bought Austin-
Nichols in this country, which is really the bourbon business
more than the wine, although they had some wines.

32

Then I met with a company called the Salin du Midi.
They're a very fascinating company. Their original primary
business was solar salt down in the Mediterranean area at the
mouth of the Rhone River.

Hicke: Solar salt?

Wright: Yes, like that stuff that we make --dried salt. They still do
that, but the amount of land that they own- -not where they
were evaporating the salt, because it would be too salty, but
somehow they wound up owning thousands of hectares of land.
This was way, way back. That land is almost pure sand, and
when the phylloxera hit Europe, the phylloxera bug doesn't
exist very well in sand, so they were able to plant vines on
this soil without having to graft them, and they developed a
huge wine business; they have been referred to as the Gallo of
France. Their brand name is Listel, and they make very
acceptable wine at that price level and have very good
technology. So they were somewhat interested, too.

Well, as it turned out, of the three people, the one who
was really interested enough to make the next step was Moet-
Hennessy. I don't think I met Alain then. I got word from
Michel later- -I believe it was that August- -that two
executives from Moet-Hennessy, Alain Chevalier- -who didn't
have a title, but essentially he was president of Moet-
Hennessy and the holding company; I think he was called
general administrator, or admLnistrateur general- -and Bertrand
Mure, who was the managing director of Moet & Chandon, the
Champagne group, were coming over in August to visit me in San
Francisco.

I brought them up to the Napa Valley and showed them
around. I remember one night they stayed at Silverado, and
Alain and I were taking a little stroll around the golf
course. He said, "I'm really interested in doing something.
I think it's time we started a California venture." He
described some of the reasons why they were interested, which
I'll get to in a minute. He said, "No matter what the market
is--" I told him up front that I had studied the market. I
said, "The sparkling wine market at this point is a little bit
of champagne here, some sparkling wine here, and Cold Duck is
the main thing. I do believe there's an opportunity for
growth in this business if somebody comes in with the right
product at the right price and so forth, but we're starting
with a small market." The whole methode champenoLse business
at that time, which was largely Korbel [F. Korbel & Bros.

Hicke:

33

winery], Kornell [Cellars], was only, I think, a hundred
thousand cases. We knew pretty much that we were going to
have to start with a capacity of about a hundred thousand to
make it interesting.

So I said, "The market is not there, but I think it can
be developed." He said, "Fine." He said, "Besides, for me
the really important thing is to get the right person to run
it," and he said, "I think that could be difficult." I said,
"Geez, with Moet & Chandon behind it, there 'd be 150 totally
qualified people lined up to get the job." [laughs] I didn't
know he was testing me; he was very subtle.

You were just having your conversation about looking for
someone to head up this new winery.

Wright: Right. At that point it was left that on my next trip to

Europe, I should come by for a further conference, not only
with Alain and Bertrand but with the bank. It was just left
somewhat loose, but, "We'll work it out when you come over
next." I said fine.

Just about this time, which would have been August of
'72, I had kind of decided that I was so intrigued with the
winery business, and really grape growing more, I think, that
if I resigned from ADL I could probably stillbecause they do
use a lot of outside consultants if you've got a track record
for special things- -figure on maybe getting work from Arthur
D. Little half time or even less, and even with that I
probably wouldn't starve to death.

Further Conferences With the French

Wright: I had already informed ADL then, in August, that I was going
to resign, but that I'd complete the Unilever work, which was
fine with them. That happened, and then it must have been a
week or two later that I got a call from Michel D'Halluin
again from Paris. He said, "Look, when are you coming over
for Unilever?" I think it was October or something, and he
said, "Well, Moet wants to see you, and we have to have the
bank there," and blah, blah, blah. I said, "Look, I have
officially resigned from Arthur D. Little. If you want to pay

me for a day or two, I'd be delighted to .do that." He said,
"Oh, yes, yes, no problem." So I said, "Fine."

I came over, and I remember I called Michel from
Brussels; he was in Paris. I said, "Is everything set up?"
[quickly] "Oh, yes, yes," and he was very, very excited.
"Mr. Chevalier has invited you to his house that evening." I
said, "Oh, that's nice." "Well, it's more than nice; it's
very important." You know, he was giving me this- -I didn't
think it was such a big deal.

I went down [to Paris] Thursday night, and on Friday we
met officially at the Moet-Hennessy headquarters in Paris and
went through the whole thing again about the wine business and
where it was going and so on.

Hicke: Where is their headquarters?

Wright: It's changed now. It used to be at the Rue Tremoille, but
shortly thereafter it moved to Avenue Hoche.

Alain was rather short, curt, and somewhat agitated by
the meeting. You could see he was just impatient, I guess is
the best word. He didn't quite cut the meeting short, but it
felt a little bit like it was shortened. We broke up, and he
said, "I'll see you tonight." I said, "Wonderful." I was
walking out with Michel, and he says, "Now, look, when you go
to his house tonight, I'm sure he's going to want you to do
some more work. I'd just like some assurance from you that
Arthur D. Little will be involved." I said, "Well, of course.
Anything I would do as an individual consultant would only be
through Arthur D. Little, because obviously he made the first
contact, and I wouldn't think of doing anything other than
that." Then I said, "But I can't imagine that that's going to
happen . "

"Oh, yes, it is. I guarantee you, you'll have a nice
dinner, and after dinner he'll take you into another room and
talk about doing some more work." I said, "All right, Michel,
maybe you're right." And, sure enough, that's exactly what
happened. We had a delightful dinner with Alain Chevalier,
his wife, and two other couples who were friends. Actually,
one was the brother of John Haskell from Dillon, Read [& Co.,
Inc.]; I don't think I'd met John then.

After dinner was over and everybody had gone, Alain
asked me to stay around for a while. We went into another

35

room and sat down, and he said that he wanted me to- -I guess
even that morning he had said he wanted me to go up to pernay
to meet Robert- Jean de Vogue, who was the chairman still of
Moet-Hennessy, and to take a look around. I said, "Fine," so
that had already been decided. But essentially that evening
he said, "I think we'd like to pursue this further. What
would your involvement be?" I said, "I can promise you total
involvement in terms of being a project leader. I might need
some other help, which would come from Arthur D. Little. I'd
only ask that you write the contract with Arthur D. Little and
not with me personally." He said, "That's no problem. But I
want you to see Bob de Vogue first, before anything is
decided." I said, "Fine."

I went up to Epernay the next day, and they put me up at
the Chateau de Saran, which was quite impressive and
luxurious. I've never stayed there again. [laughter] As an
employee, you see, I didn't, but then I was given the full
treatment. That's all right; I've eaten there a few times,
and my daughter has been there a couple of times.

I met with Bob, who was this incredible- -he was a very
short man, but he looked a little like Maurice Chevalier. He
sort of had an air about him. He'd wear a hat a little cocked
like Maurice Chevalier. He actually had graduated from
St. Cyr, the military academy, so he was very military in his
bearing always, very elegant; a true nobleman, which he was.
The Vogue family is very, very old. In France they have a
saying that there's the nobility of the sword and the nobility
of the robe, and he was definitely the nobility of the sword,
the family going back to the Knights -Templar and all that,
whereas some of the newer nobility were only made ones by
doing favors for Louis XIV, Louis XIII, et cetera.

In fact Bob, even though his education and his first
career were military, really got into the champagne business
because the lady he married was a member of the Moet family,
and somewhat distant, too. Well, she was a member, yes, but
it's a little complicated, because her name wasn't Moet or
Chandbn. I've forgotten what her maiden name was. She's
still alive, Ghislaine. After they got married they brought
him in, and I guess in a matter of a very short period of time
he became the dominant leader of Moet [snap, snap, snap], just
like that- -a fantastic, great sense of leadership.

And he was a bit of a terror; he didn't suffer fools
very much, I guess. I remember he told me one time, "You

36

know, when I came into the business, all the other
champenoLses wanted to do was leave the bottles in their
cellar because they felt very rich with all the bottles in
their cellar. Moi , je suis un marchand du vin--I'm a wine
merchant. I decided you ought to sell them to get rich!" So
he did. He was one of the first people who had really
aggressively gone out and actually tried to capture market
share. He went into the U.K. [United Kingdom]. At that point
Moet was hardly anything and very soon became the number -one
brand, and he did that in other markets. So he really had a
sense, as he said, of being a "marchand du vin."

But he was also very, very supportive of technology,
almost to a fault. He really believed that technology made
better wine, and he was the first person to have a truly
accredited enologist, as opposed to a kind of "learn on the
job" winemaker. Actually, he separated enology from the chef
du cave anyway. Moet was an innovator in a lot of technology.
The only problem was , when they did any sort of consumer
research they realized that they had to play this down,
because consumers looked upon technology as anti-quality in
some ways .

Hicke: Like it's machine made or something?

Wright: Yes, exactly. But he was very supportive of technology, as

well as being really savvy in marketing and very aggressive in
sales and marketing.

Hicke: He had been to California, hadn't he?

Wright: Yes, at least once, and I'm sure more than that. His son,
[Count] Ghislaine [de Vogue], tells me that in '69 he and
"papa" were here at a wine WSWA (Wine and Spirits Wholesalers
of America) meeting in San Francisco. They were looking for
the hospitality suite of our then agent for both Moet and
Hennessy, Schieffelin & Company, and they wandered into the
wrong suite, which happened to be the Wine Institute that was
having a tasting as well. Ghislain said, "I said to Papa,
'Papa, we must go over to Schieffelin.' He said, 'No, I want
to stay here and taste some of these wines. I'm very
curious.'" So he spent the next three hours there, both
tasting and pontificating, I guess, telling people what he
thought of the wines. He was very fascinated, particularly
with the Cabernets. So he sort of had implanted in the back
of his mind that California was an up-and-coming place to make

37

world-class wines. He was that kind of a person; he was
really quite broad minded in global outlook.

So I arrived on the scene and was ushered into his
office. 1 sat down, and 1 was somewhat curious as to what
language we were going to speak, but he spoke beautiful
English, which certainly helped, although I could speak a
little bit of French. I speak more today, but at that point I
spoke, well, not bad French, I guess. We chatted, and Bob,
after maybe forty- five minutes or so, said, "Well, I've always
wanted to do something in California. I think the time is
right, but the main thing is to get the right person, and I
want you to be chairman of the company." I said, "What?"
"Well, chairman, president, or whatever you call it." I said,
"I'm very flattered." I didn't say he had made me an offer I
couldn't refuse, but I almost did. I said, "That would be
wonderful , but I think you ought to take a certain amount of
time to study the situation, maybe principally to see whether
we should start from scratch, or whether we should buy an
existing company and what the implications of that would be--
sort of a feasibility study." I said I'd like to do that
under contract with Arthur D. Little, if that was all right.
"Oh, that's no problem. Go right ahead. Fine, fine."

M. Poirier Tastes California Vines

Wright: With that, he said, "Now I want you to meet Monsieur [Renaud]
Poirier, because he will be the one to finally determine
whether or not we go to California." I said, "Oh, really?"
He said, "Yes." So I got ushered out. I didn't know who
Poirier was from whatever. Going through all the buildings at
Moet, into the winery and upstairs in the winery, in the
cuv^rie, which is the tank room, was the lab. I got ushered
into the lab, and this rather tall fellowwell, Renaud was
about ready to retire, so he was about sixty -two or -three
then, with gray hair, not very much hair, with a lab coat on.
I sat down, and he proceeded to talk to me only in French
[laughs]. I found out he could speak English. He wrote
beautiful English, but he would never speak English to me.
He's one of those characters, you know- -sort of one-upmanship.

He asked me a lot of questions about my family life and
all that. Then he said, [forcefully] "Okay, I'm coming over
in December, and I want to taste wines. I don't want to taste

38

any sparkling wine, because I know it's all inbuvable--
undrinkable. 1 only want to taste wines that were made this
year that are still fresh from this vintage." This was
October, and I said, "It's not going to be terribly easy."
"Well, that's what I want to do." I said, "Okay, I'll start
talking to some wine people there to see if I can get
something set up."

He said, "And I want any number of different cepages--
varieties- -because I don't believe that just because we use
Chardonnay and Pinot noir in champagne, it will work in
California. It's too hot a climate; it won't work. It won't
work, so we've got to look at all these others," and then he
goes on this long speech. He was a real kick. He said, "I'm
a very ill person. I've been diagnosed, and I have a very
serious disease. I don't expect to last for a year." I'm
looking at him like this [shows facial expression]. He's
still alive. [laughter] He said, "I'm bringing my nurse with
me." I said, [whispering] "All right, fine."

It turns out his nurse, Francoise, is his wife as well,
and a delightful, lovely lady for whom he had literally
stormed a convent, where her father had put her to keep her
away from him, and dragged her out of the convent, and they
got married. It's quite a story. I think he really did think
he was very ill. He had had an operation, but it was
obviously very successful.

He laid it out: "I want a place where there are no
extraneous smells, and for every wine I taste, I want a
complete chemical analysis before I taste it, in front." This
is the first person, at least from Champagne, that I have ever
known who wants to taste with a technical analysis in front of
him.

He was the key person who was going to come over and
say, "Can we make really world-class wine here or can't we?
And where should we be?" I came back and busily went around
and got tremendous cooperation from Louis Martini, Bob
Mondavi, Bob Travers at Mayacamas , Mirassou, Christian
Brothers, and a lot of people like that. I got samples of
wine from that year. I told them what I was doing, and there
wasn't any problem. I had a whole bunch of samples there, and
I had all the chemical analyses done by Scott Labs.

Hicke: Can I interrupt and ask why he wanted the chemical analysis?
To check the acidity?

39

Wright: I don't know. That's just the way he tasted. [laughs] pH,
acidity, et cetera.

Hicke: He wanted to know all that at the time that he was tasting it?

Wright: I think Renaud, who was a very key figure, was so proud, I
guess- -he was the first true enologist in Champagne, with
proper scientific background, although his father was the chef
du cave at Pommery. Renaud followed his father in that job,
but he always fought with the Prince of Polignac, who used to
own Pommery [& Greno]--the Polignac family. Apparently every
two months he'd go in and say, "I quit," and Guy de Polignac
would say, "Oh, no, no, don't do that; don't do that," and
bring him back. So one day I guess Guy de Polignac was so fed
up that when Renaud said, "I quit," he said, "Fine. You're
fired."

Within two days Bob de Vogue hired him, for two reasons:
one, he had a really excellent reputation as a
scientist/enologist ; and secondly, Bob de Vogu6 , because he
was head of the resistance during the war- - [Joachim] von
Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, had been a sales
manager for Pommery in Germany, so whether it was correct or
not, there was a certain feeling that Pommery was a bit pro-
German. Pommery was always kind of an enemy for Bob, so if he
could get back at Pommery, he'd do it. So he hired Renaud for
that reason, too.

I got back and hustled around and got everything done,
and Renaud and Francoise came that December. He tasted the
wines and, as I said, wouldn't touch a glass of sparkling
wine- -absolutely would not. He was really quite an
interesting guy. He went through all the swirling and
sniffing and spitting, and he wrote down his notes. What he
found at that stage was that potentially Chardonnay and Pinot
Noir might be a little more interesting than he thought,
although actually I didn't have any real Pinot Noir; I had red
Pinot Noir, but I didn't have any white.

He felt there was a possibility of making a really high-
quality wine. He felt, interestingly enough, that the
mountain vineyards showed a certain subtlety and interest that
some of the valley vineyards did not. And he felt that Napa
Valley was more interesting than the Monterey area or Sonoma
area. Now, was that very scientific? I don't know.

40

Hicke: Did you have any of your own grapes?
Wright: No, they weren't ready.

So he gave his blessing, said yes, we could make some
really fine wine here.

Hicke: That's amazing, because it sounds as if he came with his mind
made up .

Wright: [laughs]. Even there, he said, "Yes," but he was still very,
very skeptical, particularly about Chardonnay, and for good
reason, considering what he had tasted, although I think there
was one mountain Chardonnay he kind of liked. He said, "Fine,
but we ought to focus primarily on Folle Blanche," and that
was based on one tasting. Lou Martini then had a Folle
Blanche white wine, and Renaud liked it because it was
"neutral"- -not insipid neutral, but it wasn't too fruity. He
also thought that Saint Emilion or Ugni blanc--he didn't taste
any Ugni blanc, because there wasn't any around, or maybe
there was onebut based upon, really, his experience in
Argentina; he'd been down and set up things in Argentina he
just kind of pre- guessed that Ugni blanc would be an
interesting grape.

His focus was being worried about too much fruitiness,
too much gout du terroLr and this sort of thing, based upon
his preconceived notion that even though some of these wines
tasted pretty good, the climate was probably still too warm,
in his mind.

At any rate, he put his blessing on it, and we were on
our way. At that point, in looking at the structure of the
industry and who was doing what and what we could do, it
became pretty obvious that buying a company didn't make any
sense. Any company that could have been purchased with any
sort of position in the sparkling wine business- -i.e. , Korbel,
for example --would have required really a very high price-to-
earnihgs ratio, simply because things were looking very good
at that point. I never even inquired whether they were for
sale. And once you've done that, you're still going to have
to invest millions in order to bring the thing around to where
you want it to be and to expand the production, so why try to
undo what others have done?

41

IV DOMAINE CHANDON
Starting UP. 1972

Wright: It wasn't exactly a no-brain decision, but it didn't take very
long to figure out that we ought to start by ourselves. So we
made that decision. Renaud was over in December of '72, and
by March 26, 1973, the company was officially formed. At that
point I had already optioned some land up on Mt. Veeder next
to where I lived because of the quality potential. It was
also convenient, because my office was in my garage up there
[laughs], so it worked out well. I was really fascinated with
Carneros. That was just starting to come in, and I thought
about the cool climate.

Hicke: Did he taste any wines from there?

Wright: Yes, but they were all red, red Pinot Noirs for the most part.
I thought that was a really interesting area, and I guess I
was somewhat romantic, too, in thinking that what were then
lower-yield vines that had to struggle a little bit- -I did
believe it. In those days we paid fifteen hundred dollars an
acre when we first bought five hundred acres in Carneros. At
that point, if you bought bare land, let's say, in the mid-
Napa Valley- -Oakville , Yountville, Oak Knoll, or wherever--!
would say the going price for bare land then was about eight
thousand an acre. So it was a big difference in price.

Hicke: Did you consider buying vineyards?

Wright: Well, we did, but there weren't any for sale. There really
weren't; there was nothing out there. Nothing out there in
terms of varieties that we thought we'd know and climates that
we'd like. But there was really very little available, and

42

Hicke:
Wright

for very high prices. I mean, you've got to recognize that in
that period of '69, '79, '71, although subsequently things
vent downwards, people were getting a thousand dollars a ton
for Cabernet and a thousand dollars a ton for Pinot noir and
Chardonnay, and so on. On an inflation basis, that was a
tremendous amount of money, particularly when you figured a
vineyard cost then nine or ten thousand an acre; so if you got
four or five tons to the acre, you were getting a really good
deal if you got that kind of money. Therefore obviously
people were asking for a good deal more than that per planted
acre, if anything was available; but essentially nothing was
available.

I had already optioned some land in Carneros , and I
optioned the land up on Mt. Veeder, waiting for the go-ahead:
are we going to go or not? Well, we made the decision in
February or so to go. Kilian Hennessy had just then become
the chairman of the board; Bob had officially retired,
although he subsequently came out for visits two or three
times. Kilian came out, and we signed the papers in the
lawyer's office in San Francisco to officially form the
company.

Was that Morrison & Foerster? John Austin?
John Austin, right.

A French Company in Napa Vallev

Hicke: Let me back up and ask you a little bit about the implications
of a French company starting a winery in the Napa Valley.
First of all their risks, which you assessed very well.

Wright: Yes, or perhaps more opportunities than risks. Interestingly
enough, particularly in the de Vogue era, but even Alain
Chevalier was of the same mold in many respects, they were
much more focused on opportunities than they were on risks.
The focus wasn't how to avoid risk or how to be risk free; the
focus was, "Is there an opportunity here?" I didn't
understand it at the time. I was, frankly, a little amazed.
They never asked to see my study.

Hicke: Oh, they didn't?

Domaine Chandon

Old press from France, 1991

Tasting area, 1991

Photographs by Carole Hicke

Domains Chandon winery, visitors' entrance.

Ancient French wine press in winery courtyard.

43

Wright: No, they never even looked at a page of it. I think I would
have had some moral misgivings about it, although by then the
study was getting a little old, but they never even asked.
I'm not saying the work I did was slipshod; it wasn't. But
once Poirier came back and said, "Look, we can make good wine
there," I think that was it. They were going to do it because
they saw an opportunity. Why they saw an opportunity or were
looking at it opportunistically was that at that point in
time --and this was the fall of '72--

Wright: We're looking now at the fall of '72, when I met Bob de Vogue.
The apparent demand for Champagne, in terms of their sales in
'69, '70, '71, looked like an ever -increasing demand,
particularly in the French market. Post-World War II, the
French really discovered Champagne and were drinking
tremendous quantities; their consumption really leaped up.
Exports were less buoyant but still sound.

So they were looking at a situation, in the fall of '72,
where the harvest of '71 produced excellent quality but very
little quantity in Champagne. The harvest of '70 was both
relatively large in quantity and very good in quality. Right
at this point- -this was October of '72, and the weather was
foul; '72 was absolutely a hideous year in terms of quality- -
they were looking at a more or less normal crop but a very,
very low quality. So they were really sitting on an inventory
which wasn't of the size that they usually felt comfortable
with for the future. They were saying, "Here's the demand for
Champagne running up this way; here's what our supply is. The
appellation contrdlee laws say now we can only plant about
1 percent or 2 percent a year." You see, they changed the
law, which they do frequently, sometime in the mid- sixties to
slow the planting down.

"Here we are, Moet & Chandon, being the dominant
producer by far, essentially being forced to restrict our
growth in the future because of lack of grapes. So let's not
only continue to export our product, but let's take our
scientific knowledge- -art , if you will and experience and
transfer them to other places in the world where the market
looks attractive and where we can make quality wine that we're
not ashamed to put our name on." This was the basic
rationale, primarily formulated by Bob de Vogu6 and Alain
Chevalier, both of whom were fundamentally strategic thinkers.

44

Hicke: Was there some worry about France turning a little bit towards
socialism?

Wright: None whatsoever on their part. That came later, but it was

never a motivation for Mot. It's been a motivation for other
investments, but there was never any consideration of that
whatsoever; it was purely, "This is a business opportunity.
We're not trying to sock money away." Even the exchange
rate- -they said, "We don't care about the exchange rate; that
all evens out over time, so let's not make a big deal about
it." No, it was really based on a business opportunity.

Now, there was a good deal of concern about what the
American reaction was going to be, or more specifically, "What
is the reaction of the Napa community going to be towards a
foreigner coming in and investing?" I said, "Gee, I can't
believe it will be anything other than favorable, for several
reasons. One, Moet coming into the Napa Valley is just a sign
of approval, that in a sense you have arrived, because Mot's
a very prestigious company. Unless people are totally
xenophobic, they're not going to react negatively to that.
Secondly, we're not buying anybody. We're not buying out a
little old family and all this kind of thing, or even a
corporate thing. We're contributing straight from the ground
up, so nobody can accuse us of just doing something like, if
you will, the Japanese and so forth are accused of --buying up
companies . "

Of course, the reason for a lot of their concern is that
the French had historically been more xenophobic and
mistrusting of foreign investment, particularly foreign
purchase of high-quality wineries. In fact, it's virtually
impossible to do that unless you are part of the European
Community.

Hicke: They would feel uncomfortable about somebody coming into
Champagne?

Wright: Oh, you bet your life. Now, legally, if it were a British or
German company, a member of the EEC [European Economic
Community], they couldn't do anything about it; the government
can't do anything about it. But if it's a Japanese company,
yes, the French government probably would not allow that.

But we Americans are not like that, right? Or we
weren't in those days. So I said I wouldn't worry about it.
"Well, but we must." One of the first things they wanted to

45

do was to have a reception for Napa Valley vintners and
growers. I said, "Fine, we'll do that," and we went over to
the Silverado Country Club and brought in numerous cases of
Moet Champagne, because we had nothing ourselves that we had
made. Bob de Vogue came over specifically for that, and with
him was a fellow named Tex Bomba. Tex had just retired from
Schieffelin & Company and was really--! don't think his
official title was president, but he really ran Schieffelin
and was a wonderful guy, very open minded and a very nice
person.

Both Tex and Bob at that point were about age 75 or 76.
Tex came with Bob to accompany him to the party at Silverado,
and all sorts of people showed up- -a great success. I
remember that I got involved in talking to somebody, and Bob
came right over to me and said, "John, you must stand with me
at the front door. I want you to introduce me properly," and
I said, "Yes, sir!." [laughs] That reception I think was
quite successful in saying that we were maybe okay people, and
in those days I never, ever felt any kind of community
resistance, certainly not in the grape-growing or winemaking
communities. There have been times when I felt that some of
the politicians in the city or in the county have been a
little prejudiced, but nothing of any real impact.

Working tfith the Trefethens

Wright: The other importance of that party was that among the invitees
was the Trefethen family. Katie Trefethen, Gene Trefethen's
wife, came with her sister, Barbara Eisley and her brother-in-
law, Milt Eisley. Gene was on a trip. He was president of
Kaiser [Aluminum & Chemical Company] , and he was over in Japan
or Australia or somewhere. He was actually due back that
evening, so he couldn't come to the party. Tex was always one
to spot a very attractive lady and go and be very gentlemanly
and gracious and so forth, so I think the minute that Katie
walked into that room, Tex was probably right over talking to
her.

I met Katie; I knew the vineyard because I'd seen it,
but I had yet to meet anybody from the Trefethen family. I
might have met Tony Baldini, who is vineyard general manager.
At any rate, I was familiar with the vineyard and its size and
its quality. Tex brought me over and introduced me to Katie,

46

and Katie said, "Why don't you all come for lunch tomorrow at
the Villa Trefethen?" I said, "That would be a great idea,"
so Bob de Vogu6, Tex, and I went over there and met John
Trefethen and Katie and Gene and had a wonderful lunch and a
wonderful time .

I started talking a little bit to John. He was starting
to make some wine from some of his grapes , and he had some
help from Tom Farrell, who was then with Inglenook. I said,
"Gee, you grow a lot of Pinot noir, don't you?" "Well, we're
in the process." I said, "You know, we'd maybe like some
grapes , " and 1 sort of planted the seed and made an
appointment to see John the next week.

When I sat down with John, I realized that he had this
building over there that used to be a winery that he wanted to
get back into being a winery. It was one of the few sources
of potentially significant quantities of grapes, and the
problem then was to try to find grapes .

Hicke: He wasn't making wine?

Wright: No, not at that time. He had made a little bit at home. In
fact, I remember, we tasted it. [laughs] No comments, John.

I met with John perhaps a week later, and he told me,
"We're in a situation where we think we want to sell about a
third of our grapes to the co-op, because that's fairly
dependable. We'd probably like to make wine out of a third,
and then we'd like to find a home for the other third that we
can be comfortable with." I said, "Here's a wonderful kind of
mutual opportunity, because we're looking for grapes." What
we wanted to do that year- -this was in '73- -was to vinify ten
or twelve different varieties. This was Poirier's plan, see,
because he wasn't convinced. We were going to try Riesling,
Semillon, Pinot noir, Chardonnay, Colombard, Folle blanche,
Ugni blanc, and you name it. The only way we had to do that
at that point was to contract it out. We weren't really happy
with doing that, because we wanted to press the product right
and handle it correctly and all that. We had hoped that some
of the wine would be useful enough to put away as reserve wine
to blend with the next year's wine.

This was June. I said to John, "We could probably, on a
very hurried-up basis, get your building over there"- -which
was dirt floor, nothing- -"into a functioning winery by crush.
Because we pick grapes early, et cetera, and you're just

47

starting anyway, we'd provide equipment, we'd provide the
basic infrastructure going in; once we leave the winery you
can 'find a way to pay us back on some basis. And we'd like to
buy"- -I forget what it was, but it was a pretty substantial
amount, certainly our major source of Pinot noir and
Chardonnay, although we didn't buy everything we could have
because we were still cautious about those varieties.

I said, "We can make wine in your facility under our
total control, and you, in turn, will have a winery built for
you at that level." He said, "That sounds like a great idea,"
so literally in a matter of about a month and a half or two
months--! think we started making wine at Trefethen on August
28 that year. That was pretty exciting.

Hicke: Did they already have it bonded?

Wright: No, they had nothing. I guess they were in the process of
getting it, but that wasn't a problem. A bigger problem is
always with the county. The feds and the state aren't a
problem; it's the county that's always a problem in trying to
do anything innovative around here. Fortunately the building
was up, and the kind of permits you needed to get were not as
horrendous as they could have been. Today, hah! It would be
totally impossible. The county just wouldn't get their act
together in nearly enough time to get a winery put up in that
order. This would never happen.

But that was really fortunate, because it gave us a year
up. It was a wonderful opportunity for us, and I think it was
a good opportunity for Trefethen. They proceeded to make some
damned good wine that year, and the year after- -the '74- -I
think their Chardonnay won the French tasting.

Hicke: I read somewhere that you were working upstairs, and they were
working downstairs.

Wright: [laughs] Yes. Well, from time to time- -I know both Janet and
John were very thankful when we left [laughs], and rightfully
so, because we were expanding all the time, and Trefethen
actually expanded faster than they thought they were going to,
so we started getting a little bit in each other's way.

Hicke: You mean in following years?

Wright: Yes, exactly. The last crush we did at Trefethen was '77, and
even in '77 what we crushed- -pressed would be more accurate--

48

presses up here in Yountville, but we still had stuff in there
in '77, and we got out, basically, in '77. Then they still
had to build another building to meet their needs.

Hicke: That was an amazing coincidence.

Wright: Oh, it sure was, and thank God for that party.

Choosing the Grape Varieties

Hicke: What happened to these other varieties of grapes that you were
going to try?

Wright: Well, it was wonderful. We vinified all these varieties, and
then Renaud came over that spring to taste what we called the
base wines --the individual wines. I guess Philippe Coulon,
who is now the technical director of Moe't & Chandon, came over
during the harvest to help supervise. He's an excellent wine
man, really an enologist. The rest of it was us, really.

Hicke: Who was "us"?

Wright: Me and a fellow named Kim Giles, who had just been the

winemaker at Mt. Veeder Vineyards and left- -a kind of an
acquaintance; I knew Kim, and I knew he made wine at Hanzell
[Vineyard] and a couple of other places. Kim came on board,
and that was about it, I guess. But Philippe came over, and
they were very precise as to what they wanted. Of course, the
equipment was all laid out for what they wanted. The tanks
were American, et cetera, but the presses and other things
were all basically dictated to us, and properly so, by Moe't as
to what they wanted.

Hicke: Were you acting as winemaker?

Wright: Well, I was pulling hoses around, yes. Kim was the real

winemaker, but, sure, I certainly worked the crush. I used to
work the night shift; I did that for five years. That was a
lot of fun; I enjoyed that They wouldn't let me be the
winemaker; I'd screw it all up. I make wine at home still- -
very, very good Cabernet and Pinot Noir, occasionally a
Zinfandel port.

Hicke: Does Renaud come and taste it?

Hicke: Does Renaud come and taste it?

Wright: No, he hasn't. Actually, I've been out of touch with him for
probably five years. I hope he's doing all right. He retired
after that; just at that point he was ready to retire. But he
did come over in the spring. I guess prior to that I was back
in France, and I met Edmond Maudiere, who is our present
consulting enologist. Edmond had come out of Mercier as the
chef du cave, but also went to the Institute Pasteur and was a
qualified enologist, although a fourth- generation Champagne
maker- -his great grandfather and so forth. Edmond, in the
merger of Mercier and Moet, in terms of the chef du cave type
of roles, was pushed aside because Mot was the bigger
company, even though Edmond was totally qualified for that.
Partly that, and partly because he really does speak rather
good English, much better than Renaud- -well , I think Renaud
speaks, but he won't.

Renaud was ready to retire that coming year, so I was
introduced to Edmond as being the successor to Renaud. Edmond
came over with Renaud that spring to taste the wines. I think
in retrospect that was also a very good stroke of fortune,
because Renaud was unquestionably an extremely qualified
Champagne maker, enologist, et cetera, but is not the most
flexible of people. Edmond is really a very open-minded,
enthusiastic, optimistic, "try it" type of person. Had he not
been on the board, I think we might have been a little more
confined in what we finally did.

They both came over, and lo and behold, of the wines we
tasted, the clear A-l wines were (1) Pinot Noir, (2) Pinot
Blanc, and (3) Chardonnay. But Renaud still insisted that
Folle blanche and Ugni blanc ought to be used, even though
they didn't come up very well. The good news with that is
that we realized that we could expand the purchase of Pinot
noir and Chardonnay from Trefethen and feel very comfortable
with what we could make from that wine. We had already
developed some other sources, albeit rather small, but a
source for Pinot blanc up at the old Lyncrest vineyard; we got
that.. I don't remember right now where we got some other
Pinot noir from, but it was predominantly Trefethen.

That really, as I said, allowed us to put away some
reserve wine --Pinot Noir and Chardonnay- -for the following
year, and allowed us to go back to Trefethen and say, "Hey, we
can use a lot more." We did that. It also solved once and
for all that we weren't going to use any Riesling, Semillon,

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Green Hungarian. About the only thing we didn't try was
Thompson's Seedless. [laughter] I don't think there was any
grown in the Napa Valley or on the coast; maybe we would have
if there had been any.

So that was a very important decision point. We did
subsequently plant some Folle blanche and Ugni blanc, both in
Carneros and some Folle blanche up on Mt. Veeder. Those
vineyards have since been budded over to Chardonnay, Pinot
blanc, and Pinot noir. [laughs] The theory wasn't true in
practice.

As I say, Edmond came in at that point, and Renaud was
still on board through that year, I guess. We were on the
right way, I felt, in terms of the grapes we were going to
use, and I felt really comfortable with that. I didn't feel
comfortable making a wine that was out of Folle blanche or
Ugni blanc .

Support and Involvement of the French Owners

Hicke: What kind of financial support did you get, and how did you
work out that arrangement?

Wright: Well, just deep pockets. [laughter] Not totally. Actually,
they brought over a million dollars to get things started.
That was enough to make the down payments on some of these
vineyard lands . What I was not aware of at the time was that
the company, Moet-Hennessy, as successful as it was even in
those days, was experiencing- -particularly in the subsequent
year, '73 going into '74 --some pretty severe cash problems. I
thought, "Heck, there's lots of money over there," but when I
looked at the balance sheet, particularly when I understood a
little better how they kept their balance sheet, I realized
that they had the financial wherewithal, but in terms of what
they were generating from actual cash, there was not an
enormous amount of cash.

I think for that reason, but also for other reasons
which I've never totally fully understood, they took the
position of very high leverage, so we almost immediately went
out and borrowed a hell of a lot of money locally.

Hicke: From which bank?

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Hicke : From which bank?

Wright: Initially from the Bank of America. Jack Hart was the head of
the wine group or whatever at B of A [Bank of America] . We
borrowed or had a [credit] line of about five million dollars.
It's always been our policy to be very highly leveraged.
Today the debt that we have we owe to the parent company.
Over time they took over and took us out of the banks, but we
still pay interest to the parent company. It's a pain, but
it's also good discipline [laughs], because when you have that
big, huge interest bill out there, life isn't a bed of roses
from a financial point of view. Life was perhaps a good deal
more complicated or severe by having this huge burden of debt,
but at the same time I think it served a certain disciplinary
purpose of not being profligate (or whatever the right word
is).

In terms of, "Hey, can we borrow more money?" or, "Would
you send over another million?" and that kind of thing, they
were fantastic, just wonderful individuals and very, very
hands off --really hands off, for the most part. Technically
it was just a wonderful situation, because I can go to Moet
even today and interface with the technical people. I don't
have to go through all sorts of layers of management to do
this. They are very open minded about this, and vice versa;
they get stuff from us, and we get stuff from them. But it's
never, "I'm going to charge you this much for Edmond's time,"
and all that kind of stuff.

Today, as of a year ago, we are officially a subsidiary
of Moet & Chandon, whereas before we were a part of Moet-
Hennessy. So today my real boss is the president of Moet &
Chandon .

Hicke: Who is he?

Wright: His name is Yves Benard. I find that very beneficial in
today's world, because the overall company, LVMH [Louis
Vuitton Moet-Hennessy] , in Paris a holding companyis
composed mostly of people who are pretty much financially
oriented, as they should be, but without a good deal of
understanding of the Champagne business per se, but with
enough sense to say, "The Champagne group ought to run its
business, and the cognac group ought to run its business"--
globally. In that kind of philosophy, which is totally
correct for today's world, it does make sense to have Domaine
Chandon- -and for that matter Simi [Winery], which is the

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company that was bought later, not as a purchase directly of
the winery but as a purchase of our distributor, Schieffelin- -
to be a part of the champagne and wine group. That's headed
up by Yves Benard, who is the president of Mot & Chandon. He
has primarily a technical background; he went to Montpellier,
which is generally considered to be one of the best schools in
France for viticulture and enology. He understands the pluses
and minuses, et cetera, of the Champagne and sparkling wine
business very well, so it's good to have that relationship.

But prior to that, when Alain Chevalier was chairman of
the whole thingpartly because he was the founder with me, I
guess--! think he always felt he wanted to have a more direct
line to Chandon. Up until recently we officially weren't a
part of Moet & Chandon and Epernay, but I never felt that to
ever be a problem of lack of cooperation on their part; it's
always been very generously given. So it's been a good
relationship.

Taxes

Hicke: Since we're on finances right now, how did things work out
with the taxes --for instance, California's unitary system?

Wright: Oh, boy! Well, back when we formed the company, John Austin
was there, and we formed the two companies on paper. One was
called M & H Vineyards, which stood for Moet-Hennessy, and the
other was M & H Ventures , which was to be a holding company
based in Delaware, the thought being that by insulating it a
little bit, the possibility of getting hit with unitary tax
was somewhat lessened. He went through all this; I didn't
have the foggiest notion what the unitary tax was then.
Subsequently I've learned.

As it turned out, the French government was really anti-
holding company and didn't allow us to form another holding
company, so M & H Ventures never really materialized into
anything. But it was understood, not by me but by the
financial people in Paris --to some degree, and certainly
Morrison & Foerster--

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Wright: It wasn't considered as major an obstacle as maybe it should
have been considered for the investment. As it turned out--
I'm trying to remember- -what we finally got hit with, because
of the unitary tax, was not as much as one might have
expected. I forget why now. Because in theory we could be
losing money here, which we were, but the state of California
would be taxing on Moet's worldwide profits.

Hicke: Yes, and maybe even LMVH. It would be incredible.
Wright: Well, now, yes. Oh, yes.
Hicke: There's a court case on it now.

Wright: I think now, where we are in terms of the amount of our
investment, which is based on the number employees, the
investment, et cetera, that comes from California, for
everything, I think, the actual tax implications are pretty
neutral. What we pay in taxes to California wouldn't be a
heck of a lot different than what they would be taxing based
upon their formula.

Hicke: What about the French? Do they tax this operation?

Wright: No, only on what's gone back, and nothing has gone back yet.
Not a sou or a f