University of California Berkeley Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series THE WENTE FAMILY AND THE CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY Interviews with Jean Wente Carolyn Wente Philip Wente Eric Wente With an Introduction by Maynard A. Amerine Interviews Conducted by Ruth Teiser 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 with The Regents of the University of California. 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 the University of California requires that the interviewees be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: "The Wente Family and the California Wine Industry," interviews with Jean, Carolyn, Philip and Eric Wente, an oral history conducted in 1991 by Ruth Teiser, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1992. Copy no . Eric, Jean, Philip, and Carolyn Wente, 1983 Photograph by Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun Cataloging Information THE WENTE FAMILY AND THE CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY, 1992, xiii, 159 pp. Jean Wente (b. 1926) on the Wente family in the Central Valley since 1926, Wente Bros, winery, 1950s to present, improvements, expansion to Monterey County. Carolyn Wente (b. 1955) discusses marketing at Wente Bros, since 1980, creating a restaurant, champagne. Philip Wente (b. 1952) recalls employees, working for Wente Bros, since 1974, becoming executive vice president in 1977, phylloxera and other vineyard problems. Eric Wente (b. 1951) on work at Wente Bros, since 1974, president since 1977, exports, expansion. Introduction by Maynard Amerine, Professor Emeritus, Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis. Interviewed in 1991 by Ruth Teiser for the Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series, The Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. TABLE OF CONTENTS-- Went e Bros. PREFACE i INTRODUCTION --by Maynard Amerine vi INTERVIEW HISTORY viit INTERVIEW WITH JEAN R. VENTE FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS, 1926-1949 1 HERMAN WENTE 5 ERNEST WENTE 8 KARL L. WENTE 9 Youth and Education, 1927-1949 9 HERMAN WENTE, CONTINUED 13 WENTE BROS. SINCE 1949 16 The Winery in the Early 1950s 16 Advances in the Vineyards 18 Advances in the Winery 21 Expansion in Monterey County 21 Ownership, Decision Making, and Responsibilities 27 KARL L. WENTE' S INDUSTRY AND COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 29 JEAN WENTE 'S WORK WITH CULTURAL AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS 33 KARL L. WENTE 'S CONCERNS 36 INTERVIEW VITH CAROLYN WENTE CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL YEARS, 1955-1980 41 Working in the Winery 42 Stanford, Washington, and Crocker Bank 43 WENTE BROS. SINCE 1980 46 Winery Goals in Transition, 1980-1990 47 Marketing and Promotion 48 Creating a Restaurant 52 Appellations and Label Terms 57 Pricing 59 Champagne 59 Owners, Managers, and Employees 61 Public Events 64 Wente Land and Cattle Company 65 Work with the Wine Institute and Other Organizations 66 INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP VENTE GROWING UP IN THE LIVERMORE AREA, 1952-1970 71 Wente Bros. Employees 74 THE WINE INDUSTRY IN THE 1970s 77 Monterey County 78 University and Career Interests 80 WENTE BROS. SINCE 1974 84 Construction, Equipment, and Systems 84 Assuming Leadership, 1977 88 Marketing and Distribution 89 Expanding Wente Properties Since 1977 93 The Sparkling Wine Business 96 Focusing on the Classical Varieties 97 Changes in Vineyard Practices 99 Phylloxera and Other Vineyard Problems 100 Monterey County Varieties 103 Cresta Blanca Vineyards 104 Land Use Planning 105 Earthquake Damage, 1980 111 Grape Sources and Nurseries 112 The Wine Institute and Marketing Orders 115 Visions for the Future 119 INTERVIEW WITH ERIC VENTE SCHOOL AND COLLEGE YEARS, 1951-1974 122 Stanford University, 1969-1973 124 UC Davis, 1973-1974 126 WENTE BROS., 1974-1991 128 Final Years Under Karl L. Wente, 1974-1977 128 Expansion 130 Changes, 1977 136 Sparkling Wine 138 Changes Since 1980 143 Exports 144 Arel Wente 148 Wine Industry and Public Activities 148 Aims for the Future 150 TAPE GUIDE 152 INDEX 153 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 . ii The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record autobiographical interviews with persons who have contributed significantly to recent California history. The office is headed by Willa K. Baum and is under the administrative supervision of The Bancroft Library. 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 iii 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 My 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 Vallev. 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 Vallev. 1973 Louis P. Martini, A Family Winery and the California Wine Industry. 1984 Eleanor McCrea, Stonv Hill Vineyards: The Creation of a Napa Vallev 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 Vallev 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 Lav 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 Vallev Grape Industry. 1977 Elie Skofis, California Wine and Brandy Maker. 1988 Andre Tchelistcheff , Grapes. Wine, and Ecology. 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 These four interviews with Jean Wente and her three children, Carolyn, Eric, and Philip, carry forward the earlier interview with Ernest Wente, their father-in-law and grandfather. The Wente family settled in the Livermore Valley in 1883. They were farmers and ranchers with an interest in vineyards and wines, and they remain so to this day. Their ties to the Livermore Valley and to the city of Livermore have been strong throughout this period. These interviews start with Jean, who includes her account of the direction of the company by her husband, Karl, from 1961 until his untimely death in 1977 . This was a period when grape varieties and clones were receiving great attention from the California wine industry, and the Wentes were very prominent in selecting new and better clones, even setting up a special certified nursery to secure the best clones for planting. At the same time, the winery facilities were being upgraded and expanded. This was a continuous process in which all of the Wentes participated. The result was that by the 1980s the Wente white table wines were recognized as representing one of the more consistent of the white table wines of California, and not only consistent but of high quality. As these interviews amply show, the Wente tradition of management continues. As owners, managers, and employers, they represent high standards thoughtfully applied to the needs of their winery. I remember Herman and Ernest Wente and their close relationship with their employees before and after World War II. It appears that the present generation continues the Wente tradition. It is obvious that the family is involved in the major management decisions. One recent development was the decision to produce sparkling wines. They have been consistent producers of these wines in their initial period. Another new area has been in the export market. Here they have been and are participating extensively. They have also done some import business in wines. The restaurant, too, has been a major project of all four of the Wentes. Recently they have also been active in land development in the Livermore Valley. vii Finally, they have been great supporters of the Livermore Valley as a quality wine -producing region. This continues. Altogether, it is a record of which the Vente family can be proud. And the California wine industry can be thankful to have a family who are so generous with their cooperation in being good members of that industry. Maynard A. Amerine Professor Emeritus, Department of Viticulture and Enology, University of California, Davis June 1992 St. Helena, California viii INTERVIEW HI STORY-- Wen te Bros. These interviews with the four members of the Wente family who head the family winery and vineyards were conducted in 1991. They continue Ernest A. Wente 's 1969 account, Wine Making in the Livermore Valley (Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley, 1971). The recollections of Ernest Wente, a son of the 1883 founder of the winery, reached back to before the beginning of the century and came up to its operations under his son, Karl L. Wente, who headed it from 1961 until his untimely death in 1977. Since we had not interviewed Karl, we asked his widow, Jean R. Wente, to recall his career in this account. Following his death, she had become chairman of the board of Wente Bros., and her sons, Eric and Philip, had become president and vice president respectively. In 1980 her daughter, Carolyn, joined the organization as vice president in charge of marketing and public relations. Thus the interviews reflect the activities and viewpoints of four active leaders, three of whom are devoting their careers energetically to the family enterprise. Many multiple -account interviews reflect differing points of view. These instead reflect a cohesiveness that is undoubtedly one key to a smoothly functioning family business. It is a business that, under the leadership of the great grandchildren of the first of the Liverraore Valley Wentes, is in a period of thoughtfully conceived growth, strengthened internally and, in 1991, expanded through joint enterprises and acquisitions. The interviewer, who had long been acquainted with the family and its activities, wishes to thank all four members for their characteristically gracious cooperation in this group of accounts. Ruth Teiser Interviewer/Editor July 1992 Regional Oral History Office The Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley JEAN R. VENTE Jean Robinson Wente became a member of the winemaking family in 1949 when she married Karl L. Wente, who in 1961 succeeded his father, Ernest Wente, as head of the Livermore Valley and Monterey County winegrowing enterprise. Between the time of her marriage and 1977, when Karl Wente died, she discussed with him informally the affairs of Wente Bros. Thus she was in a position to transmit to their children knowledge of the family business practices and traditions. As chairman of the board, she advises them while encouraging their independent decisions . On the basis of an outline of suggested subjects for discussion that was sent to her in advance, she made notes to which she referred as she spoke. The interview was held in her office at the sparkling wine cellars and restaurant complex. Regional Oral History Office University of California Room 486 The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California 94720 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (Please write clearly. Use black ink.) Your full name Eugenia (Jean) Robinson Wente Date of birth February 1. 1926 Birthplace Hanford , CA Father's full name Louis Turner Robinson Occupation Farm management Birthplace Greensboro, Georgia Mother's full name Sara Nevsom Robinson Occupation housewife Birthplace Union Point/ Georgia Your spouse Karl Laird Wente Your children Eric Peter Wente, Philip Robinson Wente , Carolyn Went Where did you grow up? Corcoran, CA Present community Li vermore , CA Education Corcoran school system, Stanford University Occupation(s) Corporate officer of Wente Bros. Inc. Areas of expertise knowledge of family business Other interests or activities golf/ tennis/ travel (see attached list for community activities) Organizations in which you are active see list Jean Wente , circa 1985 INTERVIEW WITH JEAN R. WENTE FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS, 1926-1949 [Date of Interview: April 11, 1991]//// 1 Teiser: Let me begin by asking whep and where you were born. Jean Wente : Teiser: J. Wente I was born in the San Joaquin Valley in 1926. Actually, the hospital was in Hanford, but my parents lived in Corcoran. Were they agriculturalists? Yes, my father, Louis T. Robinson, was a cotton farmer. He came from Georgia and was very instrumental in putting together the J. G. Boswell Company, which are large corporate farmers. J. G. Boswell was also from Georgia, from the same area my father was, and when he was getting into his farming operation in the San Joaquin [Valley] , down around the Tulare Lake basin, he asked my father if he'd come out from Georgia. My father said he'd be very interested. Of course, times were tough in Georgia. This was 1926, I guess; I'm a native Calif ornian, so they came out in 1925. Their whole idea was that they'd stay a few years and see how it went, and so forth and so on, and of course they never went back- -and they never lost their little, soft southern accents, either. [laughter] Teiser: So you grew up-- 1 This symbol (#//) indicates that a tape or portion of a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes, see page 152. J. Wente: I grew up in a small farming community in the San Joaquin Valley. Teiser: And you came to Stanford? J. Wente: I came to Stanford. Actually, I think there were like thirty- two or thirty- four in my graduating senior class, and when I was at Stanford there were five kids at Stanford from that local high school. I think it speaks well for the quality of the education that little school was carrying out. Teiser: What was the name of the school? J. Wente: Corcoran Unified School District. Teiser: Yes, it must have given you a good background. Do I remember that you were a history major at Stanford? J. Wente: Yes, I was. That's marvelous; how did you remember that? Teiser: I've asked you about yourself before, you know, in connection with articles I've written. You met Karl at Stanford? At Dinah's, as I remember. J. Wente: That's right. Actually, he picked me up in a bar. This is the story we always tell the kids: "Your father picked me up in a bar." [laughter] Teiser: You married him, then, in '49? J. Wente: Yes, in November of '49. Teiser: Did you come here to live? J. Wente: Yes. You've been over to the [Louis] Mel winery the Mel house --haven't you? Teiser: Yes. J. Wente: Well, the Mel house was my honeymoon cottage. Karl and I worked on the Mel house, painting and papering, putting in a bathroom or two, and all kinds of things, from maybe mid-August through November 5, when we were married. We had it together enough that we could move in, and then we went right on working on it. That was our first home. Teiser: Went on working on it in the vintage season, then? J. Wente: No. Things come to a screeching halt during vintage season. We laughed about that, because the reason for November 5 as the wedding date was when the harvest was going to be finished that year --whether it would be early, late, or so forth. November 5 seemed like a safe date for the harvest being over. HERMAN VENTE Teiser: I was about to ask you about your first activities after your marriage, but maybe I should go back to your recollections of Herman Wente and Ernest Vente. 1 never met Herman. What was he like? J. Wente: Herman was absolutely a charmer; everybody liked Herman. He was gregarious, outgoing, extremely bright. He was just that type of personality. He was the original p.r. man, but I'd say a subtle p.r. man, in that he was so genuinely wrapped up in the wine businesswinemaking, wine and food, and so forth- -that it never came across as p.r. He was just an ambassador at large for Vente wine, and California wine as far as that goes. Teiser: Old-timers speak of him with very great regard. J. Wente: I think one of the things that Carolyn [Wente] pointed out was that all this business now of wine and food- -balancing wine with food and so on- -Herman would be laughing at us, because he did that constantly. He was very aware of flavors with flavors and so forth. I can remember people calling Herman and saying, "We're having a big affair, and if I sent you the menu, Herman, could you possibly match wines for me?" Or, "Would you send me wines?" or "Tell me what I should be doing." He was good at it, he liked it; he had a marvelous palate. I think there are people in this world who have what I call a computer palate in their head for remembering flavors and tastes. Herman was one of these people who could describe a wine he'd had fifteen years previously and talk to you about it. I think that's a real talent, and I think there are people in the wine industry who can do that, who have that kind of memory bank. Teiser: J. Wente: Herman and Edith [Mrs. Herman Wente] entertained quite a bit- -not quite a bit; they entertained almost constantly. Herman really enjoyed that. I always looked forward to being included, because the guests were always fascinating, good conversation, good food. Were they other wine people or just people in general? A wide variety, buffs . Usually some other wine people and then wine When I said Herman was sort of our first p.r. person, he was on a first-name basis with the original editor of Gourmet. for example. Bobbie [Robert] Balzer always said that Herman straightened him out and set him on the right road for having a wine palate and learning about wine . I can think of some others. Herman just knew people who were interested in wine and food and so forth. Andre Simon, the person who was head of London Wine and Food Society [The Wine and Food Society, London] for so long (which is now the International Wine and Food Society), and Herman corresponded. He was just on that level in the wine and food industry at that time. Herman had a marvelous collection of menus from restaurants around the country and wine lists. He not only had a memory bank for but a file for maitre d's and waiters. He just did all that very automatically. I must say, that was at a time when a waiter and a maitre d' stayed a few years at a restaurant. 1 don't think that's true today. On top of all that, I think his basic thrust was that he was fantastically interested in wine quality; that was his shove all the way --improving the quality of wine, improving the techniques. When I first became a Wente, we sent all of our lab work down to a lab in Berkeley. Herman could see that this was becoming more and more difficult and that he needed more instant results; the time involved in sending the samples and receiving the information took too long as the winery became more technology conscious. He was instrumental in realizing that we needed to have an in-house lab. That was just getting underway. He had a young man coming down from [University of California at] Davis on the weekends who was working on his Ph.D. He came on the weekends and worked in the lab with Herman and started this. I guess this was after Karl was back. I think Herman could see that the wine world was changing and needed to change. I think about Herman being the original boutique man. He had a vision for California wine that there needed to be more premium wineries in order to make California Teiser: J. Wente Teiser: J. Wente Teiser: J. Wente wine a viable industry. He really encouraged people getting into the vine business, such as the McCraes [Eleanor and Fred] with Stony Hill [Vineyard] and the Stewarts [J. Leland and Glenzella] at [Chateau] Souverain and Mary and Jack Taylor at Mayacamas [Vineyards], I know he was very friendly and did a lot of wine conversation with the Bartholomews [Frank H. and Antonia] at Buena Vista. Of course, one of our favorites was Jim Howe, who was with United Press. He was a real wine buff. He had been on the China beat back in the thirties, so to speak, and that sort of thing. He and Herman were good friends then. Jim had a little home winery that he called Gopher Gulch, because he said the gophers got as many grapes as he did. Herman really had a plan for the California wine industry, I think you might say. Well, evidenced by the fact that he was very instrumental in the Wine Institute as we know it today. I know one of his really driving forces was to get some kind of industry group together that could work together. Leon Adams gives him great credit for strengthening the wine industry early on. He was very interested in what was going on at Davis and was encouraging the viticulture department, first at UC [University of California at Berkeley], of course. Herman went to Berkeley. They had a very small enology and viticulture department there, and I gather he dabbled in that while he was there. Then it moved to UC Davis . Did he work with Dr. [William V.] Cruess? I don't know if he worked with Dr. Cruess or someone with a very Italian name like Bonicelli or Bolinelli. Probably Frederic T. Bioletti. This is where you need Ernest. [laughs] ERNEST VENTE Teiser: As you remember, we did do a very fine interview with Herman's brother, Ernest. How would you compare them? J. Wente : Sort of night and day. It's amazing- -well, it's not amazing, because I look at Eric and Phil. Ernest was very much into the farming part of it, really adored being the outdoor, manual, hard- labor farmer, and Herman was just the other way around. Cecil [Aguirre] said that one way to distinguish them is that Ernest came to work in work boots and khakis and a Pendleton shirt, and Herman came to work in a suit and tie. [laughter] That was non- grape season, however. Teiser: I remember that I had an appointment with Ernest for an interview, and I got here and he wasn't here. It turned out he was out fixing a pump. It was first things first. J. Wente: That's typical. Herman certainly was the winemaker. Herman worked in the winery and worked hard. Of course, when Herman and Ernest were doing this, we're talking pre- current technology- -automatic refrigeration, for example --and lot of hands-on physical labor. When I think about California wine now, it's hard to find a bad California wine. I think you'd really have to look. The technology is such now that if you're making a bad wine, it's up here [indicates the mind], not because the knowledge isn't there; it's something you're doing. As opposed to when they were doing it right after Prohibition. None of the ease of technology was with them; it was the experience that was with them. I think it's something that they both passed along to Karl, because Herman and Ernest both were very innovative and creative about the things they were doing and starting, Herman about his winery and Ernest about his farming, when Karl came along. KARL L. WENTE Youth and Education 1927-1949 Teiser: Karl really knew both enology and viticulture, then, didn't he? J. Wente: Actually, there was a bit of rivalry going on there, whether Karl would be wine (enology) oriented or viticulture oriented. Of course, he wound up doing both, and doing both very easily, I think. Teiser: What do you know about Karl as a young person before you met him? J. Wente: I would gather just from listening, really, that Karl was absolutely the apple of everybody's eye. He was the first grandson. Hilma [Mrs. Edwin E. Hagemann] is so much younger than Ernest that her two childrenKarl was maybe five or six before there were any more grandchildren. Here were all these older Wentes and Karl, so you can sort of envision the family light shining on him. It's amazing to me that he wasn't a completely spoiled brat. Or maybe he was for a while, and one eventually either outgrows that or not. But he really was the center of that family, there's no doubt about it, from his grandparents through all the aunts and uncles and so forth. Karl had a very marvelous childhood in that father was home for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; work was immediately there. Karl grew up on the ranch and in the winery. It was a very loving but in a way very strict upbringing. He went to work at all the little chores and so forth, and by the time he was old enough he was working summers on the ranch or in the winery. I don't know how much discussion there was about it, but I think 10 they all just assumed he wouldn't think of doing anything else but running the family business. Teiser: Did he? J. Wente: I think for a moment or two he did. I really do. I think when he left home and was out on his own, so to speak, and was in college, it did pass through his mind more than once that there were some other pretty exciting things out there. Yet I think there's a very strong family feeling in the Wentes, and I think I see this in our children. They feel the responsibility for what's been left to them and for hanging onto it and making it better for the next generation. It's almost like they're overseers or caretakers for the next person coming along. I think Karl felt that very strongly, that this was an opportunity a lot of people would kill for, probably, and here it was just being more or less handed to him. Yet I think the exceptions are Karl's, because in Karl's generation boys weren't going back to family businesses. I think perhaps even in our children' s- -Karl and I used to hope we would get one out of the three. We'd just laugh and say, "Isn't it fun that we have three, because surely one of them will want to do this." We tried very hard never to suggest or even indicate that we expected them to come back. I think you at least owe that much to your children to know there's no big chain there. It is their life, and if this isn't what they want to do, fine. I never ever thought I'd have all three of them. [ laughs ] Teiser: What were Karl's college studies? J. Wente: Karl majored in biochemistry. I think he seriously thought about med school for a little while there. Basically it was a scientific-oriented course. Teiser: I'm surprised he didn't go to Davis, but I guess it wasn't so well developed then. J. Wente: No, the viticulture department wasn't so well developed, but I think his whole family was surprised that he didn't go to Davis, especially his father, who, as you know, was one of Davis 's first students. I think his being out and away during the war, it was one of the first things Karl decided on his own- -that he wasn't going to go to Davis just because his father had gone to Davis, that he'd rather try something else. Karl L. Wente in the winery, early 1970s. Photograph courtesy Wines & Vines 11 Karl's war career was probably not exciting to him. He went to boot camp in Chicago --Navy- -and said that he quickly learned that if you read the bulletin board every morning, there was some kind of a test you could take for something. Therefore, if you were off to take this test you weren't doing yard duty or drilling or something. [laughter] So he wound up in one of the college programs, whether it's V-12 or V-6, at Oregon State. That's where he was during the war; he was at Oregon State at one of the Navy programs. Teiser: That was before he went to Stanford? J. Vente: Yes, and he came into Stanford as more than a freshman. Teiser: I suppose there was some advantage to getting whatever the learning experience is in the service. J. Wente: I think that basically this is your officer's candidate program. They were all, I suppose, about to be ensigns or something. Teiser: By the time he finished Stanford was he pretty sure he was going to come into the winery? J. Wente: Yes. I don't think there was any doubt about it. Teiser: He took a trip to Europe then? J. Wente: Oh, the famous grand tour. It was sort of like a coming out party or something when your children went to the continent. The whole family had been planning this for Karl's graduation, I think ever since he started college or probably even before that. Everyone went: Edith [Mrs. Herman Wente] and Herman, Karl's mother and father, and another uncle, Carl, and Jess Wente, and then Karl. The only difficult part about the grand tour, 1 guess, was me. Karl and 1 met the spring of his senior year and had decided we were going to get married. We announced our engagement at the end of the school term before graduation. This whole trip had been planned- - I* J. Wente: I more or less got to know the family because Karl and I would drive up from Stanford to San Francisco when they went in to get their passport pictures, and then we went in on one of the shopping expeditions and stayed for dinner with the family. Then 1 came to Livermore a couple of times before school was out. I came for rodeo weekend, which was always the big thing, and we had the rodeo party at Karl's aunt Frieda's, Ernest and 12 Herman's sister- -Frieda and George Tubbs . So I knew the family pretty well, or was getting to know the family, shall we say. I think they were truly concerned whether Karl was actually going to go. Karl and I talked it over, because Karl definitely was leaning toward the fact that he really wasn't too excited about going to Europe with these six older people. At least we both had sense enough to say, "They've been planning this for so long, and you'd do nothing but disappoint them forever," and so forth and so on. So he took off for Europe. Herman had worked very hard organizing this grand wine tour. They called on people that Herman knew, they called on people that I'm sure were contacts set up by Davis for probably Maynard [A. Amerine] or [Albert J.] Winkler at that point. They really just had a perfectly marvelous wine tour of France. I know Karl said it was just like being royalty when they arrived. Here was Herman with the Wine Institute fame and so well recommended by Davis and all these people. And, of course, there's been a lot of travel ing --maybe not as much now, but there used to be quite a lot of traveling between wine families that you don't see so much anymore. Or maybe I'm just out of it now; who knows? I do know that European wine families were always coming through Livermore and being here for a couple of days. I can't tell you how many European wine children we had live with us when our children were young. Anyway, they had lots of contacts, and I guess it was just a 100 percent marvelous trip. Then they got back to Paris and met up with Carl and Jess and Bess, who had not gone on the wine tour; just Herman and Ernest and Carl did the wine tour. The rest of them had gone to Italy, Switzerland, and maybe called on relatives in Germany; I don't know what they were doing. Then they were all to meet and take this continued tour, which was going up into Scandinavia and around. When they got back to Paris, Karl announced he was going home. They were all really put out with him, but he said, "No, I've done all the wine tour, which was the whole point of the trip." He said he absolutely thought it was marvelous, but he was going home to see Jean, which I think was very nice, [laughter] So he cut the trip in half. They were spending the whole summer in Europe, which was the plan, and then Karl came home. That's when we really started working on the house and so forth. 13 HERMAN WENTE, CONTINUED J. Wente: I think there are even letters in Herman's files, correspondence with these people getting this marvelous trip set up. I should have gone through some of Herman's files, because we have a tremendous amount of material on Herman in our archives. I should look into that for you. He was active in the Wine and Food Society of San Francisco, and he had several groups, I guess--! don't know if I'd call them clubs --that he kept up with that were really wine and food oriented. They had their spring wine tastings. His class at Berkeley came out every year. Teiser: What class was it? J. Wente: Class of '15. I'm not sure Herman actually graduated, because he was in the army during World War I. That's something interesting, when you think about the Japanese during World War II: apparently there was a tremendous amount of anti-German [sentiment] during World War I, and even in a small town like Livermore the Wagners, the Wentes, and so forth--. The Wentes felt it. I think one of the really big things Herman did for California wine wasyou know, Herman was responsible for varietal labeling. He and Frank Schoonmaker were batting themselves around about what to do, and Herman came up with the idea of grape names. Herman was desperate to get California "premium varietal" wines recognized as being that. He was still fighting all the generic things on the market- -burgundy , chablis, etc. He thought of calling Semillon "S6millon" on the bottle, and putting Sauvignon Blanc on the bottle and so forth. He actually came up with that concept and put the vintage dates on them. Nobody was putting vintages on bottles. So he had that kind of approach: "If we're going to make this work, we 14 Teiser: J . Wente Teiser: J. Wente Teiser: have to be upscale. We really have to show we're serious and that we're not jug wine people," and that sort of thing. So he was into that. Of course, at that time he was into the sauterne type of wines, because Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc were I'm sure Ernest told you that our Semillon and Sauvignon blanc cuttings are direct descendants from Chateau d'Yquem. So sauternes were Herman's big interest. I think they really started out with the sweeter, residual sugar sauterne, and then Herman was working into the dry ones really big, dry Sauvignon Blancs and so forth . The vintage dating is fascinating to me, because there was a period not too long ago where people weren't dating bottles anymore; I'd say that in the late fifties or early sixties, vintage -dating bottles wasn't all that much of a go. This is the fad thing. Now it's back to dating bottles, and now with this Heritage and things like that, where you're combining, I suppose dating won't be as important again. I think Herman firmly planted the idea that we were an estate vineyard, an estate winery, that you should be in charge of your own grapes and your own winemaking. I can see why your family got along so well with the Louis M. Martini winery, because I guess they developed these ideas a little after yours. Yes, because Louis wasn't- -when did Louis go up here? He moved to the Napa Valley from Kingsburg in 1940, but he had bought vineyard land there earlier. I think he, too, was influenced by Frank Schoonmaker. Yes, I think so. I think Schoonmaker was marketing, and Herman recognized that marketing was the name of the game even then, not to the extent it is this day and age, but certainly that you had to get your product in front of the buying public. Schoonmaker was really good at that. Now that you've mentioned Louis M. Martini, there are some marvelous stories that I hope Ernest told you about Herman, Louis Martini, and Tony Korbel traveling together and being the ambassadors for California wine on the East Coast, New Orleans, Chicago, and other places. That's interesting. I didn't know about that. I knew Herman Wente had gone on such trips, but I didn't know the others did. 15 J. Wente: He, Louis, and Tony Korbel traveled together quite frequently. Teiser: That must have been quite a crew. J. Wente: Can't you see them? [laughter] I'm sure there was nothing but twelve-course lunches and sixteen-course dinners. I think before he died, Herman was really into the fact that there were going to be better type wine presses, so there had to be better type cooperage and so forth. I think he certainly had Karl indoctrinated in that, that there were better ways to do things. As I said, I think both Ernest and Herman grounded Karl very well in what it was he was supposed to do, and I think they made it exciting. It's kind of fun to get up in the morning and go to work liking what you're going to do, and I don't think there was ever a day when Karl didn't feel like that about it. I think that's really from Herman and Ernest that he had that drive. 16 VENTE BROS. SINCE 1949 The Vinerv in the Early 1950s Teiser: When you came into the family, you could hardly have missed knowing a lot about the winery. What was it like then? J. Wente : I probably had only about three years or so with the status quo of the buildings and so forth. When 1 came, the office was a minute, two little rooms in the corner of the old wooden winery, and the [Carl Wente, Sr.] family house was still there, which was kind of a fun house. It had sort of grown like Topsy. There were seven children, and it was sort of like they added for each child. [laughter] It had high ceilings and was cool. They still had dirt floors in the winery and the old screw presses. Refrigeration was nonexistent except during harvest, when the ice truck never stopped coming, just to keep things cool. They'd run cold water through one line and wine through the other, side by side, to keep the wine cool. I remember that sort of thing. Of course, now we have all this refrigeration everywhere . Bottling, if it wasn't completely by hand it wasn't far off, because I can remember going down in one of the trucks with Karl into a foundry type place in Berkeley or Emeryville. We brought home this corking machine that everybody was terribly excited about. We went down in a truckwe didn't have big trucks; it had to be something just maybe the next size up from a standard pickup. The man who had hand-made it was so thrilled with it that, as he carefully pointed out to Karl and me, he had on his own put this little metal wine glass on top with a bunch of grapes --just decoration on the top of this corking machine. 17 We came home, and it was after dark when we got back, so Karl said, "We'll just go home and unload this in the morning." He pulled into our little garage and didn't think about it, and the thing was just too tall to go in with the fancy little ornament, which just snapped right off. I've never seen anyone so upset over something that really--! mean, thank goodness it had nothing to do with the machinery. [laughter] Then the big thing was to get somebody to come who could solder that on again so that the man would never know. So we were upgrading, but when you think that the corker we were so proud of you could put on a small truck and bring back-- when I think about what's over there now. We were just beginning to do that sort of thing. Also, there was just beginning to be enough wineries and call for the technology so that developing or adapting the technology from other bottling type of things was worthwhile to companies who were making the equipment. I know that when we first started in on changing our pressing system from wooden cage, vertical basket presses to horizontal stainless steel, Pete Peters from Valley Foundry practically lived up here. Herman was still in on that. It was probably just before Herman died, maybe 1959 or somewhere along in there, when they started designing presses with Pete Peters. At the same time, the insurance and maintenance on the wooden buildings just became absolutely prohibitive. We always laugh and say that we don't have anything antique to show that says we've been here since 1883, but on the other hand we're still here and nothing burned down. [laughter] You've seen the pictures of the old winery, and truly it wasn't that enchanting; if you think about preserving something, it wasn't. There isn't anything left of the original wooden winery; it's all new. Teiser: Was it redone in stages? J. Wente: It was redone in stages, yes, and they're still doing it. I always laugh and say that I seem to be the only one in a dead panic every year about whether they'll have everything back together by crush. I've never seen a piece of equipment come into this place that first it was Karl, and then it was Bob Detjens and Karl together, and now it's Eric and Aris. They run it a little, and they think, "Well, this would really be better and more efficient if we did this to it." So we will have just paid this enormous amount of money for something, and they're taking it apart. [laughs] I'm going like this [gestures], thinking, "Gee, the grapes look like they're about ready, and they're still fooling with that press." But it always seems to work out. 18 Advances in the Vineyards J. Wente: The biggest change was under Karl, because Karl really went from the lack of technology as far as equipment is concerned to state of the art winery; it all really occurred under Karl. That's everything from presses to bottling wines, too: equipment in the fields- -I think about the vineyards. We had two good wells down on East Avenue, and they ran pipelines from East Avenue all the way to the top of the vineyards at the Fagoni place, which is a couple of miles, and started sprinkling- -started irrigating- -under Karl. And he put in an enormous reservoir for frost protection, which we never had before; we just held our breath and hoped it wouldn't freeze too long or wouldn't freeze at all. Although the latest recorded frost in our vineyard is May 22, so you always have the feeling that you're not quite home free until the first of June. Also, I think the worst berry shatter we had was probably about the fifth of June from heat, so it's a short block there. [laughs] Then, with the advent of the canal coming through, we had access to water. Teiser: Oh, yes. When was that? J. Wente: Probably in the sixties. Teiser: The Delta Mendota? J . Wente : Yes , but this is the one that goes to San Jose . Teiser: Does it have a name? J. Wente: Yes; I refer to it as the canal. I'm sure it does have a name, Ruth. The only place it's underground is when it goes through Ernest's property, because Ernest would not give them the right of way to have an open canal behind his house . Teiser: Oh, really. J. Wente: Really. It was practically completed on both ends, and Ernest was sitting there saying, "I'm not going to do it." So they put it underground. He said, "I'm not going to wake up some morning and find I'm downtown because the canal is broken." Ernest said he had lived in that spot too long, and the hills shift; you get 19 a little tremor, and the hills shift. "That canal's going to shift, and it's going to dump its water, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not in my lifetime, but it's going to happen." So they went underground behind Ernest's house, and then it comes out again. Then we really went into piping all of the vineyards and irrigating. That led to all kinds of changes, because Karl was working with both Upright and Chisholm Ryder on mechanical harvesting, which led to how you do the viticulture in your vineyards, which led to a different kind of piping for your sprinklers so that when you were mechanically harvesting you weren't ruining your sprinkling system, because they are permanent-set sprinklers. (But drip irrigation is now being used. ) You've seen the lumber carriers and the way we handle the grapes. Karl thought that one out. He bought, for something like seven hundred dollars, a used lumber carrier. He and Cecil Aguirre built one- ton capacity steel tubs. The lumber carrier could drive over them and pick them up, and then they took these out and dropped them in the avenues in the field. Karl was trying to get rid of wooden boxes , which he thought were a mess- -hard to clean, heavy, and so forth- -and so they went to lightweight plastic tubs. The pickers used the plastic tubs and then dumped in these one -ton tub containers which were on little- -we referred to them as burros, but they were tiny motorized carts that you could steer down vineyard rows. When those were full we put them out in an avenue, and the lumber carrier came along and picked them up and took the grapes back to the winery. So you got your fruit in quicker with less damage and all that sort of thing, which was one of the things Karl was thinking about. That translated into doing the same thing with the mechanical harvester rig. We started out with the lumber carrier idea, and then the little geared- down- -these things are like a cart with a long handle on them, and the man on the row could set this to move slowly enough so that as they went along with their small boxes, picking on each side of it, they could dump in it. Then whoever was in charge of that kept the thing moving at an adequate pace for the pickers to dump into. With the advent of the mechanical harvester and the viticultural change of putting enough vineyard up on trellises so it could be mechanically harvested, we went to that system. I think we're probably very close to being 100 percent mechanically harvested, both here and in Arroyo Seco. But the 20 Teiser: J. Wente: Teiser: J . Wente : lumber carrier stays with us. It still does the same thing; it still brings the fruit in from the vineyards. I've seen those in action down in Arroyo Seco, and it never occurred to me that they were lumber carriers. The harvester is built on the same principle. Even though it has all that equipment up on top and in the center, it's a lumber carrier base, and it straddles the vines. Those are wonderful developments . of mechanical pruning? Have you gone now to any kind Not without men. But one thing we use our harvesters for they take out the fingers that hit the vines and knock off the fruit and replace them with big, circular saw blades. They run that down the row, and what it does is get rid of the heavy outside brush. Then the pruners come in, and they're not fighting all those long canes. That's then ground up and put back as humus to keep the soil loose. Another thing it does is that we've had much less incidence of scratches or eye damage. We've never had anything really serious, but when you're fooling with those canes out there in the vineyard, they're always whipping around. Teiser: So you do prune -- J. Wente: With pneumatic shears. There's a compressor that goes down the row, and then there are two booms that go out with as many stations as the compressor can handle, I think probably four to six on each side. So you're covering, say, six rows on each side. Then a hose comes off at the station for each row, and it's attached to a pair of shears. You just push a button; you're not gripping and cutting. To that extent we're mechanical, and it makes it much easier and quicker to move through the vineyard pruning. It's just recently that we thought of cutting the heavy brush off first, so we're getting double use out of that mechanical harvester. This is another example of how we just can't leave anything alone, so we use it for something else, working around and coming up with another idea. Although I don't say that's one of Karl's ideas. We weren't doing that when Karl was in charge; that's something that Eric and Phil have come up with. Phil's goal is one man per hundred acres. He thinks that with the technology and the equipment you have farming, you 21 should be able to get your vineyard down to where you have one man per hundred acres for maintenance and care. Advances in the Winery Teiser: I guess the improvements Karl made to the winery, inside and out, were just endless. J. Wente: Well, they were. Everything from the temperature controls to the stainless steel fermenters and the stainless jacketing on them. The first stainless steel fermenters had iron jackets, not stainless. I think Cecil [Aguirre] and Karl were looking at them someplace else, and they said, "If we're going to do it, let's see if we can do it stainless all the way," because that iron bit you're going to be painting; there would be rust problems, and the maintenance would be greater. So for those outside jackets that go on the stainless steel tanks for temperature control, they did turn up with the stainless jackets as well as the stainless tanks. I'm sure the boys will be full of what went on in the winery. Let's see if there's anything else [looking over her notes] . Expansion in Monterey County M. Wente: Well, Monterey was all Karl's doing. Teiser: How was that decision made? J. Wente: Basically, there was an interesting kind of pressure going on back then. One of our main concerns was that we were losing growers, and that, in a way, put the price of what their vineyard land was going for- -it indicated that if we were going to be taxed for the best use, or whatever the tax man's thing is --if somebody across the street just got $10,000 an acre, and you're being taxed as an agricultural thing, will you be taxed at $10,000 an acre or as agriculture? There was no indication that you'd be taxed as agriculture, so with that in mind we really started looking. 22 There were a lot of family discussions about whether we wanted to stay in the wine business. Obviously, the decision was made . Teiser: J. Wente Teiser: J . Wente : Teiser: J . Wente : I should ask you about the whole family participation, you like to discuss it later? Would Why don't we finish with Monterey and then come back, because actually Monterey was a family decision. Ernest and Karl really did a lot of looking before they settled down in Monterey. We always laugh and say it's because of the rocks in Monterey; they reminded Ernest of being at home. But Ernest said, "No, the roots of grapevines like to have something to grab onto." That was his explanation for rocks; he said it was good to have your vines in rocks. That's really how we wound up in Monterey. We were looking for something to hedge our bets. And, of course, it was pre- Williamson Act. Along with the tax situation, it's not terribly viable to be the only farmer in the area, shall we say. There wasn't any direct pressure on us to stop farming or to stop growing grapes or anything like that; these were all sort of peripheral things, and we were trying to make the best educated guess we could about what was going to happen to us and how quickly the valley might fill in. Then we bought the Monterey property as a grape supply source and to hedge our bet against what might be happening here. We were really into it just a couple of years or so when the Williamson Act came along in '65. That put things back in perspective here. You put your land in the-- In the Williamson Act, yes. All of our land went into the Williamson Act. That relieved a great deal of pressure as to what would happen for a long-term site. Did you decide to go to Monterey because it was accessible? How do you truck things back and forth? Four-lane freeway. West to #680 and south on #101. We went in because Ernest and Karl liked the soil and the climate, and it had the same kind of growing conditions that you think about being good for premium varietal grapes. One of my opening remarks for talks sometimes is that 1 say that California premium wine country starts just south of the Oregon border and winds up just north of Mexico, but in conjunction with coastal 23 valleys where the temperature is right and you're far enough inland to have warm enough days to ripen grapes, but you're not so far inland that you've got too much heat, and so forth and so on. They just felt that the soil and climate and everything looked good, and it turned out to be absolutely true. The growing season is different. Eric can tell you that the Chardonnay that comes from Monterey is a little different from the Chardonnay from Livermore, but that's all to the good. Back to being an estate vineyard, we bottle estate -grown Chardonnay from Monterey, and we bottle estate -grown Chardonnay from Livermore. It's nice to have the contrast and the capability of doing that. Teiser: You can call it estate -grown even though it's not contiguous? J. Wente: Yes. You can say "estate," but if it's not contiguous you can say "vintner 1 grown." I think that contiguous has now gone, because Carolyn is the one who got the BATF to accept vintner - grown; if you own property, farmed it, were in complete charge, and the grapes came to your production facility, you could say vintner -grown. I think now the same thing is true: if you own it, farm it, and the grapes come directly to you, you don't have to say "grown" anymore. I think you can say "estate-bottled." I think she made her point, and you don't have to say "estate- grown" anymore. She was very proud of that, and I was very proud of her for doing it- -that she could get the BATF to accept that. Because it does seem funny that if the property is yours and so forth that you can't say "estate bottled" on it. 2 Getting back to our concept of wanting to be an estate -- estate in my mind connotes a family operation, as in a wine estate as opposed to- -I think of farming. I think estate perhaps sounds like my tree -lined driveway to my house and swimming pool (I don't have one), but that's not what I mean. [ laughs ] For Monterey grapes we use the central coast appellation for estate wine. *Since we talked, we are not using "vintner -grown" anymore. The vineyard and winery must be in the same appellation to say "estate." J.R.W. 2 See also interview with Carolyn Wente, p. 58. 24 Teiser: In Monterey County at Arroyo Seco, the system worked out for handling the grapes and bringing them to the vinery here -- J. Wente: At this stage the grapes are picked and mechanically harvested; everything in Arroyo Seco is mechanically harvested. The vineyards were planted to be mechanically harvested before we were really quite sure about the mechanical harvester; it wasn't quite perfected when they planted those vineyards to be mechanically harvested, but Karl said it was going to work and was the coming thing, and we might as well do it. Karl's thrust in a lot of this was that he wanted to be able to maintain a year-round labor force and not have people coming in seasonally. He wanted his people well paid, well cared for, children in one school- -not this bouncing around from when there is ranch work and when there isn't ranch work. We've really done that, because our field crew goes from pruning to cultivation to vineyard care to harvest, and we use the same year-round people. It makes for loyalty, it makes for greater interest in your job, a greater feeling of responsibility. You sit somebody up on top of a $200,000 harvester, you want that guy to be interested in what he's doing; you don't want him taking out rows of vines. The same thing is true when you're cultivating and so forth; you want them to feel a part of the operation. Teiser: When did you start field crushing in Monterey? J. Wente: I think the field crushing was not far behind- -I'm trying to think if I remember the little burro system in Monterey with hand picking, and I truly don't, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. But we were certainly field crushing in 1970. I have it in my mind that we almost just started out mechanically harvesting in Monterey. We still do some field crushing, but mainly whole -berry pressing now. Teiser: At first you would have brought the grapes over here? J. Wente: I just think about those steel boxes coming in, rather than grapes, from Monterey. I think the fun thing about Monterey was that while the vineyards were maturing, Karl started with UC Davis the mother nursery block. This is when Davis was into their heat-treating program for virus -free vines. Karl took five acres in conjunction with Davis and put in a heat-treated, certified nursery of maybe five, six, or seven different varieties of grapes. We sold cuttings out of that certified nursery for years. I guess one of the jokes was that when 25 somebody wanted something, they'd say, "Well, you know, we're selling those cuttings; that'll cover that." [laughs] The cuttings were a bonus. We didn't plan to have that kind of income from Monterey. I mean, it takes you five years to get a new vineyard going. The cutting business was just fantastic, and Karl was there at the right time with certified cuttings, just as all the 1960 plantings went in all over California. The record of our cutting book reads like Who's Who in the wine industry. I think we sold cuttings everywhere, all up and down Napa, Sonoma, Canada, Virginia, Mexico, Missouri. A lot of the new vineyards in the states of Washington and Oregon are right off of cuttings out of the Arroyo Seco vineyard. As I say, we always teased and said, "Well, we have the cutting money; we'll do it with that." Teiser: You've always had a plant nursery here, haven't you? J. Wente: Yes, but not on the scale that we were doing it there, and of course this was certified, guaranteed wood. If you handled it properly, presumably you wouldn't have any problems in your vineyards . Teiser: I believe that an earlier operator of Chalone Vineyard, Will Silvear, had got cuttings from the Wente nursery. J. Wente: He brought grapes to the winery here. He pickup -trucked his fifteen boxes a day from Chalone. Whatever he picked, he'd bring them down in a pickup truck, and Ernest did the crushing and bottling for him. At least he took his grapes. Now, when I say the crushing and bottling, I can't remember Will Silvear with a Chalone label or any label, but he was almost on the way out when I was on the way in. That's something that Hilma [Hagemann] will probably know about, or even Cecil. Certainly Bruno [Canziani] would know about that, because I do remember meeting Will Silvear. He was absolutely marvelous. Teiser: Was he? J. Wente: Fun to talk to, did it all himself up there on that earthquake fault, quaking all the time [laughs]. Herman really encouraged him like crazy, because he thought he had good grapes and it was a good place to have them. Teiser: That's interesting. I didn't know that. 26 J. Wente: I think of Will Silvear in conjunction with Herman and Ernest, not Karl, so that's the vintage he would have been. Teiser: He also had Almaden [Vineyards] make a champagne for him. I've seen the bottle. These things tie in interestingly. He was growing grapes at Chalone in the 1930s and 1940s. I've uncovered a little mythology about him. J. Wente: I think that's fun that the mythology is there, because I think that someone like Will Silvear, where the people who knew him personally are no longer around, would develop a cult almost. I could see where something like that would happen. What else can I tell you about Karl in Monterey? Teiser: Yes, I'm sorry I distracted you. J. Wente: Oh, I'm sort of Ernest's pupil. I could just sit and listen to him- -we had offices across from each other, and Ernest would come in around mealtime, go home at lunch, and then come back at mid- afternoon. He'd say things like, "Can you hang up the phone now and come in? I want to talk to you." I told Carolyn- -he wouldn't do it for me, but for Carolyn he did a Livermore book about families and things in Livermore, as opposed to the kind of thing he did with you [in his Regional Oral History Office interview] on vineyards and California wine. 3 Teiser: Do you have more on Monterey? J. Wente: Just that in planting in Monterey, Karl had always been interested in champagne and in making champagne. That was always something that was down the road, and he didn't make it; the road stopped for him before he got into the champagne business. But I do think it's interesting that Monterey really has the perfect climate for champagne grapes. I think the boys' interest in going into champagne is a little bit of tipping our hat to Karl. Teiser: Did Karl make some experimentally? J. Wente: Yes. Actually, Herman was always doing that. Herman was the biggest wine and grape trader going. We always had unlabeled champagne. Somebody made it out of our wine, and in return Herman would make something for them. The industry was very 3 Ernest A. Wente, Memories of the Early History of the Livermore Valley, privately printed, 1981; 57 pp. 27 small at that point. That was not only done, it was acceptable. You didn't have to track the wine like you do now and all that sort of thing. The regulatory system of the wine industry now, I think, is one of it's greatest hazards; it may be what finally does it in- -all the government regulations. Teiser: Of course Wente Bros, did some bulk wine business still when you were first married, didn't they? J. Wente: We were just about out of that. We had half -gallon jugs --the half -gallon jugs with the little hook handle --that were only sold in the tasting room. It was almost like on Friday afternoon locals came in and bought their red wine for the weekend or the next week. But when I arrived they were no longer shipping any uncorked finished jugs. Bruno can tell you about that . Ownership. Decision Makina, and Responsibilities J. Wente Teiser: J. Wente: Let me go back to the family interest in the winery. Herman and Ernest were the complete owners of the winery; from their father [Carl Heinrich Wente] they bought the winery and the vineyards. Herman left his to Edith, and then Edith to Karl, although Herman left Karl stock or something. Anyway, it was certainly understood from Herman's will that anything to do with the vineyards and the winery would become Karl's. The same thing was true of Ernest. As life becomes more complicated and estates become more complicated, we all now have stock, but there's no outside stock; it's strictly family. It's a corporation that is strictly family-owned stock now. I've tried to give mine away as fast as I can- -you know, estate planning and all that sort of thing. Basically, the three children all have an equal amount. We're beginning to pass things on to Christine and Karl, who are Eric's children. But it's all family owned. I see you were on the board early on. the board? Have you always been on No. I would say that was after Edith's death. That's the date that passes into my mind, and I don't know why. I could certainly find out just by looking at the minutes book, but I think officially that's probably about right. If not when Edith 28 died, then when Edith stopped being interested in it. With Herman's dying, Edith was on the board. Perhaps I went on a bit earlier than her death, because I know she just said, "Enough's enough . " Teiser: What is the board's function? J. Wente: The board functions as any corporate board functions. We have an annual meeting, we meet as executive committee or when necessary to conduct the corporate business. These are very serious meetings when we have them, but on the other hand I'd say that board meetings go on every day, because all three children talk to each other every day, and I see them. [laughs] Teiser: You're now chairman of the board? J. Wente: Yes. I think that means I've reached my sixty-fifth birthday. [laughter] 29 KARL L. VENTE'S INDUSTRY AND COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES Teiser: Going on to Karl's activities in various industry and local organizations -- J. Wente: He was director of the Wine Institute and the Wine Advisory Board. I think maybe he was the youngest chairman of the Wine Institute; he was very early on a director of the Wine Institute. Then he was on the state college university system board, and he chaired that. He was on the Bank of America board, he was on the board of PG&E [Pacific Gass and Electric Co.], he was on the California State Automobile Association board. Locally he was one of the founding directors at the local hospital and was chairman of that. He was one of the founding organizers of the Zone Seven water district and I think was its first chairman. He was in his late twenties then; he was a young chairman. What else? He was so busy, that just seems like nothing. Teiser: He must have been very willing to take responsibility. J. Wente: I think he felt that when you take, you give back, very definitely. Oh, he belonged to the Bohemian Club and Wine and Food Society of San Francisco. Those are fun things as opposed to--. I think one of the things that's interesting to me as I see what we're doing now and the kind of pause we've had, I always feel like there was a generation gap in our public relations between Herman and Carolyn and Phil and Eric. Karl was forty -nine when he died, and he was just backing away from the business to a certain extent, which is one reason for some of these boards; he was looking for something to do that was interesting to him and to get out of the kids' hair. He said, "You know, I can see that I need to start--." I think what he was really saying, too, was that he wasn't going to be there as 30 long as grandfather and Herman, breathing down their necks. Although then he'd immediately say, "I can't really say they were breathing down my neck." But he wanted the boys to feel there was someplace to go and that they would be in charge . Karl was very outgoing and gregarious, and I still run into people who suddenly identify the name and say, "I knew your husband. 1 can't tell you how much he influenced me, what he did for me. He was just one of the most outstanding people I've ever come across," and so forth. And this is a long time after- -Karl has been dead for fourteen years now, and I still run into people who don't know me; it's just a name association. Teiser: I have a little story. I had to appear before the Wine Advisory Board to get some money for this series, and he was conducting the meeting. I was frozen with fright, having had no experience with that sort of thing. He looked at me and nodded, and smiled, and I thought, "Well, okay." He just gave me confidence to get up there and ask for $10,000. I've always remembered that very kind gesture. J. Wente: When I think how the p.r. end of the wine industry and the marketing end of the wine industry have changed--! think from Herman and Ernest and it being feasible to be a home family winery, the wine industry has taken this big, technological, capital-intensive swing. Your marketing and your public relations and so forth are every bit, if not more, important. You can't afford not to be doing the right thing in the field and in the winery, but whether those things translate to staying in business has to do with your marketing and your public relations . Karl was one of these people, like Herman, who knew everybody and was into a lot of things, was well liked, and was aware of this change coming on. He was looking at our relationship with our distributors, both main distributors and wholesalers and distributors throughout the country, and how this should become a part of something that we should be paying very close attention to, and on and on. Then Karl died. I will say that when Karl died there wasn't this overabundance or proliferation of wine writers, wine magazines, wine critics, and every restaurant maitre d' being a wine buff and all that sort of thing. This has sort of come even much more strongly post- Karl than when Karl was alive, but he was very aware that this was in the offing. I think that Jean and the two boys and then Carolyn were so concerned with keeping the vineyards going and the winery 31 go Ing- -even though we'd all been around forever and should have osmosed a lot more than we did, we actually found out that we knew a lot more than we thought we did, which was surprising. But for quite a few years we missed out on that one segment that we should have been paying attention to, and 1 think that had Karl been around he would have been doing a lot more of that while the boys were getting their feet wet in the winery and the vineyard- -where he could keep an eye on it, but they weren't going to get into any serious problems; he could be out doing more of the marketing end and that kind of thing. I think the children are doing a fantastic job now. I think they're back on it; they're really on top of it. Carolyn is a whiz at it, and so is Philip. Eric doesn't have quite the same opportunity because his responsibilities in the business take him in a different direction. That's something that I see as probably a fault of mine; I didn't pick up on it. Well, let's get back to family. I forget what brought this on! We were talking about the family involvement in the business . Teiser: I guess you're part of the p.r. now, too, aren't you? Or you always have been? J. Wente: I think I always have been, in a way, because I laugh and say that 1 served more p.r. meals and made more p.r. beds than probably anyone. [laughter] That was part of the business. We entertained at home constantly, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Rarely were there any bummers. I think you meet interesting people. I don't know what it is about wine and the good life, but I do think you meet fascinating people whose vocation is not necessarily the wine industry; it's their avocation. Goodness knows, we've had marvelous people come through in the course of meeting them businesswise. Teiser: Do you give talks about your wines? J. Wente: Yes, we all do. Arel, who is Eric's wife, is excellent at it. She's a good ambassador for us; she really is. Of course, Carolyn and Phil are at it all the time just in their marketing and so forth. I am doing less and less. I'm playing my back off role. I find my span of attention for traveling is great, but my span of attention for business traveling is shorter and shorter. I find it harder to keep a smile pasted on my face from six o'clock in the morning until midnight, working. I think the children are all so good at it, and I think it's time I did a little "Jean" thing or two. 32 Teiser: They're very personable people, so I'm sure they make good impressions. J. Wente: I'm fantastically fortunate that the three of them are interested in the family business and that they all get along so well. They each basically have a niche, and it all overlaps. They each have their own territory, and it works out extremely well. 33 JEAN VENTE'S WORK WITH CULTURAL AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS Teiser: I want to ask you about your own very active participation in art. J. Wente: I guess I'm a "museumer . " I've always been interested in museums. I suppose this was part of my family, because Corcoran was probably fifteen hundred to two thousand people, twenty-five hundred at the most when I was growing up, so it was a very small town. When my father had a business trip and it was feasible, or perhaps even when we could afford it, he was very big on taking us to San Francisco or Los Angles, staying in hotels, going to plays, going to museums, and doing that sort of thing. He was also very big on taking us to baseball and football games. [laughs] I was really very fortunate. I was sort of looking for a niche of something to do. This opportunity came up to be part of the beginning of the Oakland Museum, and I just found that fascinating. One thing I like about it is that it's an ongoing learning experience. There's nothing stagnant about a museum, or static either, as far as that goes, and there are so many facets to it, from keeping the doors open to the actual collections. It has now turned out that I'm the current chairman of the Museum Trustee Association, which is a national organization with headquarters in Washington. We are about museum governance, which of course is the realm of museum trustees. I'm enjoying it thoroughly. It's like anything: the board meets four times a year, but I'm on the phone every day at six o'clock in the morning because of the East Coast/West Coast time schedule. And everybody knows they can get me early in the morning, too. I'm doing a fair amount of traveling in conjunction with this job. I find it continuing to be absolutely fascinating. The people you meet, the museums, the collections, and the doors that are opened to you are just marvelous. I feel that museums are going to, and should, be playing a bigger and bigger role in education. I think our 34 education system needs to take advantage of museums, and museums need to take advantage of what they can offer in the way of education, which is really unlimited. Teiser: You've been on the board of the California College of Arts and Crafts [CCAC]? J. Wente: Yes, I have. I am the just -re tired chairman. Rod Lorimer of Clorox is the new chairman; he's been chairman about six or eight months now. Teiser: Did your interest in the Oakland Museum come out of that? J. Wente: No, I was on the board of the Oakland Museum before I was on the board at CCAC. Well, I think an art college- -it' s education, it's art, it's cultural approach to things --is a fascinating thing to be involved in. Teiser: You're also on some other boards. You're on the California State Automobile Association board. J. Wente: Yes, I am. Let's see- -I'm still on the CCAC college board. Gee, my mind is absolutely blank, but let me pull out a Jean Wente resum [laughs]. 1 I work on several things with Stanford, but I think everyone --we always laugh and say, "Your degree is only as good as your college." It's the credibility of your college, and I'm sure Stanford's credibility will pick up shortly after the trouble [President] Donald Kennedy has had [with the charge of misuse of federal funds]. Oh, something that I think is kind of fun is the Brotherhood of the Knights of the Vines. I was their first Supreme Lady of the Vine. It's a national organization with most chapters in California, and I thought it was rather enchanting that they asked me to be their first Supreme Lady. I've been active in the Monterey winegrowers' groups and in the Livermore Valley winegrowers' groups. Teiser: Are the Monterey people active? J. Wente: They are. It's amazing; I went to the annual meeting at the end of February, and there are something like twenty plus members listed now, whereas there used to be five or six that were actually growing grapes and in the wine business. That has a lot to do with it. When you look at Napa and Sonoma, where l See p. 34a. 34a WENTE BROS. Jean R. Wente (Mrs. Karl L.) 1992 5565 Tesla Road Livermore, CA 94550 Chairman, Wente Bros., Inc. Vineyards and Wineries Current Community Activities Founding Board Member of the Museum Trustee Association and current chairman. Trustee Winterthur Museum and Garden Trustee and immediate past Chairman of California College of Arts and Crafts Honorary Chairman of the Livermore Valley Wine museum Foundation Member of Stanford Associates, Stanford University Member of Steering Committee for Friends of Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine Member of Committee for Art, Stanford University Member of Humanities Study Group, Stanford University Trustee of World Affairs Council of Northern California California Commission on Campaign Financing ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) National Board Member Board member Oakland /Alameda County Coliseum Foundation California Associates, a study group with membership mainly from the Los Angeles area Former Community Activities Chairman and Board Member of Oakland Museum Association; President and Board Member of Oakland Museum Association Women's Board Member of Committee that established NEH state -based humanities program in California Alameda County Architect Selection Committee Chairman Alameda County Art Commission Advisory Committee Rand Corporation/ Urban Institute on Immigration Policy WENTE BROS. SPARKLING WINE CELLARS & RESTAURANT 5050 ARROYO ROAD LIVERMORE. CA 94550 (510)447-3023 FAX (510) 447-0970 35 there are several hundred wineries in each county, I think that has a lot to do with it. I was quite excited to see the enthusiasm and the new faces, and there are quite a few new, small wineries going in down there, which is what it needs to make it go. Of course, we're growers down there, as opposed to being a facility presence. You don't get a lot of touring until you have facility presence; you can look at a vine, and then you can look at the next vine, but if you can't taste the product--. You know, Monterey grapes are everywhere; if you pick up a bottle of wine, you may very well have Monterey grapes in it. 36 KARL L. VENTE'S CONCERNS Teiser: Was Karl ill for a time before he died? J. Wente: Karl was diagnosed as having Hodgkins [disease] twelve years before he died. He went through very intensive treatment at Stanford, which has one of the outstanding programs for Hodgkins in the country. He was there under treatment for the better part of a year, and then he went back for regular checkups. Dr. Henry Kaplan said something to me about Karl taking more treatment than they'd ever given anyone before and having it work, and that the young interns were laying bets on whether he'd walk in for his last treatment or not. They're so debilitating that people would come in, and they'd wind up coming in in a wheelchair, but Karl walked in for his last treatment . For all intents and purposes , as far as outward appearances, he was just fine for the following ten years. I think that what happened to Karl when he died- -it's like getting polio the day before the Salk vaccine; I think they've now advanced the treatment enough that they can handle it. He signed on as an experimental case. His Hodgkins was very well advanced when they found it. Teiser: The reason I asked is that I wondered if he planned with you for the future. J. Wente: Yes, I think so. We talked a great deal about it from then on. a J. Wente: Not detailed planning, but we certainly did estate planning and that type of thing far more seriously after we found out about the Hodgkins . Something I should have said early on is that Karl was very aware of being an only child for the older 37 generation, and he felt very responsible for them. We talked about that and the fact that I would then be responsible. We talked about the children and education for them and that type of thing. Karl always, from the day we were married, talked business with me. He'd come home and say, "Let me try this out on you," or "What do you think about this?" That sort of thing. When he died, I thought, "You dumb -dumb, why didn't you pay more attention?" Early on, before the Hodgkins, I was busy with three children and running the house and so forth, and I don't think you ever think about what happened happening. But Karl was very sharing about the business, and especially after the Hodgkins. Well, after the Hodgkins, I paid more attention; let's put it that way. Teiser: Did you have clear ideas then about how your children would function in the business? J. Wente: When Karl died, Eric was back working for us, having gone to grad school at Davis. Phil was just out of Davis and just back and working. I've never even put this to the kids particularly, but whether, if Karl hadn't had Hodgkins, both boys would have turned up or not, I don't know. They're so close together in age, and they're so different. I think that's the reason it works. It used to be that if I took on Phil, Eric would say, "Mother, you don't understand the situation," and so on. If I take on Eric, Phil's right in there, "Mother--." [laughs] They've always been like that. Whether there would have been enough going to keep all three of them truly busy, even though Karl was planning to back off --at that point Ernest was still reasonably active, and I think Karl worried about whether he could find enough to keep those two bright boys interested. I think they probably more seriously thought about returning knowing about the Hodgkins than they might have otherwise. That may be just my own feeling about it. Teiser: Did the older generation have any idea that Carolyn would come into the business? J. Wente: I think her grandfather hoped she would, but I don't think he thought about it until after Karl died. I don't think they seriously considered that she might do that. I think Karl would have been delighted to know she was back. Ernest was from the generation where you were a hausfrau, although I must say he tipped his hat in my direction a couple of times, [laughs], bless his heart. He was a marvelous support. 38 We laugh, because when Carolyn graduated from college, we sure didn't have anything to do with her. We had no place to slot her, she had no skills we could use --answer ing the telephone or using a typewriter and that sort of thing- -so we shipped her off. It was kind of fun, because she learned a lot, and she learned very quickly. She's got a good grasp of the business and certainly knows the wine business inside and out at this point, and, as 1 say, is marvelous with marketing and public relations. Teiser: She certainly has a good presence. J. Wente: Yes. I guess maybe it was four or five years before we brought her home, and she's been invaluable ever since. Teiser: I daresay you had something to do with it. J. Wente: Maybe it goes back to Karl. 1 said Karl had kind of an unusual childhood in that everybody was around. He had his grandparents; you know, his grandfather Monihan lived with them, and his Wente grandparents were just down the road, and he spent a terrific amount of time there. He had all these doting aunts and uncles. I mean, he really had a family support group going. I can say exactly the same thing for my three. Karl ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at home; he would come by during the pre- school years with the kids if he was doing something where he could handle it. You know, the two boys are just seventeen months apart, so they're practically twins. He'd come by and pick up the little boys, take them in the pickup truck and be gone for two hours, the most divine thing that could possibly happen to a mother. [laughs] I think a lot of it has to do with that kind of thing, and that's not the norm for kids. I think there's something about having the ranch and living on it and being with your grandparents and your father and your great aunts and uncles. It all translates into a very firm family feeling. Teiser: I think we've covered all the main subjects I've thought of. I will be talking with your children- -adult children. J. Wente: Well, I think of them as kids. [laughs] I love talking to you. The children and I are extremely flattered to think that you want to continue on with the family. We sort of look at ourselves as practically an institution at this point. [laughs] 39 Back to Karl againwhen the vine business was beginning to expand with all the new wineries and the new growth in vineyards, Karl was a constant source of information for these people. Karl consulted for more beginning wineries and vineyardists and did it willingly. It was just like Herman saying, "We need the expanded industry, we need the top quality, we need to be going in that direction." I think of all the people who came through our winery when Karl was still with us, looking at it for all the innovative ideas and things that they would like to be doing. It was sort of pointed out as, "Go down and talk to Wente." Teiser: Can you think of some of those who came to him? J. Wente: I will. I think the ones I enjoyed most were the Spaniards who kept coming. I will put my mind on that. Teiser: I'd like to know what the influence of this winery has been elsewhere. Thank you very much. 40 CAROLYN WENTE Carolyn Wente, the youngest of the three children of Jean R. and Karl L. Wente, was born in Livermore in 1955, attended local schools, and, like her brothers, worked at various tasks in the winery and on the family ranch. At Stanford she studied history and also took business courses. After graduating, she worked as a financial analyst at Crocker Bank in San Francisco for several years. In 1980 her brothers asked her to join Wente Bros, as vice president for public relations and marketing. She was interviewed at her home on the ranch, following a back operation, in bed but active, surrounded by communication and business equipment . Regional Oral History Office Room 486 The Bancroft Library University of California Berkeley, California 94720 Your full name BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION (Please write clearly. Use black ink.) C Aft Itf JQ \AJttt fe L^(A Date of birth // " L Father's full name Occupation /_ d / Vgj Mother's full name Occupation Your spouse ISA Occupation Your children A/ / A Birthplace Ll l/tlrm/Trf. Birthplace L* \,'&Y Birthplace Birthplace Lft Where did you grow up? I* / Present community 1^1 Education A-, Occupation(s) Areas of expertise \Sj jft / /> Other interests or activities &*& JT Organizations in which you are active Carolyn Wente, circa 1990 41 INTERVIEW WITH CAROLYN WENTE CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL TEARS, 1955-1980 [Interview date: April 25, 1991 ]## Teiser: Carolyn Wente Teiser: C. Wente Teiser: C. Wente Let's start at the beginning: were you born? when were you born, and where Teiser: I was born November 6, 1955, in St. Paul's Hospital, which is the same hospital my father was born in, and his claim to fame was being the very first Livermore baby born in that hospital. There must have been a few in between. I think so, like both my brothers! Then you came to the family home? I came home and was raised in Livermore on our ranchwhat we refer to as the Mel ranch, which was the original property that Louis Mel and his wife purchased here in Livermore and where they built their weekend home. That home is where I spent the first five years of my life, and then my parents built a house on the hill above the old Mel home, where I grew up the rest of the time . It's about a mile or two miles from the original estate winery on Tesla Road. My mother still lives there today. Arturo Chavez , who is our vineyard manager here in Livermore , lives in the Mel house now. In 1983, when we celebrated Wente Bros.' one-hundredth anniversary, we renovated the old Mel winery to use it as an entertainment facility upstairs, and then downstairs was a cellar with barrels and stuff for aging. Where is that ? 42 C. Wente: It's off of Tesla Road, and it's directly behind the old Mel house, built into the side of the hill. Teiser: What was your childhood like? C. Wente: I went to Livermore public schools all the way through high school. It was during a time when the city of Livermore was growing quite a bit, because every year a new school was built. Because I lived out in the country and they picked all the country children up on buses , we were bussed around to all the new schools as they opened to help fill them up as the new neighborhoods were growing in Livermore. Many of the new neighborhoods that went in were where old vineyards were; people had sold off their land. The Wagner vineyard would be one, and there's a housing tract here in Livermore that's called the Wagner tract. My life was going to these public schools and ending up in Livermore High and graduating from there. It's the same school my father went to and graduated from. Other than schooling, I remember, virtually every weekend or after school, working on the cattle ranch with my grandfather, riding horses, looking out for the fence, checking on the cows with the calves with him; or riding in the vineyards with my father, checking on what the grapevines were doing at various times of the year. Working in the Winery C. Wente: When I got to an age where I could be of some use in the winery or working summer vacations, like my two brothers I worked in virtually every position throughout the winery. The first job I had in the winery was working on the bottling line, putting caps on the bottling line and then tailing off, casing the wines, and checking the labels. From that point on I knew that school looked pretty good [laughs], because that was not exactly my idea of what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. That is certainly all automated today and is a little bit different operation than it was then. Then I worked in the tasting room, in the office, and various jobs around. My exposure to the winery was every vacation working there or sometimes after school if an extra hand was needed. 43 Teiser: Was that unusual for a girl at that time? C. Wente: A lot of my friends, certainly through high school, had jobs or worked. I think my grandfather and my parents, particularly, never really treated me any differently from my brothers. I think they expected that we should all pull our oar and do what we needed to do. 1 think there was maybe a lesson to be learned from that, that the wine business and the farming business is hard work, but it also provides a nice lifestyle. That certainly showed in the fact that all three of us wanted to come back and be a part of it. Without that subtle lesson being learned early on, maybe Eric would have gone on to be a doctor, 1 might have been a banker, and Philip a skier, 1 don't know. [ laughs ] Teiser: Girls were not necessarily destined for jobs in wineries earlier, or were they? C. Wente: My grandmother was the first chemist or lab analyst that we had. She did all of the lab analyses for my great-uncle Herman, so she was always involved. My mother certainly, from day one that I can remember, was always involved with the entertainment and public relations side of things, which is probably the more traditional role that women in the wine business had always taken in supporting their husbands. My role at the winery is marketing now, along with all the auxiliary functions that fall under marketing. I don't think that in my mind I wanted to be winemaker. The vineyards always interested me, the cattle ranch interested me, maybe because I was much more of an outdoors person, but I always felt that I might end up on the business side or the p.r.--the marketing- side, and in fact that's what happened. Teiser: I didn't realize there was that much continuity. Stanford. Va shine ton, and Crocker Bank Teiser: C. Wente: You were at Stanford and studied history, chemistry, too? Did you study some History was my major, and I chose it because I certainly enjoyed history and thought it really gave me a broad background. It was very easy for me and allowed me to take a lot of other 44 classes that I wanted to take which were probably more business related. Stanford doesn't have an undergraduate business degree, so I ended up taking accounting, computer science, and those kinds of things. No chemistry; I don't have any chemistry background. I leave that to my brother Eric and my brother Phil. Teiser: When you got out of college, what did you intend to do immediately? C. Wente: In my senior year I was a quarter ahead at Stanford, and I took the winter quarter off and went back to Washington, D.C. , and worked as an intern for Senator [Paul] Laxalt. I very much enjoyed Washington, but during my period in Washington was when my father died, so I came back to be with my family and my mother, in particular, to support her and be around through the end of that winter quarter. Then I went back to Stanford in the spring and finished up. At that point I felt, maybe being a little independent, that I wanted to go find a job outside the winery. At some point I always felt I would come back and work at the winery, but I also felt it was in a very transitional state, and both of my brothers were getting their arms around what was going on. My grandfather was there, and my mother was also very involved. In my mind I needed to go out and establish who I was and do what I wanted to do. So I got a job with Crocker Bank as a financial analyst in their agricultural banking department. Over the next three plus years that I worked for Crocker I did financial and business planning for their commercial and agricultural banking department. I very much enjoyed that, learned a lot. They were very supportive of me and my endeavors at the bank. Teiser: In spite of your uncle Carl's association with Bank of America? C. Wente: Yes. Maybe they were eternally hopeful at that point that Wente Bros, might come toward Crocker, but I think I made it quite clear that there was a strong connection with the Bank of America. [laughs] I think they also realized that at some point I might go back and work in the family business. In fact, I had said that to them when I interviewed with them. Finally I decided to come back to the winery when Crocker started to invest a lot of time and money in me. They were going to put me in what they called their fast track management training program, at which point I felt that they were making an 45 investment and that I needed to really decide what I was going to do about the winery. At the same time, my brothers had come to me --this was in 1980 --and said, "We recognize the need for hiring someone to do marketing and public relations for the winery; we have our hands full with the vineyards and the production side. Is this something that you're interested in? If not, we're going to hire somebody else." I said, "You bet! I'd be very interested in it." 46 WENTE BROS. SINCE 1980 C. Wente: I think the timing was right at that time for me to come back, and so I did. I joined the winery in October of 1980, and I've been here ever since. Teiser: Most jobs develop as you go along. Was yours then what it is now? C. Wente: I think you'd probably get three different perspectives on that. My job is not at all like it was when I first joined the winery, and I think all jobs change as one gains experience. My brother Phil at one point had said to me, "Your training obviously was not strong on the marketing side, but as Eric felt, and we all believe, that we're fairly smart, logical individuals, we can take ideas and develop them and do things. There's nothing that we don't feel we can tackle and go after." He felt I'd be very successful in that area and could do a good job, but there needed to be some amount of guidance . I think he kept prodding my brother Eric, saying, "Are you, as president of the winery, guiding Carolyn and giving her the direction that she needs to understand where she ought to go?" I think Eric certainly had the same feeling, that he needed to be a good goal -setter for me. My feeling about coming back into the winery was that I didn't want to step on anybody's toes, because certainly somebody had been doing the marketing. It had been pretty much split up between Eric and Phil and our national marketing company, Parrott & Co. So I didn't want to come in and step on somebody's toes and say, "Okay, I'm going to take over this and take over your territory." On the other hand, I think Eric and Phil looked at me and said, "Here, you can do this," and just sort of brushed their hands. "There is more than enough to do; roll up your sleeves and get to work." That was a good, healthy 47 attitude and one that encouraged me to roll up my sleeves and go to work. Winery Goals in Transition. 1980-1990 C. Wente: For us, back in 1980, we were probably at the peak of our sales volume under the Wente brand or label. That was primarily with the Le Blanc de Blancs, Grey Riesling, and chablis at that point, which were the more moderate to lower-priced wines. Our Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blancs, Semillons were all sold out at that time; we couldn't make enough to keep up with the demand. Somehow the Le Blancs and Grey became the bigger volume items ; we were able to buy grapes from other people and increase the production more rapidly than we did with the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blancs . Teiser: You cut back on those? C. Wente: I think my father kind of saw the writing on the wall for the way the market was going and where the consumers' tastes were going- -towards the premium high end wines, the pinnacle wines being Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, or Sauvignon Blanc. If you look back during the seventies, those were the wines he was moving towards in producing, doing vineyard selections on them and making smaller, estate -bottled lots. It's not that the Grey Riesling and the Le Blanc de Blancs weren't a major part of the winery; they were a major part of the volume and the cash flow but not, I think, the direction where my father saw it going. When Eric took over the winery in 1977, when my father died, I think the winery was geared up to be much more of a product ion- driven winery and less market driven. In the last ten years, from 1980 to 1990, the three of us have really recognized the fact that the wine business is much more marketing oriented than production oriented. We've had to make those adjustments at Wente Bros., and it's been a bit of a struggle. I think a lot of people recognized Wente Bros. 1 as a white wine winery, and probably recognized it as Grey Riesling and Le Blanc de Blancs because they became such popular wines in the seventies and early eighties. Most people don't recognize the fact that Wente Bros, was the first one to produce Chardonnay with the variety labeled as such, or all the Chardonnay cloning that my grandfather and great uncle did, or all the foundation vineyards that we got into. We were truly on the premium side always; that is the backbone of our business. 48 I think that's what my brothers and I recognized and where we intend to emphasize or take the business. II C Vente: And that we needed to first start in the vineyards and make sure all of our vineyard plantings were planted to Chardonnay and Sauvignon blanc in the right areas, Cabernet in the right area. That included the expansion of vineyards down to Monterey and extending our vineyards here in Livermore . We are truly focusing on the fact that the three top varieties that we want to produce are Chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Teiser: You're fortunate in that you have your own nursery. C. Wente: Yes. You'll have to talk to Philip about this, because he certainly knows more about it. Maybe my mother talked about it, because it is probably clearer in her memory and less clear in mine about the nursery that we had down in Monterey; the number of cuttings that we sold virtually funded our vineyard. I mean, we paid off the Monterey vineyard by selling all these grape cuttings during the early seventies when all these new vineyards were flourishing. We're very grateful for that and glad to see the expansion of vineyards in California. Marketing and Promotion Teiser: As you settled into your job --even the term "marketing" hasn't been used in the wine industry so long. How did you know the functions of a marketing manager? C. Wente: I think you see a need, and you fill it. Certainly the needs arise by the questions wholesalers ask you; the materials that they want or need to sell your wines with have to fit into an overall vision of where we as a winery see ourselves and what we want to recognize and be recognized as. All of those things, interrelated, created a whole list of projects that needed to be done. I think with any list, somebody can go down the list and get those things accomplished, so it's kind of on- the -job training, if you will. [laughs] Teiser: What were the projects like? C. Wente: To start off with, since I came back in the 1980s, one of the first projects I did was to say, "Okay, what tools do we have to sell our wines? What things are coming up that we can talk 49 about that will help sell our wines and position us in the marketplace?" Probably the major thing that came up was the fact that we were going to be celebrating our centennial in 1983. That would probably have been the first major event that 1 did on the public relations side. 1 got together with Donna Vilcox, who was the general manager at that time at Concannon Vineyard. 1 Teiser: She's with you now? C. Vente: She's with us now. It was actually the first time I had met her. We got together for lunch one day and started talking about how we both had our one -hundredth anniversaries coming up, and we ought to put on some sort of joint celebration. We started brains terming. That was about a year before- -sometime in 1982 . So we planned several events for 1983 with both wineries. The largest event was what we called the centennial weekend, which was a two -day event. We had over 25,000 people come through the valley and were just amazed at the response we got from people coming out to celebrate the two wineries' birthdays. I think it awakened people's awareness to the Livermore Valley again. Because we don't have the number of wineries that are in Napa or Sonoma, I think people have forgotten a little bit about Livermore; there just aren't the numbers of wineries out there banging on everybody's door, saying, "We're from Livermore," "Livermore," "the Livermore Valley," which also helps on the marketing side. The more people you have out there saying where you're from, the greater recognition you're going to get. That was some of the reawakening in the local people's minds about the fact that there were two strong wineries out here. Since then we've had several new wineries start up in the Livermore Valley. We have a lot of projects underway, which my brother Phil will probably talk about, because he's very much into what we think is the renaissance of the Livermore Valley in terms of the vineyards and wineries. We feel there's a strong positive atmosphere for future growth in the viticulture and winery area here. Back to the centennial, I think that was a very major event that took a lot of planning, got us kicked off in the right 1992 Concannon Vineyards was acquired by Wente Bros. 50 direction, and brought a lot of attention to the one -hundred- year-old wineries. But then where do we go from there? It simply became a lot of time on the road for me, talking to different wholesalers, understanding how they saw Wente Bros., what we needed to do to convince them about who we were and where we were going. 1 think we still are working on that and working very hard at it. Teiser: I seem to remember that you were traveling with Carolyn Martini. Did you put on joint presentations? C. Wente: As you know, we had been marketing our wines with the Martini winery since the 1940s. Teiser: Through Parrott & Co.? C. Wente: Yes. Then back in 1975, I believe it was, we purchased Parrott & Co. with the Martinis from the Menzies family, who had owned it for a hundred-plus years. We continued to market our wines together, and I think that's where the strong association for California wines --Martini for reds, Wente for whites --came through, which is still fairly true, although I think there were benefits of the Wentes and Martinis splitting up back in 1988. The Martinis left Parrott & Co., and Wente bought out their portion, so it has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Wente Bros, and is our marketing arm. We have a national sales force that is still Parrott & Co. and representing brands other than Wente Bros.; they have three or four other wineries, some imports, a couple of spirits brands, and Ficklin port that we still represent nationally. Back to Martini and Wente, the Martinis, I think, upon splitting up had an opportunity. As Carolyn Martini put it, "When we sold our wines together, they'd always present Wente Chardonnay and Martini Cabernet. Now we can introduce a whole new generation to the fact that Martini produces white wines. People generally start with white wines, so it'll be a natural progression for us to go from white to red and get them into the Martini red wines; and vice versa for Wente Bros." So we both saw different marketing opportunities in the split. On the other hand, 1 think we had done business so long together that it was kind of funny to go back out into the marketplace and not be marketing with Carolyn or Mike Martini. When Carolyn and I would go on the road once or twice a year together, we'd go to various markets, do wine tastings and presentations to the wholesalers, because obviously we were both 51 in the same wholesale houses. We did travel quite a bit together, and I very much enjoyed being with her. We were a great team, because I'm a morning person and she's a late-night person, so when one of us would start dragging, the other one would pick up. [laughs] I think we both enjoyed each other. She's still a very good friend, although I don't get to see her that often because we're both so busy. Teiser: What were some other of the projects that you picked up? C. Wente: You asked me what the term "marketing" was. I sort of answered it, but marketing to Wente Bros, came under a whole umbrella of things in my job title, which included our retail operations, meaning both of our tasting rooms , one at the estate winery- - Teiser: I've just been over to the one at the estate winery. It's very attractive. C. Wente: Thank you. I guess it was one of the first tasting rooms, built and opened up back in 1968 . We thought at time that it was a very big tasting room [laughs] , but nowadays it seems fairly small for the amount of traffic and the popularity that wines have gained, and the fact that people really do like to come out and visit wineries, taste wines, and become more educated. We hope at some point to expand that tasting room and make it a bigger facility. We opened the sparkling wine cellars tasting room in 1985, and that also fell under my bailiwick- -one of the hats I wear. Also at the sparkling wine cellars tasting room we have a conference center, where we began renting rooms for conferences in 1986 and becoming more of a full -service conference center. Today that's just going gangbusters. If you drove up to my house you probably came through the parking lot that was full; they've got a conference going on there today. Georgine Woodward, who is the facility sales director, has done a tremendous job in booking the facility. I think part of that is marketing Wente Bros, and getting Wente Bros.' name out to the community. Having a lot of people come to a winery to hold a conference is a wonderful thing. They can have a rural setting, it's quiet, they can have their meetings and also have different events like tastings or tours to break up the monotony of their conferences [laughs]. All of that I developed. I have to say that I have tremendous staff who have just been really 52 the ones who have put it all together. 1 just get to help them out with it and give them a little guidance. Creating a Restaurant C. Wente: The other thing that fell under my area of responsibility was the restaurant. That was a major portion of time and energy during 1985. Teiser: How did it happen that you decided to undertake that very complex job of creating a restaurant? C. Wente: You want the real family inside story, or do you want the p.r. version? [laughs] I would say that when we purchased Cresta Blanca winery from Schenley, we had various ideas as to what we were going to do with this property. Finally we decided we wanted to get into the sparkling wine business, and this would be the ideal site to have our sparkling wine cellars --to move the secondary fermentation away from the still wine winery, the estate winery- -so that those very active yeasts weren't floating around over there to infect any of our still wines. We decided to renovate this winery, and one of the nicest buildings on the property was the old Cresta Blanca hospitality house. It was in the best condition. We couldn't quite decide what we were going to do with it. We had taken the old champagne building of Cresta Blanca and turned it into some amount of storage- -there are some tunnels that go back in that building itself where we have the sparkling wine en tirade- -and we decided to make the building itself the tasting room and visitors' center area, and upstairs put the conference center. That left really no need for the hospitality room or a tasting room, so we had this nice little building sitting there. My brother Phil felt it would be really nice to have a restaurant on the property to showcase great California wines with great California food. There was no other white -tablecloth restaurant in the valley within a half hour or forty- five minutes driving distance. Much like Domaine Chandon was to the Napa Valley, one of the first white -table -cloth restaurants that I think really kicked off the culinary boom that's gone on up there, we felt maybe starting and having the cornerstone placed here in the Livermore Valley with a good restaurant would awaken people to the fact that they didn't have to drive into San Francisco or Oakland or Berkeley to have a good meal. 53 Telser: C. Wente I said that sounded all fine and dandy and, yes, very visionary; but on the other hand, a restaurant to me was twenty- four hours a day, seven days a week, and not many of them were successful. They weren't entirely profitable, and did we really want to get into this? Eric, Phil, and I talked about it a great deal and certainly included my mother, who rolled her eyes and wasn't quite sure it was a thing we ought to be getting into. My brother Phil I think lobbied my brother Eric a little bit harder than he lobbied me, and the vote came down two for and one against, me being the one who voted against it, and somehow 1 got to run it. [laughs] I think all I knew about the restaurant business was selling wine to restaurants or dining in restaurants. Lord knows, I've dined in restaurants all across the country, in Europe, and the Far East and certainly had a distinct opinion about what kind of restaurant I wanted and what style. But had I ever had any restaurant experience? No. I think we hired some very astute, good people to help develop the restaurant, a good chef, a good general manager, etc. The restaurant business has a high rate of turnover of personnel. Ours is not too different from that, particularly in the top management, but of our wait staff we probably have five or six of the core original waiters that we hired five years ago who are still with us. I think we are stabilizing on the management and the kitchen staff as well, but we've gained a great reputation for what we're doing out here that now attracts top kitchen people and top restaurant management people to want to be out here. Traditionally, kitchen people are temperamental and have short tempers and need a lot of direction. Were you the personnel manager? Yes, and I guess that was one of the things that in developing it did take a lot of time and patience and understanding. I think 1 grew exponentially in that area, learning about restaurants, learning about people, and learning how to make a profit. One of the initial things that we had decided when we started in on this restaurant venture was that it was not just to be a p.r. function; it had to stand as its own profit center and either make it or break it. If it was not breaking even or making money, we would close the doors on it; we were not going to fund something that didn't make sense or wasn't profitable. I've been really pleased with the community's reaction and support. They've all come out and supported the restaurant, and it's been profitable. We've gained some nice awards; within the 54 Teiser: C. Wente: Teiser: first year we were recognized as one of the top one hundred restaurants in the United States in a restaurant book published by Simon & Schuster. The first year we were open, and every year since then, The Wine Spectator has recognized our wine list as being one of the best in the country; they've given us an award of excellence for it. So I think we've got some really exciting things going on, and it's ever evolving and ever changing, as I think the culinary scene is. You can't say, "I'm here, and I'm staying here." I think in the restaurant business you've always got to be changing and adjusting to what the marketplace is all about. We've certainly changed some food styles, we've changed prices, some presentation. I think we consistently try to work at improving the wine list, broadening our depth. I think we have a fairly good breadth of selections, but it's trying to always keep up with those older vintages and making sure that you lay enough of certain vintages away. We have the luxury, unlike a lot of other restaurants, of having a warehouse where we can store a lot of wine. It's not like being in downtown San Francisco, where your space is very limited. So there are some fortunate things, being out here in the country. Another advantage is that you don't have to buy your own wine. Well, we do for all of the other wineries, but, yes, for Wente Bros, wines it's a little different. Do you actually make use of some of the produce of your ranching operation? C. Wente: That was one of the other things that sort of fell under my bailiwick. When we opened the restaurant I was surprised, because I thought fish would be the number one selling item and chicken probably number two, because back in 1986 it was a very health conscious, trendy thing to have lighter, lower cholesterol, and this, that, and the other thing. At our restaurant beef was the number one selling item and lamb was number two. It may have said something for our market out here, but on the other hand, it then led us to the idea that here we had a cattle ranch. We run an approximately two hundred cow- calf operation, and why not select the top calves each year and feed them out and have a natural lean beef, one that is not grain- fed, fatty, hormone -injected, or fed to induce weight gain, and provide our customers with lean, healthful premium beef? 55 We've been fine-tuning it over the last three years now that we've been actively doing the program, and 1 think we've gotten it down to a science that works. At one point I was trying to take the entire animal that we slaughtered, use the prime cuts here, and then market the rest of it as hamburger to various restaurants around the Bay Area. Probably the best known would be Perry's in San Francisco; it was using Wente Bros, lean beef. But they were a little bit timid to market it that way on their menu, as having a lean-beef burger, and were not willing to pay the premium for a lean beef, so it may have been a little bit ahead of their time. And it was just the logistics of trying to market hamburger to all the different restaurants. We have finally gotten down to where we take the primal cuts that we want for the restaurant from the slaughter house, bring them back here and trim them out, and then just sell the rest of the animal to the slaughterhouse right then and there so that we don't have to market the entire animal. That seems to keep our kitchen staff very happy; they love the quality of the beef, and they love the whole concept of having an estate - grown product. That took us one step further, to the olive trees that we have here on the ranch. Teiser: Yes, I wondered if they had been there always. C. Wente: They were planted by Louis Mel. He imported the cuttings from France. His wife had apparently grown up with olive trees on their property in France, so he brought these over and planted them along their driveway up to their house. According to Darrell Corti, who was very helpful on this entire olive oil project, he identified the trees as being the Lucques variety, which I guess in Italian is "Lucca." As far as he knows, we were the only ones who have that variety in California, and you're no longer able to import the cuttings for them. Teiser: There is a Lucques variety imported from France. Would that have been the one Mel brought? C. Wente: Yes. Teiser: f* I think the early California Mission olive trees came from Mexico. 56 C. Wente: What we found through Darrell Corti was that the type of varieties that we had were some Mission and then this Lucques variety that Louis Mel imported. In tracing this back, Charles Wetmore, who was the founder of Cresta Blanca winery, also imported some of these olive cuttings as well. Early ripening Mission, Picholenes, and what they just call Mission are the other three types that we have on our property in addition to the Lucques. Darrell Corti was suggesting that he felt that since Mr. Mel and Mr. Wetmore were such good buddies, they probably exchanged some of these cuttings back and forth. At any rate, my grandfather had harvested these olives through about the early sixties. 1 remember as a kid the pickers coming in and picking the trees, but the price of labor for picking olives soon outgrew the revenue we got for selling the olives to Lindsay Olive or whomever during the sixties. The price of olive oil wasn't that high then. I think lately olive oil has taken off again for all its healthful benefits. We thought about whether this would be economical for us to do, and so we gave it a try. The crop just kept coming up, year after year, so all we needed to do was go out and pick it. It wasn't much of an investment [laughs]. Nick Sciabica, with Dan Sciabica and Sons in Modesto, did the custom pressing for us, and he also was very helpful. He and Darrell Corti were there when the olive oil was being pressed, and they were just amazed. I guess that to qualify as an extra-virgin olive oil, the fatty acid has to be less than .20 [two -tenths] of 1 percent, and ours was .01. So we were really excited about it. I think the quality of it is quite good. To have an extra-virgin olive oil sitting on all your trees all these years, you kind of kick yourself [laughs], but the restaurant staff is thrilled to be able to use it in the restaurant in various presentations. We do a thin-sliced beef that they drizzle some of our olive oil on, with some capers and parmigiano cheese shavings, and it's really quite tasty. And they use it on a pizzetta that they do and on some other things, and we sell it through the tasting rooms at this point. We hope to continue producing it. This last year the crop was very, very light, and we ended up not picking it because it was so light. I think it had to do with the flowering last spring; we had those very late rains that hit the flowers off, so we didn't get a very good set. Also I think the olive trees were impacted by the drought. 57 Teiser: Do you also manage your advertising program? C. Wente: Yes, I do, and we do very little advertising. I think, again, that part of our marketing philosophy is that the dollars that we could spend in advertising we could use better in the marketplace supplying point -of -sales tools for the salesmen. Being about a 200 ,000 -case winery in just domestic sales, we don't really have the dollars built into every case to have a national ad campaign. We do a little advertising here and there, but nothing that's "Galloesque. " Appellations and Label Terms Teiser: At the WITS conference early this year, you were talking about appellations and brand names. How do you rank appellations in connection with brand names? C. Wente: That's a good question. [laughter] In my opinion the whole vineyard goes from varietal, brand, and appellation, or brand, varietal, appellation. But the concept that I've dealt with most was when the BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms] came up with this idea of having appellations. Where did we fit in, where did we want to fit in, what were we going to do about it? Because nobody else was going to take the bull by the horns and get something done. Did it have importance to us? Yes, it did, because of other regulations about how you qualified for estate-bottled wines, which virtually all of our wines are. It then became a matter of pedigree, and I think that's all appellations are- -a furthering of the pedigree on the label. Having said that, I think in the past people always recognized a brand name and recognized the style of wines that you made. Today the consumer might have a little bit different perspective, because Napa Valley is a buzz word to them. I think the example I used at the WITS conference was if you were to go out and stop somebody on the street and say, "Could you name five appellations in France?" They could probably name five of the gross or large appellations, like Chablis, Burgundy (two easy ones), Champagne, Bordeaux. They might even get Loire, or they might even go down to some smaller ones like Medoc on down. But if you were to ask that same person whether he could name five California appellations, I bet you they could name Napa Valley, and they might be able to name Sonoma, but I'm 58 not sure they know Stag's Leap, Carneros , Monterey, Livermore Valley, Arroyo Seco, San Luis Obispo. So in my mind the appellation sy