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Regional  Oral  History  Office  University  of  California 

The  Bancroft  Library  Berkeley,  California 


The  Wine  Spectator  California  Winemen  Oral  History  Series 


Myron  S.  Nightingale 
MAKING  WINE  IN  CALIFORNIA,  1944-1987 


With  an  Introduction  by 
Maynard  A.  Amerine 


An  Interview  Conducted  by 

Ruth  Teiser  and  Lisa  Jacobson 

in  1987 


Copyright   ©   1988  by  The  Regents  of  the  University  of  California 


S.F.  CHRONICLE 
Monday,  November  28,  1988 

Myron  Nightingale 

Funeral  services  will  be  held 
today  for  Napa  Valley  winemaker 
Myron  Nightingale,  73,  a  dean  of 
California  viticulture  and  enology. 

Mr.  Nightingale  died  Friday  at 
St.  Helena  Hospital 

He  was  born  in  McMechen, 
W.Va.,  and  moved  to  California  in 
1929.  He  was  a  1940  graduate  of  the 
University  of  California  at  Berke 
ley. 

His  wine  career  included  jobs 
with  Italian  Swiss  Colony,  Cresta 
Blanca  and  Roma  before  moving  to 
the  Napa  Valley  and  becoming 
winemaster  for  Beringer  Brothers 
in  1971. 

Since  1983,  he  was  winemaster 
emeritus  at  the  firm's  St  Helena 
winery.  He  was  named  a  "Living 
Legend"  by  the  Napa  Valley  Vint 
ners  hi  1987. 

He  is  survived  by  his  wife  of  47 
years,  Alice;  three  sons,  Myron  Jr.  of 
Red  Bluff,  Dan  of  Napa  and  Barry 
of  Fremont,  and  two  granddaugh 
ters. 

Today's  services  are  scheduled 
for  10  a.m.  at  Morrison  Funeral  Cha 
pel  in  St  Helena. 

The  family  prefers  donations  to 
the  Scholarship  Fund  of  the  Ameri 
can  Society  of  Enology  and  Viticul 
ture,  P.©.  Box  1855,  Davis  95617. 


MYRON  S.  NIGHTINGALE 
1985 


Since  1954  the  Regional  Oral  History  Office  has  been  interviewing 
leading  participants  in  or  well -placed  witnesses  to  major  events  in  the 
development  of  Northern  California,  the  West,  and  the  Nation.   Oral 
history  is  a  modern  research  technique  involving  an  interviewee  and  an 
informed  interviewer  in  spontaneous  conversation.   The  taped  record  is 
transcribed,  lightly  edited  for  continuity  and  clarity,  and  reviewed  by 
the  interviewee.   The  resulting  manuscript  is  typed  in  final  form, 
indexed,  bound  with  photographs  and  illustrative  materials,  and  placed  in 
The  Bancroft  Library  at  the  University  of  California,  Berkeley  and  other 
research  collections  for  scholarly  use.   Because  it  is  primary  material, 
oral  history  is  not  intended  to  present  the  final,  verified,  or  complete 
narrative  of  events.   It  is  a  spoken  account,  offered  by  the  interviewee 
in  response  to  questioning,  and  as  such  it  is  reflective,  partisan, 
deeply  involved,  and  irreplaceable. 


******************************** 


All  uses  of  this  manuscript  are  covered  by  a  legal 
agreement  between  the  University  of  California  and 
Myron  S.  Nightingale  dated  10  March  1987.   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. 

Request  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  Myron  S.  Nightingale 
requires  that  he  be  notified  of  the  request  and  allowed 
thirty  days  in  which  to  respond. 

It  is  recommended  that  this  oral  history  be  cited  as 
follows : 

Myron  S.  Nightingale,  "Making  Wine  in 
California,  1944  -  1987,"  an  oral  history 
conducted  in  1987  by  Ruth  Teiser  and  Lisa 
Jacobson,  Regional  Oral  History  Office, 
The  Bancroft  Library,  University  of 
California,  Berkeley,  1988. 


Copy  no . 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  --  Myron  S.  Nightingale 

PREFACE  i 

INTRODUCTION  by  Maynard  A.  Amerine  v 

INTERVIEW  HISTORY  vi 

BRIEF  BIOGRAPHIES  vii 

INTERVIEW  WITH  MYRON  S.  NIGHTINGALE 

I  MYRON  S.  NIGHTINGALE  1 

Family  Background  and  Early  Education  1 

Work  in  the  C.C.C.  Camps  2 

Early  Interests  2 

Formative  Experiences  in  the  C.C.C.  Camps  3 

College  Education  4 

II   EARLY  EXPERIENCE  IN  THE  FOOD  INDUSTRY,  1940-1944                      5 

V.R.  Smith  Olive  Company  5 

Mission  Dry  Company  6 

Getting  into  the  Wine  Business  7 

III   HILGARD  HALL,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY                       8 

Recollections  of  Dr.  William  V.  Cruess  8 

The  Class  of  1940  9 

Recollections  of  Maynard  A.  Joslyn  9 

The  Food  Science  Department  10 

IV   SHEWAN-JONES,  1944-1949  13 

Recollections  of  Lee  Jones  13 

Brandy  Tasting  with  Mr.  Jones  14 

Jones'  Leadership  in  the  Wine  Institute  15 

Recollections  of  Elbert  M.  Brown  15 

Wine,  Brandy,  and  Champagne  16 

Consumer  Preferences  in  Wines  17 

Ownership  by  National  Distillers  19 

National  Spirits  Companies  and  the  Wine  Industry                    19 

Marketing  Practices  during  World  War  II  20 

Responsibilities  as  Wine  Chemist  20 

Educating  New  Winemakers  21 

The  Lodi  Wine  District  22 


V  ITALIAN  SWISS  COLONY.  1949-53  24 

The  Move  to  Astl  24 

Key  Personnel:   Paul  Heck,  Ed  Prati,  and  the  Rossis  25 

Wine  and  Brandy  Products  26 
Reflections  on  National  Distillers  and  the  Role  of  Big 

Corporations  in  the  Wine  Industry  26 

The  Potential  for  Increased  Wine  Consumption  27 

Bartolomeo  Coppo  28 

Enrico  Prati 's  Management  Style  29 

Photograph  of  Ed  Rossi,  Jr.  and  Rosalyn  Simis  29 

Italian  Traditions  at  Italian  Swiss  Colony  30 

Underground  Tanks  30 

VI   SCHENLEY  INDUSTRIES,  1953-1971  32 

Joining  Cresta  Blanca  32 

Schenley's  Plans  for  Cresta  Blanca  33 

The  Early  Days  of  Schenley's  Operations  in  California  34 

Upgrading  the  Cresta  Blanca  Label  35 

Del  Loma  Plant  35 

Sale  of  Schenley  Properties  to  Guild  35 

VII   BERINGER  VINEYARDS,  1971-1983  37 

Decision  to  Leave  Schenley  and  Join  Beringer  37 

Peter  Jurgens'  Management  of  Beringer  38 

Bob  Brass'  Tenure:   Acquiring  Vineyards  for  Beringer  39 

Richard  L.  Maher's  Tenure:   Capital  Improvements  39 

Nestle 's  Commitment  to  Quality  41 

Upgrading  Beringer 's  Cooperage  41 

Vineyard  Plantings  42 

Los  Hermanos  Label  43 

Winemaking  in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley  44 

Upgrading  the  Beringer  Label  46 

Herman  Wente  47 

Innovations  in  Winemaking  48 

Sulfur  Dioxide  Theories  49 

Adding  Stems  during  Fermentation  49 

Cold  Fermentations  50 

Protein  Stabilization  Theories  50 

Problems  with  Ion  Exchange  Techniques  51 

Problems  with  Metal  Contamination  52 

Grape  Varieties  53 

Grafting  54 


VIII   DEVELOPMENT  OF  BOTRYTISED  WINE  56 

Necessary  Climatic  Conditions  57 

Early  Laboratory  Experiments  at  Davis  57 

Experiments  at  Cresta  Blanca:   Perfecting  the  Technique              57 

Experiments  with  Freezing  the  Spores  59 

Botrytis  and  Grape  Varieties  59 

Natural  Incidence  of  Botrytis  60 

First  Volume  Production  at  Cresta  Blanca  61 

Grand  Cru's  Botrytised  Gewurtztraminer  62 

Public  Relations  Efforts  62 

IX  THE  CALIFORNIA  WINE  INDUSTRY  IN  THE  1980s  63 

Nestle 's  Involvement  in  Self -Education  about  Wines  63 

Nestl^'s  Investments  in  Wine  Research  63 

Educating  Nestll  about  California  Wines  64 

Knowledge  of  Winemaking  in  the  Big  Corporations  65 

Movement  of  Wine  in  Bulk  66 

Maintaining  Continuity  of  Quality  66 

The  Wine  Industry:   A  Risky  Business  67 

X  WORK  AS  A  BERINGER  CONSULTANT,  1983-PRESENT  69 

Winemaking  Responsibilities  69 

Evaluation  of  Career  with  Beringer  70 

XI   INDUSTRY  ACTIVITIES  72 

Technical  Advisory  Committee  72 

American  Society  of  Enologists  (ASE)  74 

Charter  Meeting  74 

Offices  Held  75 

Research  and  Promotional  Activities  75 

Name  Change  to  Include  Viticulture  76 

ASE  Merit  Award  77 

Establishing  Principles  of  Quality  in  Winemaking  77 

TAPE  GUIDE  79 

APPENDIX  —   "Long  road  for  winemaker,  but  lots  of  help  from 

wife",  article  from  the  Napa  Register.  April  19,  1984  80 

INDEX  83 


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  James  D.  Hart,  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;  Jack  L.  Davies,  the  1985  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  wine  making  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  wine  making  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. 

Three  master  indices  for  the  entire  series  are  being  prepared,  one  of 
general  subjects,  one  of  wines,  one  of  grapes  by  variety.   These  will  be 
available  to  researchers  at  the  conclusion  of  the  series  in  the  Regional  Oral 
History  Office  and  at  the  library  of  the  Wine  Institute, 


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  James  D.  Hart,  the  director  of 
The  Bancroft  Library. 


Ruth  Teiser 
Project  Director 
The  Wine  Spectator  California 
Winemen  Oral  History  Series 


10  September  1984 
Regional  Oral  History  Office 
486  The  Bancroft  Library 
University  of  California,  Berkeley 


iii 


CALIFORNIA  WINE   INDUSTRY  INTERVIEWS 
Interviews   Completed  by  1988 

Leon  D.    Adams.    Revitalizing  the  California  Wine  Industry  197A 

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.    Gel la.    The   Cella  Family   in  the   California  Wine  Industry  1986 

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 

William  A.  Dieppe.  Almaden  is  My  Life     1985 

Alfred  Fromm.  Marketing  California  Wine  and  Brandy     1984 

Joseph  E.  Heitz.  Creating  a  Winery  in  the  Napa  Valley     1986 

Maynard  A,  Joslyn.  A  Technologist  Views  the  California  Wine  Industry 
197  4~~ 

Amandus  N.  Kasimatis.  A  Career  in  California  Viticulture     1988 

Horace  0.  Lanza  and  Harry  Baccigaluppi.  California  Grape  Products  and 
Other  Wine  Enterprises     1971 

Louis  M.  Martini  and  Louis  P.  Martini,  Wine  Making  in  the  Napa  Valley 
1973 

Louis  P.  Martini,  A  Family  Winery  and  the  California  Wine  Industry 
1987" 

Otto  E.  Meyer.  California  Premium  Wines  and  Brandy     1973 

Norbert  C.  Mirassou  and  Edmund  A.  Mirassou,  The  Evolution  of  a  Santa  Clara 
Valley  Winery     1986 

Robert  Mondavi,  Creativity  in  the  Wine  Indsutry     1985 

Myron  S.  Nightingale.  Making  Wine  in  California.  1944-1987     1988 

Harold  P.  Olmo.  Plant  Genetics  and  New  Grape  Varieties     1976 


iv 


Antonio  Perelli-Minetti,    A  Life   in  Wine  Making  1975 

Louis  A.    Petri,    The  Petri  Family   in  the  Wine   Industry  1971 

Jefferson  E.    Peyser.    The  Law  and  the  California  Wine   Industry  1974 

Lucius   Powers.    The  Fresno  Area  and  the  California  Wine   Industry  1974 

Victor  Repetto  and  Sydney  J.    Block.    Perspectives   on  California  Wines 
1976 

Edmund  A.    Rossi.    Italian   Swiss   Colony   and   the  Wine   Industry  1971 

Arpaxat  Setrakian.   A.    Setrakian.    A  Leader  of   the   San  Joaquin  Valley  Grape 
Industry  1977 

Elie   C.    Skofis.    California  Wine   and  Brandy  Maker  1988 

Andre  Teh el ist chef f.    Grapes.   Wine,    and  Ecology  1983 

Brother  Timothy.    The  Christian  Brothers  as  Wine  Makers  1974 

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

Albert  J.  Winkler.   Viticultural  Research  at  UC  Davis    (1921-1971)  1973 


INTRODUCTION  by  Maynard  A.  Amerine 


This  interview  nicely  covers  the  saga  of  Myron  S.  Nightingale  from 
West  Virginia  to  the  Napa  Valley.   The  text  includes  Myron's  schooling, 
life  in  the  C.C.C.  camp,  college  and  the  University,  the  food  industry 
and  then  the  wine  industry.   It  ends  with  his  highly  successful  years  at 
Beringer  from  1971  to  1987.   There  is  a  chapter  on  the  history  of  the 
wines  he  and  his  wife,  Alice,  made  from  botrytised  grapes,  which  includes 
details  of  the  technique. 

The  account  indicates  that  Nightingale  has  been  making  a  wide  variety 
of  types  of  wines  from  grapes  from  Lodi,  Asti,  Livermore,  and  the  Napa 
Valley.   He  is  a  master  of  winery  organization  and  administration;  he 
knows  what  he  wants  and  why. 

There  are,  in  addition,  some  revealing  remarks  about  the  men  he  has 
been  associated  with.   For  example,  at  his  first  job  in  the  wine  industry 
he  met  Lee  Jones  and  Elbert  Brown.   He  paints  a  sharp  picture  of  Jones, 
a  softer  one  of  Brown.   He  praises  Bartolomeo  Coppo,  whom  he  met  later  at 
Italian  Swiss  Colony,  and  comments  wryly  on  Enrico  Prati's  management 
style.   He  reserves  for  the  boss  at  Schenley,  and  for  that  organization, 
his  most  acid  comments — undoubtedly  fully  deserved. 

It  has  a  happy  ending,  though.   Nightingale  got  the  job  at  Beringer 
and  lived  happily  ever  after.   In  1987  he  was  named  a  "Living  Legend"  by 
the  Napa  Valley  Vintners  for  "his  attention  to  detail,  dedication  to 
quality,  and  vast  enological  and  viticultural  experience." 


Maynard  A.  Amerine 


December  1987 

St.  Helena,  California 


vi 


INTERVIEW  HISTORY  --  Myron  S.  Nightingale 


Myron  S.  Nightingale  has  been  a  well  respected  and  well  liked  member  of 
the  California  wine  industry  since  the  1940s.   He  has  worked  for  large 
corporate  wineries  whose  influence  upon  the  course  of  the  state's  winemaking 
history  has  not  been  fully  discussed.   As  he  was  a  responsible,  equable- 
minded,  and  observant  employee,  his  account  of  the  experiences  in  these 
organizations  is  of  particular  value. 

Reflected  but  not  spelled  out  in  the  interview  is  the  influence  Myron 
Nightingale  has  had  upon  many  younger  people  who  have  worked  under  him.   Ed 
Sbragia,  who  succeeded  him  as  winemaker  at  Beringer,  articulated  what  others 
have  said  in  other  ways:   "He  didn't  just  show  you,  he  let  you  do  it.   But  he 
was  always  there  to  watch  and  guide  . . .  Myron  became  my  mentor,  teacher,  and 
good  friend." 

The  interview  sessions  were  held  in  Mr.  Nightingale's  office  in  the 

winery  at  St.  Helena  on  February  24,  March  3,  and  March  10,  1987,  with  Alice 
Nightingale  participating  in  that  of  March  3.   Lisa  Jacobson  joined  Ruth 
Teiser  in  interviewing. 

Ruth  Teiser 
Interviewer -Editor 


13  September  1988 

Regional  Oral  History  Office 

486  The  Bancroft  Library 

University  of  California  at  Berkeley 


Regional  Oral  History  Office  University  of  California 

Room  486  The  Bancroft  Library  vii        Berkeley,  California  94720 


BIOGRAPHICAL  INFORMATION 
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Room  ^86  The  Bancroft  Library  Berkeley,    California  94720 

viii 

BIOGRAPHICAL  INFORMATION 
(Please  print  or  write  clearly) 


Your  full  name 

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Date  of  birth     /2//jT//?  _  Place  of  birth      htn  ISOK  ,  Te  X  A  5 
/        / 

Father's   full  name      John 


Birthplace 


Occupation     fakiMA-j-  /%t-fa  )-  f    h 


Mother's   full  name 


Birthplace     Gha»  d  Rd     i  ds 


; 

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Occupation      Hr>h*.£  fv\a 


Where  did  you  grow  up   1       LiH/JSAU  t   Lfilif  OtMl  A. 


Present  community 


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Occupation(s)      ft 


Special  interests   or  activities 


I   MYRON  S.  NIGHTINGALE 

[Interview  1:  February  24,  1987]  //// 

Family  Background  and  Early  Education 

Teiser:    I'd  like  to  begin  by  asking  you  where  and  when  you  were  born. 

MSN:       I  was  born  back  in  West  Virginia  on  May  3,  1915,  in  a  little  town 
called  McMechen,  which  is  about  five  or  six  miles  down  the  river 
from  Wheeling,  which  at  that  time  was  the  largest  city  in  West 
Virginia.   It's  about  sixty  miles  south  of  Pittsburgh  on  the  Ohio 
River.   It  was  a  railroad,  steel  mill,  mining  area;  that  was  all 
the  industry  that  was  up  in  the  panhandle  in  the  days  when  I  was  a 
kid. 

My  father  worked  on  the  B&O  Railroad.   He  got  killed  in  1920 
working  on  the  railroad,  so  my  mother  and  I  and  my  sister  struggled 
around  for  a  while.   My  first  trip  to  California  was  in  1923  when 
my  mother  came  out  here  for  a  short  period  of  time.   In  1925,  '26, 
my  mother  remarried  and  in  1929  I  came  to  California  with  my  step 
father  and  my  mother  and  a  half-brother.   That's  how  I  got  my  roots 
down  in  California — so  I'm  almost  a  native  son.   [laughter] 

We  settled  in  Southern  California  in  Glendale  for  a  very  short 
period  of  time.   Then  I  went  to  Venice  High  School  in  '29-'30.   My 
stepfather,   who  had  worked  in  West  Virginia  for  Wheeling  Steel 
Corporation,  went  to  work  for  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation 
in  Torrance.   Obviously,  that  was  a  job,  so  we  moved  to  Torrance 
and  that's  where  I  went  to  high  school.   Later  on,  I  went  to  junior 
college  and  eventually  the  University  of  California. 


////This  symbol  indicates  that  a  tape  or  a  segment  of  a  tape  has 
begun  or  ended.   For  a  guide  to  the  tapes  see  page 


Work  in  the  C.C. C .  Camp s 


MSN:       But  the  Depression  days  from  '29-'36  I  really  spent  in  Southern 

California.   I  graduated  from  high  school  in  '33  and  in  1934  I  went 
in  the  government  C.C.C.  [Civilian  Conservation  Corps]  camps.   That 
was  one  of  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt's  babies  and  probably  one  of  the 
best  babies  he  ever  had  as  far  as  doing  something  for  the  country. 
I  was  stationed  up  at  Big  Bear  Lake  and  Lake  Arrowhead  and'  that 
area  for  two  years. 

While  I  was  up  there,  I  got  acquainted  with  a  man  who  was  the 
educational  advisor,  and  he  encouraged  me  to  go  on  to  school.   Mind 
you,  I  got  $30  a  month — $25  a  month  went  home  and  $5  I  got  to  keep. 
But  I  had  a  place  to  sleep  and  I  had  something  to  eat,  which  in 
the  thirties  was  a  prime  concern  because  it  was  really  right  in  the 
middle  of  the  Depression. 

When  I  got  out  of  the  C.C.C.  camps  in  1936,  I  went  to  school 
at  Compton  Junior  College  until  1938,  then  transferred  up  to  Cal 
at  Berkeley  in  1938. 


Early  Interests 

Teiser:    Did  you  have  any  strong  interests  in  your  early  years — as  a  young 
man  in  high  school,  say? 

MSN:       Oh,  I  guess  I  was  the  typical  teenager:   I  was  floating  all  over 

the  block.   I  don't  think  I  accomplished  very  much.   I  didn't  know 
very  much  what  I  wanted  to  do.   In  fact,  at  one  time,  when  I  first 
got  out  of  high  school,  because  I  had  been  the  editor  of  a  high 
school  newspaper  and  had  helped  with  advertising  on  our  local  paper, 
I  suddenly  decided  I  wanted  to  be  a  journalist.   So  I  applied  for 
a  scholarship  at  the  University  of  Southern  California. 
Unfortunately,  I  guess  I  wasn't  the  calibre  that  they  wanted  so  I 
gave  up  on  that . 

Of  course,  you  have  to  understand  the  times.   It  was  really  a 
mixed  period.   A  job  was  a  job,  and  everybody  was  competing  for 
jobs.   It  finally  just  got  to  me:  there  just  weren't  any  jobs. 
When  you  get  tired  of  standing  in  bread  lines,  well,  then,  you  do 
the  most  obvious  thing.   That's  when  I  jumped  into  the  C.C.C.  camps. 
I  thank  God  I  did. 


Formative  Experiences  in  the  C.C.C.  Camps 

Teiser:    Did  your  experiences  there  stand  you  in  good  stead  in  general? 

MSN:       Oh,  I  think  so.   [laughs]   In  fact,  some  of  the  things  that 

happened  to  me  in  those  camps  I  put  to  good  use  years  later.   When 
I  went  into  the  camps  I  worked  out  on  the  firebreak  for  about  four 
or  five  months.   Boy,  I  thought  I  was  really  being  persecuted 
because  you  got  out  there  behind  Lake  Arrowhead  and  out  in  that 
desert  area  toward  Bar stow  and  it  was  pretty,  pretty  dry  and  hot. 
There  was  a  Mexican  fellow  by  the  name  of  Eugene  Miranda.   I  will 
never  forget  him.   He  used  to  call  me  "Night."  One  day  he  came 
to  me  in  the  barracks.   He  says,  "How'd  you  like  to  be  a  cook?" 
"Oh,"  I  says,  "that's  great.   That  will  sure  beat  that  110°  heat 
out  there  on  that  firebreak.  "    Little  did  I  know  what  I  was 
walking  into. 

I  became  an  expert  at  cleaning  pots  and  pans  and  pretty  deep 
containers  and  the  usual  run  of  stuff.   Eventually  I  worked  my  way 
up  through  the  grades  in  the  camps  until  I  became  a  cook,  a  mess 
sergeant.   The  sequel  to  the  story  was  that  after  I  got  out  of  camps 
and  went  to  school  I  cooked  a  couple  summers  for  youth  camps.   1 
went  down  to  Southern  California  and  cooked  at  one  near  Santa  Monica, 
and  then  I  cooked  for  one  year  up  here.   The  San  Francisco  Boy's 
Club  used  to  have  a  camp  between  Willits  and  Fort  Bragg  called  Camp 
Marwedel.   So  I  cooked  there  one  summer. 

I  used  that  so-called  restaurant  experience  at  two  or  three 
places  when  I  went  to  school  at  Cal.   A  fry  cook  didn't  make  much, 
but  [laughing]  I'm  telling  you,  a  buck  was  a  buck.   I  ate  at 
Barrington  Hall,  which  was  down  on  Dwight  Way.   I  think  that  cost 
me  $16  a  month  plus  work,  and  my  room  was  $10  a  month  down  on 
Ellsworth,  right  around  the  corner.   Twenty-six  dollars  a  month, 
you  know,  and  you  really  pinch  yourself. 

Then  part  of  the  time  when  I  was  in  the  camps  there,  I  worked 
as  an  assistant  educational  advisor.   I  think  this  is  one  of  the 
things  that  kept  me  from  getting  into  a  rut.   I  thought,  "Here  I  am 
now.   When  I  get  out  I'll  get  to  do  something."  I  picked  up  things 
in  the  camps  that  made  me  become  interested  in  medicine.   I  thought 
I  would  be  a  great  doctor.   I  thought,  "This  is  what  I'm  going  to 
do." 


College  Education 

MSN:       I  made  up  my  mind  when  I  came  back  out  of  the  camps.   I  was  going 

to  go  to  college  and  I  was  going  to  study  bacteriology  and  hopefully 
get  into  medicine.   As  my  wife  says,  I'd  have  made  a  heck  of  a 
doctor.   [laughter]   But,  anyway,  I  came  back  and  went  into 
bacteriology  and  then  when  I  transferred  to  Cal  I  continued  in  that 
major.  With  some  good  advice  in  my  junior  year  at  Cal  and  with  the 
amount  of  finances  I  had  available,  I  was  told  to  forget  it  in  so 
many  words.   "Either  you  may  not  have  brains  or  you  may  not  have 
the  money — at  best  it ' s  a  big  gamble." 

Now  this  is  back  in  the  thirties.   I  really  have  to  thank  two 
men  at  Cal.   One  of  them  was  Karl  Frederick  Meyer,  who  was  the 
head  of  the  Department  of  Bacteriology  at  Berkeley  at  that  time, 
and  also  Dr.  William  Vere  Cruess,  the  late  Dr.  Cruess,  over  in  the 
College  of  Agriculture. 

Dr.  Meyer,  who  was  probably  one  of  the  greatest  pathologists 
there  ever  was,  God  bless  him,  said,  "Why  don't  you  consider  putting 
this  bacteriology  to  work  in  an  industrial  field?"  He  said,  "That's 
going  to  be  a  big  field  some  day."  So  I  went  over  and  I  talked  to 
Dr.  Cruess  at  Hilgard  Hall.   I  don't  know  how  many  evenings  I  talked 
to  Dr.  Cruess.   And  I  talked  to  Dr.  [Emil]  Mrak  over  there  who  was 
later  the  chancellor  at  Davis,  and  I  talked  to  Dr.  Reese  Vaughn  and 
Professor  George  Marsh.   All  these  men  were  in  what  was  then  the 
Food  Science  Department  at  Berkeley.   The  Food  Science  Department 
did  everything  with  foods,  including  the  production  of  wines. 

Finally,  in  my  last  year  at  Cal  I  thought,  "Well,  I've  got  to 
salvage  something  out  of  this  thing."  I  went  over  and  I  took  all 
the  upper  division  courses  I  could  find  in  what  was  then  known  as 
Fruit  Products  and  learned  about  processing  and  preservation  of  all 
types  of  fruits  and  vegetables.   Of  course,  my  bacteriology  fell 
right  in  with  that. 


II   EARLY  EXPERIENCE  IN  THE  FOOD  INDUSTRY,  1940-1944 


V.  R.  Smith  Olive  Company 


MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser: 


MSN: 


When  I  graduated  in  1940,  I  went  to  work  in  the  gas  station  for 
Standard  Oil.   I  graduated  in  May,  and  one  evening — this  was,  I 
guess,  about  November  or  December — I  got  a  letter  from  Dr.  Cruess. 
Dr.  Cruess  told  me  that  there  was  an  opening  for  a  chemist  in  the 
olive  plant  down  in  Lindsay. 

Who  headed  that  plant? 

V.  R.  Smith  of  the  V.  R.  Smith  Olive  Company. 

Cruess  says,  "If  you're  interested  I  suggest  you  get  up  there." 
Well,  I  don't  think  I  had  that  letter  in  my  hand  more  than  two  hours 
and  I  was  on  my  way,  because  this  was  '40  and  jobs  were  still  pretty 
scarce.  That  was  before  the  war,  of  course. 

I  went  up  there  and  got  the  job  at  the  V.  R.  Smith  Olive 
Company  and  I  started  out  at  $110  a  month.   I  won't  tell  you  the 
hours  because  they  started  on  Monday  morning  and  when  I  got  through 
the  following  Sunday  night  that's  when  you  got  ready  to  get  ready 
for  work  on  Monday  morning.   It  was  one  of  those  fifteen-  or 
sixteen-hour  day  jobs.  When  you  start  processing  olives  you  try  to 
do  as  much  of  it  in  the  winter  and  spring  as  you  can.   Then  when  it 
gets  into  the  summer,  then  you  really  get  into  problems  because  of 
spoilage.   My  bacteriology  really  came  in  handy  there.   I  worked 
there  from  1940  to  about  '42. 

Where  do  olives  stand  in  the  war  production  picture?  Where  they 
considered  essentials? 

I  don't  know  whether  they  were  essential  or  not.  I  know  we  were 
putting  up  an  awful  lot  of  government  contracts  with  olives.  An 
awful  lot  of  them.  I  guess  that  was  one  of  the  reasons. 


MSN:       I  got  married  in  October  '41.   Maybe  the  fact  that  I  was  married 
and  the  fact  that  I  was  working  on  some  government  contracts  kept 
me  out  of  the  draft.   I  don't  know.   It  caught  up  with  me 
eventually. 

I  worked  there  in  the  olive  plant  and,  believe  me,  that  was  an 
education  in  labor.   Long  hours.   More  than  once  I  had  my  shoes 
figuratively  taken  off  my  feet  by  the  lye  solutions.   [laughs] 
Once  I  was  so  tired  I  fell  into  a  vat  of  lye  and  that  was  -an 
interesting  situation.   But  that  ended  pretty  well  thanks  to  an 
ex-Ford  mechanic  out  of  Detroit  who  knew  what  to  do  with  some  acid 
and  water. 

I  worked  there,  in  the  middle  of  the  San  Joaquin  Valley,  until 
1942. 


Mission  Dry  Corporation 

MSN:       Along  came  1942  and  I  got  this  letter  from  the  Mission  Dry 

Corporation  in  Los  Angeles.   They  had  just  built  a  new  plant  down 
on  South  Soto  Street.   The  Mission  Dry  Corporation  was  producing 
citrus  concentrates  for  the  British  and  American  governments  in 
addition  to  their  so-called  domestic  products:  fountain  bases  for 
fountain  drinks  and  this  sort  of  stuff.   They  asked  me  if  I  would 
like  a  job  with  the  company. 

They  told  me  that  they  had  contacted  Dr.  Cruess  at  the 
University  of  California,  who  seemed  to  follow  me,  thank  God.   By 
that  time  in  1942,  I  think  I  was  up  to  $125  a  month  at  the  olive 
plant . 

So,  anyway,  I  went  down  and  I  told  Alice,  my  wife,  "Boy,  you 
know,  if  they  offer  me  $25  or  $50  a  month  more,  I'm  going  to  grab 
it . "  Lo  and  behold ,  I  got  down  there  and  there  was  a  woman  by  the 
name  of  Sara  Blangsted.   She  was  a  Danish  pharmacist  who  was  the 
chief  chemist,  and  she  hired  me.   She  says,  "Your  starting  wage  will 
be  $175  a  month."  Well,  I  didn't  know  whether  to  scrape  through  the 
bottom  of  the  floor  or  tear  the  chair  apart.   I  was  trying  to 
control  myself.   [laughter] 

She  says,  "However,  there's  something  that  you  have  to 
understand."   I  thought,  "Well,  here  we  go,  Catch  22."  She  said, 
"We  are  on  government  contracts  and  it'll  be  shift  work.   You,  of 
course,  will  get  paid  overtime,  but  there's  going  to  be  a  lot  of 
work  and  you're  going  to  be  dealing  with  a  lot  of  products."   I 
eventually  wound  up  dealing  not  only  with  running  vitamin  assays  on 
concentrates,  but  I  got  into  essential  oils  and  before  it  was  over 
I  was  even  fabricating  ice  creams  for  the  armed  services. 


MSN:       It  was  good  experience  because  it  drew  on  all  this  learning  that  I 
had  picked  up  at  Berkeley  in  the  Fruit  Products  Division,  right 
down  there  in  the  bottom  of  Hilgard  Hall  with  Professor  Cruess  and 
his  men.   I  worked  there  at  Mission  Dry  for  two-and-a-half  years 
until  '44.   Often,  my  overtime  check  there  alone  was  a  lot  more 
than  my  salary,  because  they  were  working  on  this  cost-plus 
business  and  money  was  no  object.  We  put  in  long  hours. 
Sometimes  I'd  work  for  20  hours  at  a  stretch;  until  you  drop  off 
you'd  keep  going.   I  had  a  wife  and  a  baby  on  the  way,  so  that 
dollar  looked  awfully  good. 

Eventually,  Miss  Blangsted  and  I  came  to  a  parting  of  ways. 
It  started  over  something  very,  very  innocent  [laughs]  and  grew 
and  grew  and  grew.   I  just  told  her  that  I  felt  I  had  to  change 
positions.   It  all  started  over  whether  she  had  told  me  I  could  go 
to  Oregon  or  not  on  a  trip.   I  had  saved  up  my  money  and  bought  a 
section  in  a  Pullman  car,  which  was  then  on  the  end  of  the  cars. 
Those  were  really  something.   I  says,  "I'm  going  to  see  my  father." 
She  says,  "Well,  something's  come  up,  you  can't  go."  I  says,  "I 
asked  for  this  three  months  ago."  Well,  being  young,  I  figured  to 
hell  with  it,  I'm  going.   So  I  went. 


Getting  into  the  Wine  Business 


MSN:       The  day  before  I  was  supposed  to  go — and  this  is  a  true  story — 
guess  who  calls  me  up  and  wants  to  know  if  he  can  take  me  to 
lunch?   It  was  Professor  George  Marsh,  one  of  my  professors  at  Cal. 
I  says,  "Well,  sure."   (In  those  days  you  could  get  a  pretty  good 
lunch  in  Huntington  Park  for  60c.)   We  went  to  lunch  and  right  in 
the  middle  of  the  lunch — this  is  how  I  got  started  in  the  wine 
business — he  says,  "I'm  down  here  looking  for  a  couple  of  food 
technologists,  chemist/bacteriologists.   One  request  came  from  the 
Star  Fruit  Products  up  in  Portland,  but  the  one  I'm  really  looking 
for  is  somebody  to  go  to  work  as  a  wine  chemist  up  at  Lodi."  I 
says,  "George,  you're  looking  at  him,"  and  that  was  how  I  started 
in  the  wine  business. 

Teiser:    That's  a  wonderful  story.   [laughter]   "How  to  get  into  the 
wine  business:   Start  in  C.C.C.  Camp." 


Ill   HILGARD  HALL,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 


Recollections  of  Dr.  William  V.  Cruess 

Teiser:    I'd  like  to  ask  you  to  characterize  Dr.  Cruess. 

MSN:       Dr.  Cruess,  to  me,  was  a  very  quiet  individual,  a  very  sincere 

individual.   A  very  devoted  man  to  the  University  and  to  what  he 
was  doing  with  food  products.   He  took  a  personal  interest  in 
everybody.   I  thought  he  was  a  hell  of  a  lecturer.   Very  few 
people  could  ever  hear  him,  though,  because  every  time  he  started 
talking  he  would  turn  his  face  to  the  board  and  mumble.   But  he 
was  a  really  fantastic  individual;  a  very  patient  individual.   He 
could  say  little  things  to  you  that  really  made  you  want  to  dig  in. 
Lots  of  times  he  would  have  some  of  his  students  come  back  at  night 
if  we  were  processing  peaches  or  something  where  you  just  couldn't 
finish  it  all  at  one  or  two  in  the  afternoon.   Such  remarks  as, 
"Well,  I  assume,  Nightingale,  you're  coming  back  to  work  this 
evening,  or  are  you  going  to  sit  there  and  smoke  that  cigarette?" 

It  wasn't  that  he  was  a  caustic  individual.   He  was  a  very 
knowledgeable  individual  when  it  came  to  food  and  the  preservation 
of  food.   Forty-some  years  ago,  I  believe  it  was,  he  won  the 
Nicholas  Appert  award.   Appert ,  of  course,  was  one  of  the  first  ones 
who  came  up  with  a  method  of  preserving  foods  by  canning. 
Dr.  Cruess  was  a  recipient  of  a  good  many  awards  and  he  was  really 
liked  by  his  students.   I  guess  one  of  the  reasons  I  liked  him  was 
he  was  short,  so  I  could  look  him  straight  in  the  eye  when  I  talked 
to  him. 

He  was  clearly  a  devoted  individual,  a  stickler  for  details — 
at  times,  repetitious.   I  can  still  remember  the  first  time  I 
opened  a  can  of  peas  and  graded  them  under  his  inspection,  and 
having  him  look  at  me. 

He  had  quite  a  bit  of  humor,  too.  I  can  remember  one  time — 
it  maybe  wouldn't  be  very  polite  in  this  company,  but,  anyway — he 
was  talking  about  some  of  the  wines  of  France.  He  was  showing  us 


MSN:       some  of  these  wines  one  afternoon  up  there  in  the  top  of  Hilgard 

Hall  on  the  second  or  third  floor,  and  he  says,  "We  have  some  wines 
here  from  the  Hospice  de  Beaune."  Everybody  got  very  quiet.   Here 
I  was  a  guy  out  of  theC.C.C.  camps,  two  years  out  of  junior  college 
in  Compton,  who  had  never  seen  a  bottle  of  wine.   Really,  I'd  seen 
a  bottle  of  wine,  but  didn't  know  whether  the  Hospice  de  Beaune  was 
road  or  railroad  or  what  it  was.   In  later  years,  when  I  visited 
there,  why,  I  thought  about  a  great  many  things  that  Creuss  said. 

One  of  the  things  that  happened  that  afternoon  that  brought 
the  class  down  was  he  says  after  we'd  tasted  the  wine,  "This  is 
supposed  to  be  a  very  good  example  of  the  area."  He  picked  up  his 
glass — and  I  never  will  forget  it  because  everybody  was  so  shocked — 
I  can  still  see  him — and  he  tasted  it.   He  says,  "They  misnamed  it. 
It  is  Hospice."   [laughter]   I  don't  know  whether  you  get  that  or 
not,  but  anyway  I  never  will  forget  that.   That  was  something  that 
you  didn't  expect  from  Dr.  Cruess.   I  can  still  see  him  slamming 
that  glass  down  on  the  table.* 


The  Class  of  1940 


MSN:       For  several  years  a  group  of  us  from  the  fruit  products  Class  of 
1940  used  to  have  reunions.   There  was  Charles  Crawford,  who's 
the  vice-president  of  Gallo,  and,  of  course,  Louis  Martini  down  the 
road  here  of  Martini  winery,  myself,  and  then  there  was  a  gentleman 
by  the  name  of  Ze'ev  Halperin,  and  a  gentleman  by  the  name  of  Aram 
Ohanesian.   That  was  the  so-called  Class  of  '40.   The  last  reunion 
we  had  was  over  at  El  Macero  maybe  six  or  seven  years  ago,  at 
Professor  Marsh's  house.   He  still  lives  over  there.   Of  course, 
Dr.  [Emil]  Mrak  lives  over  there  also  and  they're  up  in  their 
eighties.   Dr.  [Reese]  Vaughn's  over  there  and  he's  up  in  his 
eighties. 


Recollections  of  Maynard  A.  Joslyn 
Teiser:    You  have  had  a  reunion  with  Joslyn? 


*See  also  William  V.  Cruess,  A  Half  Century  of  Food  and  Wine 
Technology,  an  oral  history  interview  conducted  in  1966,  Regional 
Oral  History  Office,  The  Bancroft  Library,  University  of  California, 
Berkeley,  1967. 


10 


MSN:       Joslyn,  yes,  Dr.  Maynard  Joslyn.   In  fact,  one  year  we  had  it  at 

the  Silvarado  Country  Club  and  Alice  and  I  went  down  and  picked  up 
Maynard  at  the  Veterans'  Home  and  brought  him  back  that  day. 

Teiser:    Had  he  been  teaching  when  you  were  an  undergraduate? 

MSN:       Yes.   My  teachers  were  Maynard  Joslyn,  Dr.  Cruess,  Emil  Mrak, 
Professor  Marsh,  and  Dr.  Reese  Vaughn. 

Teiser:    Quite  a  stellar  group. 

MSN:       Oh,  yes,  indeed.  You  know  the  story,  of  course,  of  Dr.  Joslyn  and 
his  work  during  the  war  with  the  Australian  government.   He  did  a 
tremendous  amount  of  work  with  the  armed  services.   He  and  Cruess 
together  did  an  awful  lot  of  work  in  the  formulation  of  food  bars 
that  the  soldiers  could  take  in  the  field  and  eat  at  all  times.   He 
was  very  instrumental  in  that,  a  very  brilliant  man.  When  he  used 
to  come  into  the  classroom  we  used  to  say,  "Here  comes  Mr.  Chem 
Abstracts,"  because  he  could  quote  Chem  Abstracts  until  you  were 
blue  in  the  face.   He  was  really  quite  a  scholar. 

Teiser:    I've  heard  people  say  that  he  had  the  most  creative  mind  in  the 
department  and  over  a  period  of  years  was  the  most  original 
thinker . 

MSN:       Yes,  I  would  certainly  go  along  with  that.   The  book  that  he  and 

Maynard  Amerine  wrote  on  dessert  wine  is  almost  a  classic.   He  was 
quite  a  professor.  When  you  got  through  with  his  class,  you  knew 
you'd  been  through  a  class.   There  weren't  any  examinations  to  see 
how  many  pine  cones  there  were  on  the  top  of  a  sycamore  tree  or 
some  stupid  thing  like  that.* 


The  Food  Science  Department 


MSN: 


Comparing  it  with  other  departments  in  the  university  which  I  had 
been  exposed  to  on  occasion  over  the  years — and  that's  been  a  long 
time  now — I  really  realize  now  how  strong  a  department  that  was. 


*See  also  Maynard  A.  Joslyn,  A  Technoligist  Views  the  California 
Wine  Industry,  an  oral  history  interview  conducted  1969  and  1973, 
Regional  Oral  History  Office,  The  Bancroft  Library,  University  of 
California,  Berkeley,  1974. 


11 


MSN:       First  of  all,  it  was  not  only  strong  in  food,  but  getting  back  to 
our  own  industry  and  with  all  due  respect  to  Maynard  Amerine  and 
Dr.  [Albert  J.]  Winkler  at  the  University  of  California  at  Davis, 
in  my  opinion,  the  rebirthing  of  the  California  wine  industry  after 
Prohibition  occurred  right  there  in  Hilgard  Hall  under  the  direction 
of  William  Vere  Cruess. 


MSN:       I  mean,  he  was  a  man  that  got  in  and  pulled  the  heads  together  and 
found  out  problems  such  as  the  Fresno  mold,  which  was  actually  not 
a  mold  at  all  but  it  was  a  bacillus  that  grew  in  dessert  wines 
because  of  low  sulfur  dioxide.   Dr.  Reese  Vaughn  worked  on  that. 

Dr.  Mrak,  for  example,  selected  —  I  would  hesitate  to  even  put 
a  number  on  it  —  numerous  yeast  collections  from  the  vineyards 
throughout  the  state.   In  fact,  when  I  was  an  undergraduate,  a  man 
by  the  name  of  Finkelstein  from  Chicago  and  I  went  through  and 
worked  with  about  twenty-five  or  thirty  of  these  yeasts  to  see 
what  their  alcohol  production  was,  because  some  of  them  would 
produce  a  little  bit  of  alcohol,  some  none,  and  some,  like  the 
Saccharomyces  cerevisiae  today,  would  produce  up  to  twelve  or 
thirteen  percent. 

These  things  look  like  simple  things  now,  but  back  then  we 
had  these  spoilage  problems,  we  had  fermentation  problems.   We  had 
cold  fermentation  and  some  of  the  fermentation  techniques  that 
were  employed  in  Europe  weren't  even  employed  over  here.   Those 
had  to  be  brought  over  and  worked  in  together  with  ours.   Of 
course,  we've  developed  our  own  techniques  now.   But  between  the 
spoilage  problems  and  the  stardardization  of  wine  types  in 
California,  we  had  something  to  shoot  for.   A  lot  of  this  came 
right  out  of  the  University  of  California.   I'm  not  saying  that 
there  weren't  other  agencies  that  didn't  contribute,  but  the 
heartland  —  if  you'll  forgive  my  A,B,C  connotation  —  came  out  of  the 
University  of  California,  in  Hilgard  Hall. 

Eventually,  in  the  fifties,  that  whole  department  was 
transferred  to  Davis. 

Teiser:    Gradually,  I  guess? 

MSN:       Yes.   Dr.  Cruess  never  did  go  up  there  even  though  there's  a  hall 

named  for  him  up  there.   Dr.  Joslyn  never  went  up  there.   Of  course, 
Reese  Vaughn  and  George  Marsh  went  to  Davis.   The  expertise  that 
was  being  developed  there  at  the  university  is  what  has  propelled 
the  University  of  California  at  Davis  to  its  status  as  one  of  the 
finest  enology  and  viticulture  schools  in  the  world. 


12 


MSN:       This  all  had  a  budding  other  than  at  Davis.   I'm  sorry  that  there 
aren't  some  Davis  people  here,  because  they'd  throw  me  out,  but 
I  have  to  say  that  because  I  truly  believe  it  and  I  think  it  can 
be  substantiated.   I  think  Charles  Crawford  would  tell  you  the  same. 
They  all  worked  with  Cruess  and  they  all  had  their  wellsprings 
there,  probably. 

Cruess,  of  course,  had  worked  and  studied  with  [Frederic] 
Bioletti  and  I  don't  know  who  else.  My  first  boss  in  the  wine 
industry,  Elbert  Brown,  was  a  student  of  Cruess 's.   In  fact,  he 
and  Cruess  and  Herman  Wente  were  all  classmates  at  Cal.   Cruess 
eventually  became  a  professor  there. 


13 


IV   SHEWAN- JONES ,  1944-1949 


Recollections  of  Lee  Jones 


Teiser:    That  brings  us  to  Shewan- Jones . 

MSN:       Oh,  God,  yes.   That's  where  I  first  started  out:  Shewan- Jones 
Winery  in  Lodi. 

Lee  Jones  was  the  president.   I  never  did  meet  this  Mrs. 
Shewan.   When  I  went  in  '44  I  think  she  was  completely  out  of  the 
picture  or  way  in  the  background.   Or  maybe  she'd  passed  away  by 
then. 


Teiser:    She  died  later. 

MSN:       Did  she?  Anyway,  Lee  Jones  had  control  of  it.   There  was  a  horse 
trader  if  there  ever  was  a  horse  trader.   He  was  really  a  sharp 
individual.   He  was  crippled,  a  hunchback,  had  a  home  in  San 
Francisco.   He'd  come  up  to  Lodi,  had  a  home  up  there  on  Acampo 
Road,  a  beautiful  place  out  there.   Then  he  had  his  own  little 
guest  house  in  which  he  had  a  bar  underneath.   In  fact,  I  stayed 
there  for  a  few  months  one  time  when  I  was  looking  for  a  place. 
He  probably  had  the  largest  stockpile  of  empty  Granddad  bottles 
of  anybody  in  the  whole  United  States.   [laughter] 

I  never  had  much  to  do  with  Mr.  Jones.   He  already  treated  me 
all  right.   He'd  given  me  a  place  to  live  out  there  for  a  while 
when  I  was  looking  for  a  place  and  had  no  place  to  go.   But  you 
never  went  to  Mr.  Jones  and  asked  him  for  a  raise.   You  had  to  think 
pretty  much  what  you  were  going  to  say  and  then  just  go  in  and  blurt 
it  out  and  then  get  the  hell  out  as  fast  as  you  could.   Because  if 
you  stood  around  and  talked  to  him,  which  I  found  out,  you  got 
talked  out  of  it  before  you  knew  what  was  doing.   [laughter] 

I  told  him  one  time  when  I  went  in  and  I  asked  for  a  raise, 
"Well,  you  know,  I'm  not  here  to  trade.   I'm  no  horse  trader,  but  I — " 
He  says,  "Well,  stop  right  there.   I  am  a  horse  trader."  I  never 
will  forget  that. 


14 


Teiser:    He  had  started  as  a  gauger  as  I  understand  it. 

MSN:       That's  right,  he  was  a  government  gauger.   Also,  at  one  time,  I 

understand  that  he  sold  rabbits  in  Lodi  from  door  to  door.   He  was 
a  pretty  sharp  guy. 

Teiser:    Did  he  know  anything  about  winemaking? 

MSN:       I  don't  think  he  knew  an  awful  lot  about  winemaking.   Elbert  M.  Brown, 
my  boss,  was  the  man  he  depended  upon  for  the  wine.   Lee  liked  brandy 
pretty  well;  he  was  a  pretty  good  brandy  taster. 


Brandy  Tasting  with  Mr.  Jones 


MSN: 


I  never  will  forget  my  first  occasion  to  sit  in  on  a  brandy 
tasting  with  Mr.  Jones.   I  didn't  sit  in;  I  was  running  back  and 
forth  to  the  sink,  really,  while  he  and  Mr.  Brown  were  tasting 
brandy.   It  all  started  out  very  innocently.   Mr.  Brown  told  me  one 
morning,  "Mr.  Jones  is  coming  to  taste  brandy.  Will  you  go  down 
the  steps" — there  were  about  25  steps  down  there — "and  bring  up 
that  large  black  rubber  mat?"  "Well,  yes,  sure,  fine.   I'll  go 
down  to  bring  it  up."  I  brought  it  up — it  was  rolled  around — and  I 
just  plunked  it  in  the  co-ner  in  the  lab.   Mr.  Brown  says,  "Roll  it 
out  there  for  Mr.  Jones."   I  said,  "Where  do  you  want  me  to  lay  it 
down?"  Mr.  Brown  said,  "Lay  it  right  down  there  in  front  of  the 
bench."  So  I  did.   And  then  Mr.  Brown  told  me,  he  says,  "Now  you 
get  about  15  or  20  glasses  out  here.   Here's  four  or  five  bottles  of 
brandy.   I  want  you  to  do  some  cutting  with  these  in  various  proofs 
and  set  these  all  up  for  Mr.  Jones." 

Well,  this  was  a  thrill.   I  was  really  going  to  witness 
something  I'd  never  seen  in  my  life.   So,  I  did  this  and  Mr.  Jones 
started  in  with  tasting  the  brandy.   I  said,  "Oh,  excuse  me,  I'll 
get  you  a  bucket  before  you  spit  any."  He  says,  "I  don't  need  any 
goddamn  bucket."   [laughter]   Why  I  brought  that  mat  up  there  was 
for  him  to  spit  on.   This  mat  was  about  as  long  as  from  here  to  the 
door  [about  ten  feet].   I'm  sorry  to  tell  you  these  things,  but  it's 
a  true  story.   I  never  will  forget  that  day. 

Mr.  Jones  and  Mr.  Brown  left  the  lab  and  they  said,  "Would  you 
like  to  join  us  for  lunch?"  So  I  stared  at  them  and  I  said,  "Well, 
gee — ."   "Well,  don't  worry  about  that,  Myron,"  Mr.  Brown  says. 
"You  can  clean  that  up  when  you  get  back."  We  got  down  to  get  into 
my  car,  and  I  never  will  forget  it  because  Lee  Jones  had  an  old 
Chrysler  New  Yorker.  That  was  really  the  humbug  in  those  days,  and  I 
said,  "Mr.  Brown,  I  just  thought  of  something.   I've  got  that  brandy 
to  cut  over  there  and  about  forty  minutes  to  get  it  ready  for 


15 


MSN: 


bottling,  so  I'd  better  stay  here."  "Okay,  whatever  you  think 's 
right."  I  just  couldn't  face  going  out  to  lunch  and  coming  back  to 
clean  up  that  mess.   "When  we  get  back."  That  just  killed  me  right 
there.   But  isn't  that  funny  how  you  think  of  something  like  that? 
[laughter] 


Jones'  Leadership  in  the  Wine  Institute 


MSN:       Lee  Jones  was  also  a  powerful  political  figure  in  the  Wine  Institute 
in  those  days. 

Teiser:    So  I  understand. 
MSN:       Very  powerful. 

There  was  a  man,  also,  in  there  who  was  a  manager  of  the  Wine 
Institute  at  that  time  by  the  name  of  Harry  Caddow.   He  was  a  very 
powerful  influence,  too.   I'm  not  saying  they  weren't  honest  people- 
don  't  misunderstand  me — I'm  just  saying  that  there  was  a  lot  of 
wheeling  and  dealing  going  on  in  those  times.   Maybe  it's  very 
similar  to  the  situation  you  have  today  where  there's  actually  a 
big  institute,  but  probably  the  power  rests  in  very  few  hands. 
Unquote.   [laughter] 

Lee  Jones  was  very  influential  and  that's  the  reason  he  kept 
his  office  in  San  Francisco.   He  had  his  home  over  there  and  he 
could  be  right  there  in  the  middle  of  everybody.   The  Palace  Hotel, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  was  practically  his  second  Wine  Institute. 
That's  where  all  the  decisions  were  made. 


Recollections  of  Elbert  M.  Brown 


Teiser:    What  was  Mr.  Brown  like? 

MSN:       Brown  was  a  very  quiet  individual,  not  one  to  go  screaming  or 

anything  like  that.   He  knew  how  to  give  you  the  devil.   It  took  me 
a  long  time  to  understand  him.   First  of  all,  he  was  rather  shy  and 
one  of  the  reasons  he  was  shy  was  because  he  couldn't  hear  very  well, 
Rather  than  embarrass  himself  he  just  kept  back.   But  he  was  a  very 
brilliant  chemist  and  a  brilliant  mathematician.   Without  a  doubt, 
he  was  the  finest  winemaker  of  his  day. 

Teiser:    Is  that  right? 


16 


MSN:       Absolutely,  unqualified.   He  was  just  terrific  and  he  was  respected. 
You  could  go  up  and  down  the  breadth  of  this  state  today  and  ask  - 
about  Elbert  Brown  and  they'll  tell  you  about  Elbert  Brown.   Some 
of  the  old-timers  will  remember  him.   And,  of  course,  he  was  one  of 
Cruess's  favorite  boys. 

He  had  a  young  son,  about  twenty,  twenty-one  years  old  and  he 
was  divorced;  he  lived  by  himself.   He  used  to  come  over  to  Alice's 
place  and  mine,  where  we  lived  at  the  winery,  and  to  show  you  how 
shy  he  was,  he  would  walk  around  our  house  until  we'd  see  'him. 
He'd  never  really  come  up  the  door  and  knock  unless  there  was 
something  he  really  had  to  get  me  to  do  urgently,  and  then  it  was 
never  one  of  those  things,  you  know,  where  it's  a  panic.   He  would 
come  over  on  Sunday  afternoons  and  it  was  a  big  deal  for  us.   "Come 
on,  get  your  wife  and  the  kids  ready.   I'll  get  you  out  of  here  and 
take  you  for  a  ride."  Well,  we'd  go  up  through  the  Mother  Lode 
country,  you  know,  and  he  knew  it  pretty  well. 

Brown  was  a  man  that  really  taught  me  champagne  production. 
He  taught  me  brandy  production,  production  of  concentrate, 
production  of  fine  sherries.   He  had  one  of  the  finest  sherries 
there  was  in  the  State  of  California  right  over  there  in  the  yard  at 
Lodi,  about  1,500  Spanish  butts,  which  was  then  quite  a  chore  in 
the  sense  of  the  amount  of  upkeep  that  it  took  to  maintain  those  casks. 
But  it  was  a  pioneering  effort.   He  loved  his  sherry.   He  was 
really  a  fantastic  sherry  man.   He  knew  a  lot  about  clarifying. 
Actually,  I  almost  could  say  his  field  was  unlimited.   He  had  it  by 
the  grassroots. 

He  did  a  lot  of  work  with  the  Alcohol,  Tobacco,  and  Firearm 
division  of  the  federal  government  in  those  early  days.   For  example, 
in  the  addition  of  caramel  in  wine,  he  did  an  awful  lot  of  work,  just 
tremendous.   Probably  90  percent  of  just  the  things  that  he  did  is 
forgotten. 


Wine,  Brandy,  and  Champagne 
Teiser:    That  was  quite  a  good  winery,  was  it  not,  physically? 

MSN:       Yes,  it  was.   It  was  a  good  winery.   It  had  a  good  distillery 

there,  good  fermentation  facilities  for  the  time.  If  you  look  back 

on  it  now,  though,  you'd  say,  "My  God,  how  did  you  get  by  with  dirt 
floors  in  the  fermenting  room?" 

Teiser:    A  continuous  still? 

MSN:       Yes,  yes.   We  had  a  pot  still  there,  too. 

Teiser:     Oh,  you  did? 


17 


MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Oh,  yes,  we  had  a  big  pot  still.   Brown  was  a  great  fan  of  lees 
brandy.  We  put  out  two  brandies,  then.   We  put  out  one  brandy 
called  Lejon,  a  lees  type,  and  the  other  one,  a  straight  brandy, 
was  called  Hartley  Brandy.   The  Hartley  Brandy  was  named  after  Lee 
Jones's  son-in-law.   Then  we  also  put  out  a  red  and  a  white  wine 
there  called  Lejon  White  and  Lejon  Red.   Then  there  was  the  Lejon 
Vermouth.   Of  course,  that  eventually  went  up  to  Asti  and  Italian 
Swiss  Colony  because  the  National  Distillers,  as  you  know,  owned 
both  Asti  and  Shewan- Jones . 

What  was  your  champagne  label? 

You  know,  that's  been  so  long  ago  I  don't  remember.   We  put  that  out 
under  an  Italian  Swiss  Colony  label,  I  think,  because  it  was  only  in 
operation  down  there  at  Lodi  maybe  a  year  or  so  and  then  the  whole 
plant  was  moved  to  Italian  Swiss  Colony  of  Asti.   Later  on,  I 
think  National  Distillers  took  that  Chateau  Lejon  label  and  put  it 
on  a  champagne  bottle,  but  it  was  back  east  in  one  of  the  plants 
they  had  up  in  Ohio.   That's  where  the  Hecks  [Adolph  and  Paul  Heck] 
were.   They  came  out  here  to  California,  through  Italian  Swiss 
Colony,  and  eventually  wound  up  with  their  own  winery  at  Korbel. 


Consumer  Preferences  in  Wines 


Teiser:    What  about  the  change  in  tastes  in  wine  from  fortified,  sweet  wines 
to  table  wines:   During  that  period  when  you  were  at  Shewan-Jones , 
what  were  the  predominant  wines  that  people  drank? 

MSN:       Port,  muscatel,  and  sherry.   That  was  it.   Our  biggest  production 
there  was  the  production  of  sherry,  really.   We  made  port,  some 
muscat,  but  sherry  was  the  big  thing  there,  along  with  brandy. 

Teiser:    What  residual  sugar  was  it? 

MSN:       Oh,  we  had  a  dry  and  sweet  sherry.   If  I  remember  correctly,  the 

dry  was  around  1  percent.   The  sweet — I  think  we  had  that  up  around 
four  or  five  or  six  Balling.   I  don't  remember  exactly.   It  was 
standardized  for  its  time  at  about  19-1/2  percent  alcohol,  which, 
of  course,  was  the  law  then  in  California.   You  couldn't  make  it 
under  19-1/2  percent.   Of  course,  that  was  instituted  by  the  pioneers 
who  wanted  to  make  the  best  use  of  California  Thompson  grapes,  you 
know. 


Teiser: 


Thompson  Seedless? 


18 


MSN:       Yes.   We  finally  got  the  law  changed  to  where  we  could  cut  down  on 
the  alcohol  in  sherry  and  in  those  dessert  wines.   But  when  it 
happened,  and  that  was  years  and  years  and  years  ago,  it  was  about 
twenty-five  or  thirty  years  too  late,  because  people  had  gotten 
tired  of  those  types  of  wine.   Along  came  the  advent  of  your  dry 
wines  in  the  fifties.   That's  really  when  they  started  catching 
fire — your  dry  whites  and  your  dry  reds,  whether  they  be  a  varietal 
or  a  non-varietal  doesn't  matter. 

Teiser:    Your  red  and  white,  what  residual  sugar  were  they? 

MSN:       They  were  sweet.   The  so-called  red  and  white  we  made  there — the 

Chateau  Lejon  Red  and  White — were  sweet.   The  white  had  a  residual 
sugar  of  3-1/2  percent.   That  went  primarily  into  the  Baltimore, 
Philadelphia,  and  New  York  areas.   The  clientele  demanded  that 
there.   The  red  had  some  residual  sugar  in  it,  but  I  don't  recall 
right  offhand.   In  fact,  I  was  looking  through  some  of  my  old  notes 
from  Lodi  several  months  ago  and  I  saw  where  I  had  made  some 
calculations  for  the  addition  of  blending  wine  to  bring  up  the  sugar 
to  3-1/2  percent.   I  had  made  some  notation  that  I  had  overshot  it. 
It  was  3.75  instead  of  3.50,  or  something  like  that. 

But  we  had  a  good  business.   In  the  period  '44  through  "49,  we 
sold  about  350,000  gallons  of  Chateau  Lejon  a  year — just  out  of  that 
one  plant.   That  doesn't  sound  like  an  awful  lot,  but  it  was  an 
awful  lot  of  that  type  for  the  winery  at  that  time  in  history. 
Because  when  you  went  to  the  store,  you  bought  muscatel  and  port — 
that's  what  you  bought.   It  was  primarily  a  Jewish  population  in 
those  areas  that  wanted  that  sweet  wine,  Philadelphia  and  New  York. 
There  was  a  tremendous  market.   It  practically  sold  itself.   There 
wasn't  anybody  out  there  telling  you  that  this  wine  tastes  better 
than  this  one,  so  you'd  better  buy  mine. 

Actually,  there  was  very  little  advertising  of  wine  in  those 
days  when  you  stop  to  analyze  it.   I  haven't  gone  back  in  historical 
records  or  anything  like  that,  but  I  know  just  from  experinece.   The 
only  advertising  you'd  see  once  in  a  while  might  be  on  a  billboard, 
but  as  far  as  really  direct  advertising  on  the  radio,  it  was  just 
non-existant . 

Teiser:    Cresta  Blanca,  I  guess,  was  the  first. 

MSN:       Yes,  they  were  the  ones  that  came  booming  out  with  their  C-R-E-S-T-A 
B-L-A-N-C-A. 

The  red  and  the  white  were  sizable  pieces  of  business,  but  they 
were  very  small  compared  to  this  sherry  and  port  and  muscat. 

Teiser:    Did  you  make  much  concentrate? 


19 


MSN:       Yes,  we  didn't  have  a  big  modern  concentrator  like  you  have  today, 
but  we  made  a  lot  of  concentrate  there. 

Teiser:    Where  did  it  go? 

MSN:       Primarily  in  our  own  products — additional  sweetening  for  the 

fortified  wines  like  the  port,  muscatel,  the  sherries;  and  it  also 
went  in  the  Chateau  Lejon  Red  and  White  wines.   That's  primarily 
where  it  went . 


Ownership  by  National  Distillers 


Teiser:    Didn't  National  Distillers  dictate  your  production? 

MSN:       As  far  as  actually  what  had  to  be  produced,  I  suppose  there  were 

policies  laid  down  that  I  didn't  know  about,  but  as  far  as  running 
a  winery  was  concerned  and  how  we  did  it,  it  was  all  Lee  Jones  and 
Brown.   I'm  sure  that  National  had  something  [laughs]  to  say  about 
the  economics  of  it,  because  they  would  have  their  engineers  out 
there.   They  put  in  a  new  distillery  while  I  was  there,  in  '45  or 
'46.   Of  course,  that  all  came  out  of  National:  they  said,  "We  have 
to  have  more  facilities,  the  wine  business  is  going  to  grow." 
They  didn't  know  at  the  time  that  there  were  box  cars  and  box  cars 
of  wine  sitting  out  there  ready  to  come  back  that  they  couldn't 
shove  down  people's  throats.   I  never  will  forget  that. 


National  Spirits  Companies  and  the  Wine  Industry 


Jacobson:   Were  the  national  distillers  trying  to  create  a  demand  for  any 
particular  kinds  of  wines  by  producing  them? 

MSN:       I  don't  think  so,  no.   You  have  to  understand  that  what  happened 
was  that  the  National  Distillers  and  Schenley  and  Seagrams  had 
their  alcohol  production  curtailed  quite  a  bit  by  the  war  effort. 
Ethyl  alcohol  just  wasn't  available  in  the  form  of  hard  spirits. 
They  had  to  have  some  income,  so  they  went  into  wines.   It  was  just 
an  outlet  for  their  business,  to  get  something  to  sell,  because 
they  didn't  have  any  whiskey  to  sell,  they  didn't  have  any  gin  to 
sell,  so  they  hooked  onto  wine. 

Unfortunately,  some  of  them  had  to  pull  back  their  horns  later 
on  and  lost  their  shirts.   A  lot  of  that  wine  came  back  into  the 
wineries  and  had  to  be  converted  into  alcohol.   Then  we  went  into  all 


20 


MSN: 


these  marketing  programs  following  that.   The  only  reason  that  they 
ever  got  into  wine  was  because,  "Hey,  look,  alcohol's  going  into 
torpedos  and  a  few  other  things  and  you're  not  going  to  have  it  for 
your  whiskey." 


Marketing  Practices  during  World  War  II 


Teiser:    I  remember  there  was  a  certain  amount  of  whiskey  and  gin  on  the 

market.   Where  did  it  come  from?  Was  it  old  stocks  or  was  it  new 
production? 

MSN:       They  were  limited  as  to  their  production.   What  they  did  was  they 
came  up  to  you  and  told  you,  "Look,  if  you  want  a  case  of  whiskey, 
you're  going  to  have  to  buy  three  cases  of  wine."  This  is  how  the 
market  got  loaded  up.   Then  there  was  the  backlash  of  that  all  into 
California  and  into  the  wineries.   It  broke  a  lot  of  wineries, 
broke  up  the  economy  to  beat  the  devil,  but  that's  what  happened. 
It  was  all  under  the  table:   "You  want  the  whiskey,  you've  gotta 
take  so  many  cases  of  wine."  Here's  this  guy  with  the  warehouse 
full  of  cases,  regardless  of  how  he  was  pricing  his  whiskey, 
because  there  was  an  awful  lot  of  bootlegging  going  on.   I  know 
that  for  a  fact. 

In  a  way  it  was  very  damaging  to  the  efforts  of  the  Wine 
Institute  because  here,  after  all  these  years,  we're  still  not  a 
wine  drinking  country.  You  could  imagine  the  effect  that  that  would 
have  trying  to  get  them  to  drink  wine.   Wine  was  associated  with  one 
name  really  in  those  days  in  the  forties  and  that  was  Howard  Street. 
If  you  read  anything  about  wine,  it  wasn't  anything  good  about  it. 
"I  picked  up  this  wino  down  on  Howard  and  Such-and-Such  and  he  had 
an  empty  bottle  of  muscatel."  This  was  the  kind  of  "advertising" 
that  we  had  around  the  industry. 


Responsibilities  as  Wine  Chemist 


Teiser:    When  you  were  at  Shewan-Jones  what  were  your  own  duties? 

MSN:       When  I  was  at  Shewan-Jones  I  was  a  chemist.   A  chemist  not  in  the 

sense  that  I  stood  in  front  of  a  lab  desk  eight  hours  a  day.   A  wine 
chemist  had  to  be  out  there  in  the  fermenting  room  when  the  crush 
came.   He's  checking  temperatures;  he's  checking  the  sugar  content 
of  the  grapes;  he's  checking  the  overall  operation  of  that  facility. 
A  wine  chemist  in  the  winery  where  the  wine  is  made  was  finishing 


21 


MSN:       that  wine:  clarifying  it,  processing — whatever  it  took  to  stabilize 
it  so  that  you  would  get  a  bottle  at  your  home  or  on  the  shelf  that 
was  palatable,  that  didn't  have  a  bunch  of  stuff  in  the  bottom; 
whether  it'd  be  protein  or  tartrate  crystals,  which  everybody  thought 
was  glass  at  one  time — 

You're  sort  of  a  supervisor,  but  you  had  to  use  your  chemical 
background,  because  you  would  get  down  and  supervise  things  in  the 
plant  and  you  had  to  run  back  upstairs  and  do  your  analysis. 
That's  how  I  really  learned  something  about  the  wine  business. 


Educating  New  Winemakers 

MSN:       I  don't  think,  unfortunately,  that  some  of  the  students  today  have 
had  a  chance  to  be  exposed  to  that.   The  university  has  tried  to 
promote  working-on-the-job  programs,  but  I  don't  think  they  have 
been  very  effective,  so  a  lot  of  these  people  that  come  out  of  the 
universities  have  good  theoretical  knowledge  but  are  really 
handicapped  as  far  as  getting  any  practical  knowledge. 

For  example,  we  have  people  out  here  whose  only  responsibility 
with  fermentations  in  the  winery  is  checking  the  temperatures  off 
the  computer  morning  and  night.  Well,  what  do  you  do  when  the 
concentrator  runs  out  of  juice  at  midnight,  or  the  Brix  is  falling 
and  you  want  it  up  higher?  What  do  you  do  if  the  grapes  are 
fermenting  too  hot?  You  go  down  there  and  you  take  care  of  it 
yourself.   It's  more  than  telling  somebody  you'll  turn  a  valve  on — 
that's  crazy.   So  there's  a  lot  of  exposure  they  can  get. 


Some  of  the  students  had  no  conception  of  what  was  involved  in 
the  addition  of  wine  spirits  to  grape  wine  or  grape  juice  for 
fortifying,  although  it's  a  very  simple  thing.   It's  just  that  the 
poor  kids  never  had  a  chance  for  the  exposure.   I  know  some  of  them 
that  have  worked  for  me  in  the  last  fifteen  or  sixteen  years — and 
some  other  places,  too,  probably — thought  that  I  was  the  meanest 
(pardon  me)  SOB  that  God  ever  created.   But  I  tell  you,  it  almost 
makes  you  cry  when  they  leave,  or  have  to  leave,  for  one  reason  or 
another  and  come  up  to  you  and  say,  "Mr.  Nighingale,  I  thank  you  for 
everything  you've  done,"  because  then  I  really  feel  that  I've 
accomplished  something. 


22 


MSN: 


One  of  them  came  up  to  me,  she  says,  "You  were  rough.   I  learned  a 
few  words  from  you,  but  I'll  never  forget  you."  .  [laughter]   One  of 
those  gals  happens  to  be  Jill  Davis  who's  a  winemaker  at  Buena 
Vista.   I'm  very  proud  of  that  gal.   Doug  Davis — he  worked  with  me 
at  Asti — is  the  executive  winemaker  now  at  Sebastiani's .   So  you 
get  compensated,  and  I  know  when  those  kids  went  out  of  here,  by 
God,  they  knew  where  the  fortifying  tank  was,  and  they  knew 
what  to  do.   [laughs]   That's  what's  important.   I'm  not  saying 
that  the  ones  we  have  out  there  don't  know  anything,  because 
they're  all  very  energetic  and  most  of  them  in  the  laboratory 
today  are  very  interested  in  what  they're  doing,  for  which  I  thank 
God.   I  don't  have  very  much  respect  for  people  who  come  to  work 
at  eight  and  quit  at  five,  because  I  like  to  come  at  nine  and  quit 
at  three  myself.   [laughs] 


The  Lodi  Wine  District 


Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


When  you  were  at  Shewan- Jones  were  you  drawing  mainly  upon  the  Lodi 
area  for  your  grapes? 

Yes,  primarily  Lodi. 

Can  you  characterize  that  area  at  that  time? 

I  would  say  that  really  that  area  wasn't  known  for  its  wine  grapes. 

But  didn't  it  have  an  old  reputation  for  Zinfandel? 

It  had  an  old  reputation  for  Zinfandel.   Some  of  the  finest 
Zinfandels  in  the  country  came  out  of  there  and  even  spread  back 
into  the  hill  country.   But  what  put  Lodi  on  the  map  was  the 
shipping  of  Flame  Tokay.   I  can  still  hear  those  cars  running  at 
night.   Some  of  those  grape  vines  over  there — I'm  sure  you've  seen 
them,  I  don't  think  I'm  exaggerating — are  damn  near  two  feet  in 
diameter.   They're  huge  big  things.   Have  you  seen  them? 

No. 

Well,  if  you're  ever  over  around  Lodi  and  you  see  some  vineyards  and 
the  vines  look  big — big — you  can  bet  those  are  Tokays. 

During  the  war  years,  we  made  an  awful  lot  of  wine  out  of 
Tokays.   Yes,  we  made  concentrate  out  of  them,  we  made  brandy  out  of 
them,  and  we  made  white  wine.   When  I  first  asked  Mr.  Brown,  I  said, 
"That  isn't  a  wine  grape,  Mr.  Brown.   How  do  you  make  wine  out  of 
that?"   "You  just  do  what  I  tell  you."  He  told  me  how  much  tannin 
to  put  in  and  how  much  citric  acid  to  put  in  it  and  let  it  go.   "It'll 
come  out,"  he  says,  "with  some  alcohol  in  it." 


23 


MSN:       Lodi  was  always,  in  my  opinion,  famous  for  its  Zinfandels.   That's 
probably  one  of  the  most  outstanding  wine  varieties  of  that  area. 
In  fact,  I'm  still  buying  Lodi  Zinfandel  there.   The  first  of  the 
White  Zinfandels  that  were  produced  came  from  there.   But  that 
sleepy  little  town  was  primarily  a  shipping  center.   There's  a  lot 
of  packing  sheds,  you  know,  along  the  railroad  tracks  to 
Sacramento  Street.   And  the  wineries.   Roma  had  a  big  winery  there. 
Then  there  was  Community  [Grape  Corporation],  which  was  a  co-op, 
and  then  East  Side  [Winery]  was  a  co-op;  Bear  Creek  [Vineyard 
Association];  Del  Rio  [Winery].   Those  are  all  now  under  the  Guild 
[Wineries  and  Distilleries]  who  put  up  that  big  huge  plant  over 
there.   I  guess  that  was  back  in  the  forties. 

Teiser:    The  Lodi  area  must  have  drawn  on  a  lot  of  other  areas  then? 

MSN:       Probably  a  little  bit  up  toward  Elk  Grove  and  then  down  toward 

Manteca,  and  out  west  toward  the  islands  there  were  grapes,  too,  of 
course. 


24 


V  ITALIAN  SWISS  COLONY,  1949-1953 


The  Move  to  Asti 


Teiser:    How  did  you  happen  to  switch  to  Italian  Swiss  Colony,  or  was  it 
switching? 

MSN:       It  was  switching  all  right.   In  fact,  I  was  told  to  go.   The  man 
who  was  the  chief  chemist  at  Asti  unfortunately  differed  in  his 
opinions  with  a  gentleman  who  I  had  always  respected  very  highly 
and  was  one  of  the  pioneers  of  California  wine  industry.   That  was 
Enrico  Prati.   The  chief  chemist  up  there  at  Asti  was  relieved  of 
his  position  by  Mr.  Prati,  who  was  then  supervising  both  Asti  and 
Shewan-Jones . 

It's  a  very  interesting  and  intriguing  story  because  Enrico 
Prati  and  Lee  Jones  were  kind  of  at  loggerheads.   When  I  look  back 
now  after  all  these  years,  it  was  really  Enrico  Prati 's  desire  to 
close  Shewan-Jones  down,  and  he  did.   In  '49  he  closed  it  down,  sent 
everything  up  to  Asti,  and  that's  when  I  went  to  Asti. 

He  came  into  the  plant  one  day  and  he  called  me  over  in  the 
office,  "Mr.  Nightingale,  you  will  go  to  Asti  tomorrow."  Just  like 
that.   So  I  was  on  my  way  to  Asti. 

Teiser:    Did  Brown  go  to  Asti? 

MSN:       No,  Brown  went  to  San  Francisco. 

I  went  up  there  the  early  part  of  '49.   Several  months  later, 
Alice  moved  up  there  and  we  lived  in  Cloverdale.   That's  how  I 
got  started  at  Asti  because,  as  I  said,  it  was  all  National 
Distillers,  and  Enrico  Prati  was  in  power.   So  I  went  up  there  to 
work  on  a  much  bigger  winery,  with  much  larger  bottling  facilities 
and  everything  else.   I  was  there  until  1953. 


25 


Key  Personnel:  Paul  Heck,  Ed  Prati,  and  the  P.ossis 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Who  else  was  there  besides  Prati? 

Well,  I'll  tell  you  who  else  was  up  there.   National  Distillers 
also  sent  up  there  at  that  time  Paul  Heck.   Of  course,  as  you  know, 
Paul  Heck  and  his  brother  [Adolph]  bought  Korbel  in  the  fifties. 
They  took  over  that  operation.   Ed  Prati,  that  was  Enrico's  son, 
was  pretty  much  in  charge  of  Asti  when  I  left  there  in  '53'.   There 
was  a  missing  period,  I  don't  know  exactly  the  year,  but  I  know  it 
was  somewhere  in  the  early  fifties  when  the  Heck  brothers  went  over 
to  Korbel.*  Ed  Prati  was  working  at  Asti  when  I  went  up  there  in 
'49.   I  don't  know  whether  he  was  a  plant  superintendent  then  or 
just  what  his  title  was,  but  he  was  one  of  the  bosses.   He  was  in 
complete  charge  over  Paul  Heck  when  I  left.   I  think  that  was  one 
of  the  reasons  the  Heck  brothers  left  and  went  out  on  their  own  at 
Korbel  and  apparently  made  a  pretty  good  success  out  of  it. 

Edmund  Rossi  was  out  of  it  by  then? 
Yes,  Edmund  and  Bob. 
Robert  senior  had  died. 

Ed  Rossi,  Jr.,  who  still  works  for  the  company  down  at  Madera,  was 
working  for  Mr.  Brown  in  San  Francisco  in  the  laboratory.   They 
all  had  a  laboratory  down  there  in  the  old  ISC  building  with  a  big 
red  brick  front.   It  was  down  on  Beach  Street. 

Bob  Rossi,  Bob  Sr.'s  son,  was  down  at  the  Italian  Swiss  Colony 
plant  at  Clovis  for  a  good  many  years.   Of  course,  he's  now  with 
Heublein,  San  Francisco,  I  guess.   Ed  Jr.  is  still  down  at  Madera. 
He's  getting  up  there  too.   He's  around  sixty. 


Yes,  the  Rossis  were  a  very  powerful  influence, 
have  the  old  place  there  at  Asti,  you  know. 

Yes,  I've  seen  it. 


They  still 


I  used  to  go  up  there  and  listen  to  the  USF  basketball  games  with 
Ed  Rossi,  of  all  the  crazy  things  to  do.   What  do  you  do  in  the 
country,  you  know? 


*1954. 


26 


MSN:       He's  a  very  sincere,  dedicated,  religious  individual.   I  always  had 
the  highest  respect  for  Ed  Rossi,  Jr.   He's  a  very  clean-cut  man, 
very  honest. 


Wine  and  Brandy  Products 


Teiser:    What  was  Asti  doing  then  at  that  time? 

MSN:       Let's  put  it  this  way,  when  the  Shewan-Jones  plant  was  divided  up  in 
'49,  the  brandy  operation  went  down  to  Clovis,  Italian  Swiss  Colony 
at  Clovis. 

Teiser:    It  was  Thompson  Seedless,  I  suppose. 

MSN:       Yes,  primarily.   Anything  in  those  days  that  we  could  get  that  made 
wine  that  we  could  convert  into  alcohol.   It  isn't  as  sophisticated 
as  now  where  they  actually  make  special  lots  of  wine  for  the  brandies, 
which  is  good,  rather  than  taking  all  the  dregs. 

Asti  had  wines  being  shipped  up  there  from  Clovis,  which  were 
the  dessert  wines,  and  we  did  all  the  bottling  up  there.   All  the 
dry  wines  were  made  up  there.   I  don't  remember  the  exact  gallonage 
of  those  now  but  they  were  made  up  there,  bottled  up  there,  and 
shipped  out.   They  did  an  awful  lot  of  shipping  of  wine  out  of  that 
place  to  the  eastern  franchise  bottlers.   One  of  them  was  Gambarelli 
&  Davitto.   That  was  quite  a  business.   Probably  four  or  five  cars  of 
wine  went  out  of  Asti  every  other  day  during  the  working  week,  which 
was  pretty  good  business.   I  don't  know  how  much  money  was  in  it  for 
National  Distillers,  but  a  lot  of  tank  cars,  as  many  as  ten  cars  at  a 
crack,  went  out. 

Reflections  on  National  Distillers  and  the  Role  of  Big  Corporations 
in  the  Wine  Industry 


Teiser:    Did  National  Distillers  lay  a  heavy  hand  on  Asti  as  far  as  you  knew? 

MSN:       Not  as  far  as  the  internal  operation  was  concerned.   You  know,  it's 
funny  that  you  bring  that  up.   This  is  something  that  has  always 
upset  me  because  some  way,  some  how,  these  people  out  here  in  the 
trade,  or  let's  say  all  of  us,  got  the  idea  that  when  these  big 
companies  come  in,  the  first  thing  they  do  is  get  their  nose  in 
there  and  it's  never  going  to  be  the  same.   "They're  going  to  change 
things,"  and  it's  always  for  the  worse.   It's  really  something  that 
disturbs  me,  because  as  far  as  I'm  concerned,  the  big  corporations, 
with  few  exceptions,  have  done  nothing  but  good  for  the  California 
wine  industry. 


27 


MSN:       I  can  give  you  a  prime  example  of  a  company  that  came  in  here  that 
has  been  very  honest,  and  I  thank  God  that  I  left  the  Guild  and 
came  to  work  for  Nestle  when  the  Guild  took  over  Schenley  [properties] 
in  '71.   It's  been  a  tremendous  fortune.   We  have  the  finest 
facilities,  we  got  the  finest  of  equipment,  and  our  business  is 
right  on  top.   We  haven't  gone  through  any  depressions  in  our 
business  in  this  plant.   I  attribute  that  to  good  leadership,  good 
marketing. 

I  think  there's  a  lot  of  good  that's  come  out  of  these  big 
companies.   Let  me  give  you  another  example.   It's  a  family  company, 
but  it  gets  the  image  of  what  big  can  do.   Look  at  Gallo  wine 
company.   Probably  the  leader  as  far  as  moderately  priced  California 
table  wine  for  years  and  years  and  years.   Still  today  putting  out 
a  very  good  product.   A  company  that  has  probably  the  largest 
research  department  of  any  winery  in  the  world.   A  lot  of  that 
research  has  flowed  over  into  the  California  wine  industry.   People 
don't  give  his  boys  credit  for  it. 

I'm  not  saying  we're  all  angels.   Don't  misunderstand  me. 

Teiser:    What  about  that  great  1946  debacle  while  you  were  at  Shewan-Jones? 
Wasn't  that  caused  by  Lewis  R.  Rosenstiel? 

MSN:       Well,  I  think  a  lot  of  that  probably  was  not  only  caused  by  Mr. 

Rosenstiel,  but  maybe  a  few  other  people  in  some  other  places,  too. 
Rosenstiel,  of  course  you  know,  was  the  big  Schenley  guy,  and  Seton 
Porter  was  the  big  man  for  National  Distillers  then.   I  really 
couldn't  say,  but  I  feel  that  probably  a  lot  of  that  deluge  of  wine 
that  came  back  was  a  result  of  mismanagement  by  the  industry  itself, 
aided  and  abetted  by  some  of  these  distillers.   If  you  order  two 
cases  of  whiskey  and  I  tell  you,  "Okay,  you  put  45  cases  of  wine  on 
that  order."  You  call  me  up  and  you  say,  "What  am  I  supposed  to  do 
with  this?"   "Sell  it  if  you  want  any  more  whiskey."  So  I  think  he 
and  a  few  others  aided  and  abetted  these  things. 


The  Potential  for  Increased  Wine  Consumption 

MSN:       You  know,  this  industry  kind  of  floats  on  a  cloud  in  a  way.   If 

you've  got  the  money,  fine,  "Okay,  let's  buy  it."   But  it's  something 
you  don't  have  to  have  to  live  by.   Maybe  I  do  because  this  is  my 
income,  but  people  are  going  to  buy  that  loaf  of  bread  before  they 
do  the  wine.   You  can't  choke  it  down  their  throats. 

People  talk  about  the  increase  in  the  use  of  wine.  Well,  I'm 
happy  to  see  people  drinking  a  lot  of  wine,  particularly  Beringer. 
[laughs]  I'm  very  happy  about  that  and  I  stop  to  think  of  the 


Winemaster  Myron 
Nightingale  evaluates  a 
Fume  Blanc  sample  aged  in 
a  French  Limousin  oak. 


Ed  Sbragia  and  Myron 
sampling  Pinot  Noir. 


Myron  and  Alice 
Nightingale  hand  inspect 
each  cluster  of  Semillon 
grapes  for  the  1980 
Nightingale. 


Sketches  by  Beringer  Vineyards 


28 


MSN:       potential  that's  available  out  there  in  the  field.   Look  at  the 

areas  in  the  Bible  belt  that  never  have  been  touched  as  far  as  wine 
is  concerned.   I  wouldn't  want  to  choke  it  down  anybody's  throat, 
don't  get  me  wrong,  but  as  far  as  wine  consumption  going  up — compare 
it  with  the  soft  drink  business.   We  can  say,  "Well,  about  thirty 
years  ago  it  was  about  1.8  and  it's  now  2.2  gallons  per  capita."* 
Then  I  tell  you,  "Well,  that's  fine.   Yes,  that's  right.   We  have 
got  increased  wine  consumption."  But,  let's  take  out  all  these 
wine  coolers  and  a  few  other  things  and  see  what  we've  got. 

I  often  describe  it  at  seminars — if  you'll  pardon  my  language — 
as  the  greatest  crapshoot  in  the  world.   Oh,  yes.   It  takes  a  lot 
of  guts,  a  lot  of  foresight,  and  a  lot  of  gambles,  but  it's  the 
most  fascinating  business,  and  I  wouldn't  trade  it  for  anything  in 
the  world. 


Bartolomeo  Coppo 

Teiser:    There's  one  other  person  at  Italian  Swiss  Colony  whose  name  I've 
seen  mentioned:  Coppo. 

MSN:       Oh,  B.  Coppo,  Bartolomeo  Coppo.   I  first  got  acquainted  with  Mr. 
Coppo  in  1949,  when  I  went  to  Asti.   He  had  two  sons  working  for 
him  up  there:  one  in  the  production  department,  Louis,  and  Joe 
worked  over  in  the  bottling  part. 

I  don't  know  an  awful  lot  about  Italian  culture,  but  I  can 
tell  you  one  thing,  Mr.  B.  Coppo — as  we  call  him,  Mr.  B. — was 
probably  one  of  the  finest  gentlemen  I  ever  met  in  my  life.   I've 
met  a  lot  of  nice  people.   He  was  not  only  a  perfect  gentleman,  he 
was  a  very,  very  good  winemaker.   His  specialty,  of  course,  was  dry 
wines  and,  I  guess,  his  real  expertise  lay  in  the  field  of  red  wine. 
The  things  that  I  picked  up  on  red  wines  from  him,  table  wines,  you 
won't  find  in  any  textbooks  because  it  was  hand-to-mouth  and  you 
either  absorbed  it  or  you  didn't  absorb  it. 

I  don't  know  how  long  he  was  there.  When  I  went  there  in  '49, 
Mr.  Coppo  must  have  been  pretty  close  to  70.   He  was  very  active. 
You  know  what  they  used  to  do?  This  came  down  from  Prati.   Every 
morning  they  used  to  bring  out  the  books  of  all  the  cellar 
operations — these  big  ledgers,  you  know,  two-by-three  feet — and 
they'd  lay  three  or  four  of  them  out  on  the  production  desk  in  the 
production  department  where  they  run  all  the  cellar  movements. 
Those  would  come  out  every  morning,  and  every  night  here  would  be 
Mr.  Coppo  leading  the  path  back  to  the  safe  down  the  hall  to  put 
those  books  back  in.   All  written  in  beautiful  script,  the  most 
beautiful  handwriting  you  ever  saw  in  your  life.   Some  of  it  some  of 


-'Wine  Institute  statistics.   M.S.N. 


29 


MSN:       us  might  not  have  been  able  to  read,  but  I  think  after  a  little 

study  you  could.  I  can  still  see  that  writing:   "It  goes  from  this 

tank  to  this  tank  to  this  tank."  It  wasn't  like  a  cardex  or  a 
computer  system. 

Mr.  Coppo  was  a  hardworking  man.   He  was  there  day  and  night. 
Really,  I  think  some  of  those  people  that  worked  there  in  those 
days  had  the  fear  of  God  beat  into  them,  figuratively.   Enrico 
Prati  was  a  fine  gentleman,  but  he  was  no  slouch  when  it  came  to 
giving  orders.   I  think  B.  Coppo  was  himself  in  the  original 
Italian  Swiss  Colony  colony  up  there.   A  lot  of  these  Italian 
immigrants  got  sent  up  to  Asti,  where  they  have  their  bunkhouses, 
work,  families. 


Enrico  Prati 's  Management  Style 


Teiser:    It  must  have  been  an  interesting  place  to  work. 

MSN:       Oh,  I'm  telling  you  some  of  the  funniest  things  in  my  life  happened 
up  there,  honest  to  God,  because  these  people  were  so  used  to  taking 
orders.   There  was  only  one  man  around  that  place  who  gave  orders. 
That  was  Enrico  Prati.   If  Mr.  Prati  says,  "Everybody  gets  down  on 
their  knees,"  everybody  got  down  on  their  knees.   I've  seen  those 
guys  when  he'd  stand  in  front  of  them  and  they'd  just  stand  there 
and  shake.   I'm  not  sure  if  that's  good  or  bad;  don't  misunderstand 
me.   But  it  was  a  hangover  from  another  era,  an  era  that  we  couldn't 
even  feel. 

Teiser:    We  have  an  interesting  description  of  it  earlier  than  that,  from 
Antonio  Perelli-Minetti  when  he  first  came  to  this  country.* 


Photograph  of  Ed  Rossi,  Jr.  and  Rosie  Simis 


Teiser:    I  think  this  is  a  good  place  to  stop  today,  but  let  me  show  you  this 
picture.   That  was  probably  later  than  your  time;  was  it? 


*Antonio  Perelli-Minetti,  A  Life  in  Wine  Making,  an  oral  history 
interview  conducted  1969,  Regional  Oral  History  Office,  The  Bancroft 
Library,  University  of  California,  Berkeley,  1975. 


30 


MSN: 


Yes.   That's  Ed  Rossi,  Jr.?  Oh,  my  God,  there's  Rosie.   This  gal 
here  [points  to  picture]  was  Rosalyn.   This  girl  is  Portuguese, 
Her  name  was  Simis.   Whenver  I  used  to  get  a  little  bit  upset  with 
anything  or  wanted  to  kid  Rosie,  either  way,  I  always  gave  her  her 
full  name,  "Rosalyn  Alice  Silvera  Simis."  Yes,  that's  Rosie  Simis; 
that's  Ed  Rossi,  Jr.,  and  those  other  two,  I  don't  know  who  they 
are.   Oh,  I  haven't  seen  Rosie  for  about  four  or  five  years.   I 
don't  think  she's  changed  an  awful  lot  since  then.   This  is  a 
comparatively  late  photo,  up  at  Asti  I'm  sure. 


Italian  Traditions  at  Italian  Swiss  Colony 
[Interview  2:   March  3,  1987 ]//# 


Tesier:    I'm  very  glad  to  have  your  recollections  of  Italian  Swiss  Colony, 

because  they  fill  in  a  period  of  its  history  that  we  didn't  have  on 
the  record. 

MSN:       Yes,  that  was  quite  a  place.   The  Colony,  in  those  days,  was  almost 
a  world  apart.   It  was  its  own  little  settlement.   There  was  still 
a  lot  of  the  real  strong  Italian  tradition  there.   The  old  [Andrea] 
Sbarboro  place  down  over  the  railroad  tracks  along  the  riverhead  had 
what  they  call  a  villa.   It  was  a  Pompeii  villa-type  of  thing,  if 
you  want  to  call  it  that.   In  fact,  I  stayed  in  it  one  night.   I 
felt  like  that  was  the  first  time  I  had  slept  in  a  deep  freeze,  but 
I  stayed  there  one  night.  What  a  cool  place  that  was!   But, 
anyway,  it  was  a  very  unique  place.   I  don't  know  whether  it's  still 
standing  or  not. 

Teiser:    Yes,  it  is. 

MSN:       Is  it?   I  haven't  been  down  in  the  Colony  there  in  years.   I  guess 
I  was  over  there  maybe  nine  years  ago,  looking  for  someplace  to 
store  wine.  We  ran  out  of  space.   Brought  back  a  lot  of  memories. 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Underground  Tanks 


They  weren't  using  that  huge  tank  when  you  were  there,  were  they? 

Oh,  yes.   That  was  really  something.   You  had  to  go  back  through  a 
long  tunnel  to  get  back  to  the  tanks.   They  were  underground, 
insulated  by  good  Mother  Earth.   There  were  two  or  three  tanks  back 


Staff  tasting  as  Asti,  early  1960 's.   Left  to  right:   Edmund  A.  Rossi,  Jr., 
Peter  Swans ton,  Rosalyn  Simis,  George  Kay,  and  Minoro  Okino. 


31 


MSN:       there,  but  I  forget  what  the  size  was  now.   I  think  it  was  somewhere 
around  a  hundred  thousand  gallons  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand.* 

Teiser:    It  was  a  single  one  before  the  earthquake,  I  think. 

MSN:       Yes,  that's  right.   The  only  way  to  get  to  it  was  through  this 

tunnel.   You  could  go  down  through  the  top,  but  to  get  wine  out  of 
it  to  clean  it,  you  had  to  go  through  this  long,  windy  tunnel.   I 
remember  very  distinctly  the  first  time  I  went  through  that,  because 
they  kept  it  white-washed.   Even  as  short  as  I  am,  I  had  to  bend 
over,  and  if  you  weren't  careful  you  hit  the  sides.   I  came  out  of 
there  looking  like  I'd  been  hit  by  a  white-wash  brush  once  in  a 
while.   The  tank  was  all  concrete.   It  was  very  difficult  to  keep 
clean. 

[brief  interruption] 

Teiser:    Ed  Rossi,  Jr.  told  me  that  he  and  his  cousin  used  to  play  in  that 
tunnel  when  they  were  kids,  and  they'd  scare  each  other.   They'd 
tell  each  other  about  ghosts. 

MSN:       Yes,  Ed  did  all  sorts  of  things.   They  even  had  dances  back  in 
those  tanks  one  time.** 

Teiser:    Yes,  I  have  a  picture  with  a  band  and  everything. 


*It  held  500,000  gallons  when  built  in  1898,  but  after  the 
earthquake  of  1906  it  was  rebuilt  and  divided  into  three  sections 
with  a  total  capacity  of  a  little  more  than  300,000  gallons. 
**To  celebrate  the  completion  of  the  original  tank. 


32 


VI   SCHENLEY  INDUSTRIES,  1953-1971 


Joining  Cresta  Blanca 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser; 


MSN: 


So  in  '53  you  went  to  Schenley. 

Yes,  in  1953  I  went  down  to  Schenley.   Schenley  came  to  me  and  told 
me  that  they  wanted  a  winemaker  down  at  Cresta  Blanca.   They 
wanted  to  know  if  I  was  interested.  You  better  believe  I  was 
interested  for  $125  more  a  month,  but  in  addition  to  that — although 
it  had  its  advantages  and  disadvantages — they  gave  me  a  nice  place 
on  the  property,  which  was  furnished.   Pretty  nice  house:  all 
hardwood  floors,  which  was  pretty  good  for  that  time.   I  had  three 
sons  and  had  two  bedrooms;  the  company  later  on  even  built  on 
another  bedroom,  a  big  huge  bedroom,  and  a  bathroom.   But,  anyway, 
I  went  down  there  and  went  to  work  in  1953 . 


How  did  Schenley  find  you? 
expertise? 


How  do  you  think  they  knew  about  your 


I  don't  know.   I  guess  I  was  quite  active  on  the  Wine  Institute  and 
Technical  Advisory  Committee.   Maybe  I  was  the  only  one  they  could 
find.   I  don't  know.   [laughs] 

But  anyway,  they  came  to  me,  and  that's  a  nice  position  to  be 
in.  We  were  living  in  Cloverdale  in  a  rented  place  Alice  and  I  got 
when  I  moved  up  there  from  Lodi.   I  hated  to  leave  because  we'd  put 
a  lot  of  work  into  the  place  that  we  were  renting  from  an  ex-San 
Francisco  business  lady  by  the  name  of  R.  H.  Jones.   She  had  a 
notary  public  office  down  on  Washington  Street.   From  the  beginning 
of  the  1900s,  her  husband,  who  was  much  older  than  her,  was  in  the 
immigration  business.   His  particular  field  was  the  Chinese.   I 
don't  know  how  much  of  it  was  legal  and  how  much  of  it  was  illegal, 
but  suffice  it  to  say  when  they  did  bring  in  certain  parties, 
Asians,  why  she  would  go  to  the  immigration  office  and  make  sure 
they  were  well  provided  with  things  and  arrange  all  the  papers.   I'm 
sure  they  had  a  lot  of  connections  in  Chinatown.   So  she  was 
a  very  astute  businesswoman. 


33 


MSN: 


She  bought  this  place  and  her  husband  passed  away  in  the  thirties. 
Very  old  place.   In  fact,  I  still  remember  pulling  some  of  the 
nails  out  of  the  boards  on  it.   There  were  two  houses  with  a  lot 
separating  them  and  they  had  these  old  square  nails  in  them,  in  the 
wood.   But,  anyway,  she  kind  of  took  a  liking  to  Alice  and  me,  so  we 
put  a  lot  of  personal  effort  into  the  place.   There  was  this  lot 
between  the  houses  and  we  landscaped  it,  but  she  helped  us.   She 
put  in  a  little  pool  so  the  kids  could  wade,  since  it  gets  awful 
hot  up  there.  Well,  that  was  pretty  nice  to  have  a  huge,  big  yard 
all  in  grass,  you  know,  right  there  in  Cloverdale. 

But  finally  we  left  and  we  went  down  to  Schenley,  money  and 
a  chance  at  a  better  position  as  a  winemaker  at  Cresta  Blanca  [at 
Livermore] .   I  stayed  there  from  '53  until  '62,  when  I  transferred 
to  Fresno. 


Schenley 's  Plans  for  Cresta  Blanca 


Tesier:    What  plans  did  Schenley  have  for  Cresta  Blanca  when  you  went  there? 

MSN:       It  was  the  same  as  all  the  other  big  distillers:  they  were  looking 
for  a  source  of  income  other  than  pure  distilled  spirits.   National 
Distillers  had  long  since  gone  into  petrochemicals.   So  this  thing 
with  Schenley,  I  think,  was  just  a  hangover  from  the  war  effort, 
because  Schenley  had  plants  up  at  Elk  Grove.   At  one  time  they 
owned  this  beautiful  building  up  the  road  here, 
Greystone. 

Teiser:    What  kind  of  wines  did  they  want  to  make  at  Cresta  Blanca? 

MSN:       I'll  tell  you,  Cresta  Blanca  at  one  time  had  probably  the  finest 
reputation  for  some  of  the  white  wines,  right  alongside  of  Wente. 
Through  a  series  of  political  maneuvers,  family  maneuvers  et  cetera, 
even  before  Schenley  got  in  there,  there  was  some  upheaval  in  the 
company.   Then  Schenley  took  it  over — a  whiskey  company,  in  fact. 
As  far  as  putting  out  real  premium  wines,  they  said  they  wanted  to 
do  it,  but  I  got  really  very  little  support  from  them.   Everything 
was  a  struggle  there,  everything  was  a  pair-of-pliers-and-a-piece- 
of-bailing-wire  effort. 

Rosenstiel,  sitting  back  there  in  New  York  City  and  maybe 
justly  so  because  after  all  it  was  his  money  and  his  business, 
certainly  saw  more  profit  in  $5  Ancient  Age  going  down  the  bottling 
line  at  140  bottles  a  minute,  than  a  bottle  of  wine  which  was  $1.69 
or  $1.70  if  it  was  Cresta  Blanca  or  maybe  $.80  or  $.85  if  it  was 
Roma — because  they  owned  Roma  also. 


34 


MSN: 


The  Schenley  organization  had  a  lot  of  good  things  about  it,  but 
as  far  as  going  ahead  in  the  business,  particularly  the  wine 
business,  their  heart  just  wasn't  there.   I  don't  think  it  ever 
was  there  because  for  every  dollar  that  was  put  out  for  capital 
expenditures  by  Schenley  in  those  days,  as  far  as  I'm  concerned, 
probably  two  cents  of  that  dollar  went  in  the  wine  business;  the 
rest  of  it  was  in  the  distilled  spirits  section. 

Just  to  show  you  their  philosophy  and  their  long-term 
projections,  which  as  far  as  the  wine  industry  was  concerned  were 
practically  nil,  when  they  sold  out  the  [wine]  business  in  '71  to 
Guild,  was  just  when  the  wine  business  was  starting  to  go  uphill. 


The  Early  Days  of  Schenley 's  Operations  in  California 


Teiser:    Did  you  ever  know  Lucien  Johnson,  the  former  owner? 

MSN:       No,  I  never  did  know  him.   Leon  Adams  has  talked  to  me  about  him 
quite  a  bit. 

The  early  history  there  of  that  operation  I  don't  know. 

Teiser:    There  was,  I  assume,  nothing  left  of  the  Wetmore  tradition  then,  or 
very  little,  by  the  time  you  got  there? 

MSN:       By  the  time  I  got  there  the  only  thing  that  was  left  of  the  Wetmore 
was  one  of  the  Wetmores  was  buried  out  on  a  hill  behind  the  winery 
there.   I  can't  remember  which  of  the  Wetmores  it  was  now. 

I  remember  because  right  down  on  the  rock  there  used  to  be  a 
little  geranium  that'd  come  up  every  spring;  then  it  didn't  get 
water,  so  it  went  right  back  down. 

But  to  put  it  mildly,  Schenley  bastardized  that  label  because, 

first  of  all,  I  understand  during  the  war  years  they  were  bringing 

in  wine  from  Elk  Grove,  shooting  it  in  one  door  and  bottling  it  and 

shooting  it  out  the  other  door.   So  there  wasn't  any  long-term 

planning.   I'm  not  saying  that  some  of  the  same  kind  of  stuff  didn't 

go  on  in  the  wine  business,  because  I'm  sure  it  did,  but  that  was 
just  the  way  it  was. 


35 


Upgrading  the  Cresta  Blanca  Label 


MSN:       When  I  went  to  Cresta  Blanca  it  was  all  explained  to  me,  "We're 

going  to  have  a  rebirth  of  this  place."  I  worked  very  hard  there 
and  I  did,  I  feel,  bring  the  label  up,  and  we  got  recognition  of 
the  label,  particularly  at  the  California  State  Fair.   California 
started  to  realize,  and  the  Wente  Brothers  and  the  Concannon  winery 
that's  down  there,  that,  "Hey,  Cresta  Blanca 's  coming  alive  out 
there  in  the  Arroyo."   I  can  get  very  enthusiastic  about  it,  but  it 
was  always  a  sort  of  empty-feeling  enthusiasm.   In  other  words,  am 
I  riding  a  bubble  here,  and  when's  it  going  to  burst?  Well,  after 
18  years  with  them  it  really  burst  on  me,  because  for  my  faithful 
service  and  the  efforts  that  I  put  forth,  I  was  given  three  weeks 
vacation  pay  and  terminated  when  the  Guild  took  over  in  1971. 

That's  a  very  long  story.   The  Guild  had  offered  me  a  position 
when  they  took  it  over.   I  was,  of  course,  down  at  Fresno  at 
Schenley  headquarters.   I  had  been  transferred  down  there  in  1962 
from  Cresta  Blanca  at  Livermore.   So  I  worked  down  there  as  chief 
inventory  controller  of  the  wines  of  the  Roma  plant  and,  of  course, 
I  had  [responsibility  for]  the  Cresta  Blanca,  Livermore  winery  and 
the  Cresta  Blanca  down  at  Delano,  plus  Kingsburg. 


Delano  Plant 


Teiser:    What  were  they  making  at  Delano? 

MSN:       When  I  went  down  there  in  '62  we  were  making  dry  reds,  dry  whites, 
ports,  sherries,  white  port.   The  dry  whites  and  dry  reds  were,  of 
course,  non-varietal.   The  whites  were  made  out  of  anything  we 
got  our  hands  on — if  you  want  to  be  honest  about  it,  probably  80  or 
85  percent  Thompson  Seedless.   They  jokingly  used  to  say  that  the 
Thompson  Seedless  was  the  great  Johannisberg  Riesling  of  the  San 
Joaquin  Valley.   [laughter] 

There  was  a  fellow  by  the  name  of  Chet  Steinhauer,  though, 
that  ran  a  good  ship.   He  has  since  now  retired.   He  went  to  work 
for  the  Guild  in  his  retirement.   He  was  a  good  man  and  he  really 
tried  to  do  things  down  there  in  Delano  as  far  as  the  dry  wine 
making  was  concerned. 


36 


Sale  of  Schenley  Properties  to  Guild 

Teiser:    Who  has  that  plant  now? 

MSN:       The  Guild  owns  that  plant.   I  think  the  Guild  still  owns  it.   I 
think  they  were  trying  to  sell  it.   I  don't  know  whether  they've 
sold  in  the  last  year  or  two  or  not,  but  it's  closed  down  completely 
now.   They  put  a  lot  of  money  in  it.   The  Guild  had  some  ideas 
about  what  they  were  going  to  do  with  these  plants,  but  after  all 
they  were  working  on  the  farmer ' s  money  and  maybe  he  had  something 
to  say  about  that,  too.   Then,  I  guess,  there  was  some  question 
about  the  leadership,  without  going  into  names.   The  leader  of  the 
Guild  at  the  time  resigned  or  departed  that  organization  several 
years  ago,  so  they  have  struggled  along.   But  as  far  as  their 
relative  position  to  somebody  like  Gallo,  or  even  Almaden,  it  is 
very  small.   I  don't  know  just  what  their  ranking  is  now,  but 
they're  pretty  far  down  the  list.   It's  a  co-op;  they  were  beset  by 
money  problems.   I  just  thank  God  that  I  made  the  decision  to  go  to 
Beringer . 


37 


VII   BERINGER  VINEYARDS,  1971-1983 


Decision  to  Leave  Schenley  and  Join  Beringer 

MSN:       It  was  probably  one  of  the  smartest  decisions  that  I  ever  made  in  my 
life  as  far  as  this  crazy  business  is  concerned.   I  just  felt  from 
a  philosophical  standpoint  that  at  age  56,  which  I  was  then,  I 
thought  to  myself,  "What  is  there  in  this  wine  business?  Do  I  want 
to  stay  in  this  wine  business?"   "Yes,  I  want  to  stay  in  it, 
because  I  have  to  stay  in  it.   That's  the  only  thing  I  really  know 
now."  But  there  I  was  stewing  about  what  was  going  to  happen, 
because  I  was  caught  by  what  Schenley  was  telling  me  was  going  to 
happen  if  I  didn't  go  to  work  for  the  Guild.   They  didn't  tell  me 
that  until  the  last  minute,  and  then  they  told  me,  "Well,  since 
you've  really  decided  not  to  go  to  work  for  the  Guild,  why,  we  have 
decided  to  keep  you  on  here,"  after  they  had  already  released  me. 

Well,  I  could  see  through  the  great  Schenley  organization. 
I'd  been  with  them  eighteen  years.   I  figured  no  way! 

Teiser:    Would  they  have  put  you  in  the  Fresno  distillery  that  they  kept? 

MSN:       Yes,  they  would  have  put  me  in  the  distillery  making  wines  for  the 
Dubonnet  product  and  maybe  wines  for  some  of  the  special  whiskeys 
for  blending.   But  I  figured  after  they  had  made  good  use  of  me  then 
I  would  have  been  out  in  the  street  somewhere,  probably. 

Along  that  line,  that  plant  subsequently  was  closed  down  as  an 
operation.   Even  Schenley  closed  it  out.   They  divided  Roma  up  with 
the  Guild  and  they  kept  a  portion  of  that  operation  as  their  own. 
That's  since  been  shut  down. 

They  finally  called  me  in  after  they'd  told  me  this  and  this 
and  this,  and  they  said,  "Well,  Mr.  Nightingale,  if  you  don't  stay 
with  us,  why,  there'll  be  no  severance  pay," — they'd  promised  me 
about  $10,000  severance  pay — "and  you  get  your  standard  three  weeks 


38 


MSN: 


vacation!   That's  it."   Just  two  or  three  days  before  that,  Harry 
Serlis — who  was  the  president  of  the  Wine  Institute  at  the  time, 
a  very  knowledgeable  wine  man  from  my  book,  at  least  on  marketing — 
called  me  up  in  Fresno  one  afternoon  and  he  said,  "Myron,  how  would 
you  like  to  go  up  to  the  Napa  Valley?"  Well,  it  almost  took  me  back 
to  the  day  that  I  went  to  work  for  Mission  Dry  when  I  was  shaking 
so  hard  in  my  shoes  that  I  didn't  know  whether  to  tell  him,  "Yes, 
I'll  take  that,"  or  what!   I  said,  "Yes,  I'm  definitely  interested." 

After  about  two  or  three  meetings  with  the  Nestle  people  at 
the  Clift  Hotel  in  San  Francisco,  thanks  to  Harry  Serlis,  I  came  to 
work  up  here  at  Beringer. 


Peter  Jurgens's  Management  of  Beringer 


MSN: 

Teiser : 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 


Peter  Jurgens ,  who  was  the  ex-president  of  Almaden  vineyards,  quite 
a  wine  promoter,  was  the  president  then.   He  had  just  come  to  work 
for  Nestle. 


I  think  the  sale  was  actually 


Nestle  had  just  bought  Beringer? 

Yes,  they  had  bought  it  in  '70. 
consummated  in  January  of  '71. 

January  11. 


Is  that  when  it  was?   Because  I  came  to  work  here  in  March.   Peter 
Jurgens  is  still  alive,  and  I  think  he  lives  down  in  San  Francisco, 
out  there  in  the  Marina  somewhere. 

Jurgens  is,  yes.   I've  talked  to  him  on  the  phone  in  recent  years. 
What  a  guy!   God. 

I  came  up  here  under  him  as  a  winemaker  and  he  really  gave  me 
a  free  hand.   I  guess  you  could  put  it  that  way,  because  after 
working  with  Schenley  for  18  years — where  you  never  knew  which  flag 
was  going  to  go  up  and  when  you  were  needed  whether  it  was  five 
o'clock  at  night  or  seven  in  the  morning  or  three  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  or  four  in  the  morning  when  Mr.  Rosenstiel  rolled  out  of 
bed  and  it  was  seven  o'clock  back  there  and  he  wanted  some  answers- 
it  took  me  a  while  to  get  adjusted  to  this  place. 

But  I  think,  with  all  due  respect  to  Peter,  most  of  his 
objectives  here  at  Beringer  were  very  short  range.   I  feel  that 
Nestle  was  looking  for  a  long-term  position,  particularly  when  I 


39 


MSN:       look  back  now  to  when  Peter  resigned  and  a  gentleman  by  the  name  of 
Bob  Bras,  from  Nest le,  came  in  here  as  the  president.   He's  now 
since  passed  away,  but  he  is  the  man  that  put  Taster's  Choice 
coffee  on  the  market  for  Nestle". 


Bob  Bras's  Tenure:  Acquiring  Vineyards  for  Beringer 

MSN:       He  didn't  know  anything  about  the  wine  business,  but  he  was  a 

fairly  good  marketing  man;  he  had  some  crazy  ideas  because  he  had 
some  money  behind  him.   And  he  got  a  few  things  done.   We  bought 
grapes.   He  was  a  great  guy  to  buy  grapes.   Everybody  thought  he 
was  nuts  at  the  time,  but  he  bought  a  lot  of  vineyards.   See,  this 
place  only  had  about  600  acres  of  vineyards  when  I  came  here.   Bob 
Bras  got  in  and  he  says,  "We're  going  to  have  a  winery  in  the  years 
to  come.   We're  going  to  need  grapes  and  we're  going  to  have  to 
have  a  good  plant  to  process  them  in."  So  to  that  extent  he  was 
very  active  in  acquiring  ground.   We  acquired  ground  all  over  the 
Napa  Valley  here.   We  have  Knight's  Valley,  but  we  acquired  more 
up  there.   We  started  out  here  with  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood 
of  600  acres.   Now  you're  looking  at  somewhere  between  2,500  and 
3,000  acres.   Now  there's  a  few  hundred  of  that  that  has  been 
ripped  out — it's  going  to  be  replanted — so  you're  looking  at, 
conservatively,  2,400,  2,500  acres  that  are  producing  right  now. 
That  was  quite  a  capital  investment  in  itself,  keeping  in  mind  that 
the  company  paid  about  $6  or  $9  million  for  the  place  when  they 
bought  it. 

But  what  they  bought  here  was  a  label  that  they  thought  could 
be  revived  and  that  was  primarily  it. 


Richard  L.  Maher's  Tenure:  Capital  Improvements 


MSN:       Getting  back  to  management,  after  Bob  Bras,  of  course,  Dick 

[Richard  L.]  Maher  came  in  here.   He  was  an  ex-ISC  and  Gallo  man, 
an  extremely  sharp  marketing  man.   He  really  went  to  bat  for  me. 
He  went  to  bat  for  Beringer,  period.   He  was  the  man  who  was 
responsible  for  the  start  of  the  rebuilding  of  the  Beringer 
vineyard.   All  that  was  here  was  the  buildings  across  the  road. 
Then  they  had  the  plant  down  at  Carneros. 

Teiser:    When  was  that  built,  the  Carneros  plant? 


40 


MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 
Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser : 

MSN: 


Oh,  God,  I  don't  know.   It  was  a  very  old  place.   Between  the  two 
plants,  I  guess  there  was  probably  six,  seven  hundred 
thousand  gallons  of  cooperage.   It  was  all  old  cooperage:  old 
tanks,  concrete  fermenters.   I  can  tell  you,  I  was  a  very  sick 
individual  for  a  few  weeks  after  I'd  seen  it  for  the  first  time. 

All  concrete  fermenters  that  late? 

Oh,  sure. 

No  stainless  steel? 

No,  we  didn't  have  any  stainless  steel  fermenters. 

Well,  I'll  be  darned. 

I'll  stand  corrected,  but  I  think  you'll  find  concrete  fermenters 
around  here  in  the  valley  today,  right  down  the  road. 

Nestle"  poured  a  lot  of  money  in  here,  that  is  quite  evident. 
I  don't  know  how  many  millions  they  must  have  in  here  now,  when 
you  start  thinking  of  the  purchase  of  over  2,000  acres  in  Napa 
Valley  land. 

At  a  time  when  it  was  high. 

Oh!   Just  to  have  the  interest  for  that  for  two  months,  you  or  I 
could  go  around  the  world  a  few  times. 

Then  the  buildings — I  don't  know  how  many  millions  we've  got 
tied  into  this  installation,  and  they're  going  to  put  up  a  new 
office  building  over  there  near  the  barn.   That  warehouse  wasn't 
here.   None  of  this  was  here  when  I  came  here. 

What's  the  capacity  now? 

You're  probably  looking  at  around  2.9  million,  I  guess.   Somewhere 
close  to  that.   We  bought  Souverain,  too,  in  the  meantime  last 
year.   So  we  have  cooperage  over  there.   Of  course,  that  will 
remain  a  separate  operation  as  far  as  we  can  make  it,  with  separate 
marketing  and  that  sort  of  thing. 

Dick  Maher  did  a  lot  of  good  things  here  for  us.   He  got  Nestle 
interested  in  doing  things,  and  I  think  how  he  got  them  interested 
was  pointing  out  to  them  the  future  of  the  wine  business  and  what 
was  possible  here  in  this  place.   Of  course,  Nestle"  didn' t  get  that 
"mountain  of  gold"  over  there  in  Vevey,  Switzerland,  by  poor 
business  practices.   You  can  imagine  that  they  are  rather  astute 
business  people. 


41 


Nestle' s  Commitment  to  Quality//// 


MSN:       Nestle  has  a  commitment  here,  and  I  think  that  commitment  can  be 
summarized  in  a  sentence  or  two.   It's  a  long-range  program,  and 
riding  right  on  the  wave  of  it  is  its  quality.   That's  the  reason 
for  the  equipment  that  we've  been  able  to  get.   I  mean,  you  can 
have  equipment  and  you  can  make  wine,  but  you've  gotta  have 
somebody  behind  you  interested  in  selling  that  wine,  too.  ,  You've 
gotta  move  the  product.  That  is  the  bottom  line. 

We've  been  fortunate  in  that  we  have  moved  the  wine.   We've 
had  strong  market  support  started  by  Dick  Maher,  now  carried  on 
by  a  man  by  the  name  of  James  Tonjum,  who,  as  far  as  I'm  concerned, 
is  one  of  the  top  marketing  men  in  the  United  States.   Dick  Maher 
really  got  us  airborne,  to  put  it  mildly.   He  was  the  one  who  was 
responsible  for  the  improvement  of  the  grounds  all  around  the  Rhine 
House  over  there  as  you  see  it  today.   He's  the  man  who  was 
responsible  for  a  lot  of  different  things,  including  the  vineyards. 
This  man  that  succeeded  him  three  years  ago,  Mike  [F.  Michael] 
Moone,  I  think  is  even  going  to  be  better,  for  he  is  really 
conscious,  for  one  thing,  of  employee  needs  and  desires.   He's  a 
man  that  says,  "I  want  everybody  on  my  team,"  and  really  backs  up 
those  words — and  he's  backed  them  up  in  a  good  many  different 
ways,  I  can  assure  you,  at  least  for  me. 

I  guess  you  have  to  understand.   Somebody  could  give  you  a 
piece  of  bailing  wire  and  a  pair  of  pliers  and  tell  you  to  go  out 
and  fix  a  barrel.   But  somebody  could  give  you  a  brand  new  oak 
barrel  and  say,  "Just  tighten  the  hoops  up  and  it'll  work  perfect." 
There's  an  awful  difference. 


Upgrading  Beringer's  Cooperage 

MSN:       We  have  a  brand  new  building  we're  just  putting  up  out  here  now. 
It  holds  twenty  thousand  French  barrels.   To  start  off  with,  the 
barrels  alone  are  about  $300  apiece  (but  I  think  the  market  price 
is  $350  or  $360  by  the  time  you  get  the  racks  and  the  whole  works 
in  position).   Then  there  is  the  building  itself.   I  don't  know 
what  that  building  costs.   It's  a  modified  Butler-type  building, 
but  it  still  costs  money. 

Teiser:    When  you  ship  that  many  barrels  from  France,  do  they  send  people 
to  assemble  them? 


42 


MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


We  have  got  most  of  them  [shipped]  assembled.   Those  that  have 
not  been  assembled  that  come  in,  we've  had  other  cooperage 
outfits,  their  agents,  assemble  them  here — depending  on  who  we 
bought  them  from.   But  we  brought  in  an  awful  lot  of  them  assembled 
already,  at  least  when  we  first  started. 

Does  it  work  as  well  that  way  as  having  them  put  together  here? 

Yes,  yes.   In  my  opinion  it  does,  yes. 

Did  you  specify  the  oak? 

Yes. 

What  is  this  last  batch,  or  is  it  one  kind? 

We  switch  around  from  Limousin  to  Nevers  oak.   We've  had 
Czechoslovakian,  yes.   Probably  right  now  I  would  say  that  maybe 
it's  fifty-fifty  Limousin-Nevers.   We  may  be  leaning  a 
little  more  toward  the  Limousin.   We  have  a  few  American  oak 
barrels  that  we  have  used  on  red  wine,  but  that  is  in  a  very  small 
minority.   We've  been  very  cautious  about  that. 

You  know,  the  French  oak  and  the  American  oak  are  two 
different  animals.   Anybody  can  put  oak  in  the  wine.   All  you  have 
to  do  is  go  down  here  to  the  lumber  yard  and  get  some  oak  powder 
and  throw  it  in.   In  American  oak,  in  my  opinion,  you  get  a 
stronger  oak  character.   But  that  isn't  really  what  you  want. 

Do  you  have  any  redwood  left? 

Yes,  we  have  some  redwood  left  on  the  other  side.   We  store  in 
that.   We  have  two  brands.   We  have  a  Beringer  brand  and  a  Los 
Hermanos  brand.   Most  of  that  redwood,  with  a  few  exceptions,  is 
used  for  the  Los  Hermanos  brand.   I  cleaned  out  most  of  the 
redwood  so  there  might  be  in  the  whole  winery  now  twenty, 
twenty-five  usable  redwood  tanks,  and  that's  nothing. 


Vineyard  Plantings 


Teiser:    That  brings  us  to  the  subject  of  your  own  acreage:  it  supplies 

part,  but,  I  suppose,  not  all  of  your  requirements. 

MSN:       Our  vineyards  provide  us  with  most  of  the  grapes  we  need  such  as 

Chardonnay,  Sauvignon  blanc,  Cabernet  Sauvignon,  and  Chenin  blanc. 

The  one  variety  that  we  buy  widely  is  Zinfandel,  and  this  is  due 


43 


MSN:       to  the  great  demand  for  White  Zinfandel.   Until  this  industry 

development,  the  demand  for  Zinfandel  was  very  low.   If  somebody 
had  said,  "Go  out  and  plant  Zinfandel"  five  or  six  years  ago,  you 
would  have  said,  "You're  crazier  than  hell.   Why  should  I  plant 
Zinfandel  when  everybody's  drinking  white  wine?"  And  logically  so. 
But  here  we  go  from  ground  zero  to  a  million  cases  in  a  couple  of 
years  (at  Beringer) .   One  never  knows  what  the  good  old  Americans 
will  jump  on  next. 

In  the  categories  of  Chardonnay  and  Cabernet,  we  buy  maybe 
20  percent  of  our  grapes.  That's  just  simply  been  because  of  a 
market  demand. 

Teiser:    This  is  for  the  Beringer  labels? 

MSN:       Yes.   Then  for  the  White  Zinfandel,  probably  90  percent  or  better 
of  those  are  bought,  because  you  have  to  keep  up  with  the  volume. 
You  take  a  million  cases  of  White  Zinfandel,  that's  two-and-a-half 
million  gallons. 


Los  Hermanos  Label 


MSN: 


Teiser: 
MSN: 


The  Los  Hermanos,  that's  all  San  Joaquin  Valley  grapes.   No  North 
Coast  wines  go  in  there  except  those  that  are  just  not  up  to  par 
for  Beringer.   For  example,  there  may  be  certain  varieties  that 
don't  fit  into  a  Chardonnay  label  because  of  their  quality,  but 
you  might  use  a  portion  in  chablis.   Things  do  happen  to  wine  just 
like  they  happen  to  individual  humans.   You  may  have  something 
that  isn't  going  to  fit  in  those  two  categories,  so  it  goes  down 
another  step  in  the  Los  Hermanos,  which  is  a  jug  wine,  bulk  wine 
mover.   But  that  percentage  is  really  very  small. 

In  all  practical  purposes,  those  grapes — all  the  Zinfandel, 
all  other  reds,  and  the  whites — involve  Chenin  blanc  and  French 
Colombard  from  the  San  Joaquin  Valley,  and — I'll  be  honest  with 
you — Thompson  Seedless.   There  are  probably  a  lot  of  people  in 
this  state  who  will  tell  you,  "We  never  put  Seedless  grapes  in  our 
wine,"  but  that's  neither  here  nor  there. 

You  don't  believe  them? 

Well,  I  know  those  Thompsons  have  to  go  somewhere.   Maybe  that  man 
in  the  valley  is  telling  the  truth  when  he  says,  "We  never  use 
Thompsons  in  our  wine,"  but  that's  his  business.   But  the  Thompson, 
as  you  well  know,  has  been  the  backbone  in  this  wine  business.   It's 
been  a  business  barometer  in  the  wine  industry.   You've  heard  all 


44 


MSN:       about  these  raisin  programs,  and  look  what  you've  got  on  TV  now 
with  the  little  raisin  boys  dancing.   I'm  sure  you've  seen  that 
ad.   You  never  saw  anything  like  that  years  ago.   We  had  surpluses 
and  they  could  export  them  into  foreign  countries.   The  market's 
no  longer  there. 

But  the  grapes  for  the  Los  Hermanos  label  are  harvested  and 
crushed  in  the  valley.   Delicate  Vineyards  in  Manteca  does  the 
work  for  us.   Sierra  Wine  Company  down  the  valley  does  bus-iness, 
and  so  does  Bronco  Wine  Company.   The  wines  are  made  to  specifica 
tions  that  I  lay  out,  and  subject  to  approval  before  we  give  them 
the  final  check.   There's  a  lot  of  wine  in  that  market  down  there 
for  sale. 

There  are  certain  things  that  we  do  with  the  fruit.   For 
example,  we  use  arrested  fermentation.   We  stop  the  fermentation 
with  residual  sugar.   Some  of  those  wines,  like  some  of  the  muscats 
that  we  use  for  sweetening,  have  to  be  made  right  during  the  crush. 
I  mean,  you  just  can't  go  out  after  the  season  and  buy  that  kind 
of  stuff.   It's  the  same  way  with  the  White  Zinfandel.   I  specify 
that  those  grapes  shall  be  crushed  and  handled  the  same  as 
Beringer.   In  other  words,  they  will  be  cold-fermented  like  a 
white  grape  to  maintain  as  much  of  the  fruit  or  the  chewing  gum, 
candy-like  odor  as  some  people  call  it.   I  think  the  public  is 
entitled  to  consideration;  it's  a  big  mover,  and  you  try  to  make 
the  best  product  you  can.   There's  no  reason  to  cheapen  a  product 
quality-wise  simply  because  the  price  is  lower  by  a  dollar  or  so. 

All  those  Los  Hermanos  wines  are  made  down  there  and  maybe 
blended  down  there  or  blended  here.   Sometimes  I  bring  them  in 
here,  depending  on  the  lot.   I  might  call  in  Bronco,  or  I  may 
call  in  Delicato  and  make  a  blend — whatever  the  situation  may  be. 

Teiser:    Delicato  is — ? 

MSN:       They're  over  in  Manteca — a  very  fine  operation;  very  quality-minded 
people  over  there  trying  to  do  a  job. 


Winemaking  in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley 


MSN:       Over  the  years  there's  been  a  lot  of  this  North  Coast  theory  on 
fermentations  and  the  handling  of  grapes  that  has  filtered  down 
into  the  San  Joaquin  Valley,  so  to  speak.   They  have  cold 
fermentations  down  there  now  and  they  have  stainless  steel.   Some 
of  them  even  have  oak  barrels,  if  they  want  to  do  that.   I'm  sure 
Mr.  Gallo  has  a  lot  of  oak  down  there. 


45 


Teiser:    He  does,  indeed,  in  the  new  cellar. 

MSN:       But,  anyway,  those  practices  are  put  into  practice  down  there,  and 
the  public  is  the  recipient  of  all  the  benefits.   Thank  goodness. 
I  mean,  it  isn't  a  matter  of  throwing  the  grapes  in  the  tank 
anymore  and  saying,  "Here  it  is.  Drink  it,"  and  all  because  Ruth 
Teiser  knows  what  she  likes  and  what  she  does  not  like.   You  didn't 
have  that  in  the  forties:  wine  was  wine. 


Upgrading  the  Beringer  Label 


Teiser:    Let  me  ask  you  about  your  part  in  upgrading  the  wines  and  the 
image  of  Beringer. 

MSN:       I'll  tell  you,  when  I  came  here,  this  place  had  been  allowed  to 
run  down  for  some  reason  or  another.   It  might  have  been  the 
people  making  the  wine.   I  have  a  hunch  a  lot  of  it  was  due  to  not 
having  the  money  to  do  things;  the  Beringers  were  pretty  well 
strapped.   I  have  to  say  that  out  of  respect  for  the  people.   But 
it  was  a  family  business,  so  it  was,  in  plain  words,  kind  of  let 
go  to  hell. 

When  Nestle  bought  this  place  in  '71,  all  they  really  bought 
was  a  label  and  those  six  hundred  acres  of  vineyard,  because  the 
wines  in  the  cooperage  were  in  pretty  sad  shape.   In  fact,  in  the 
first  six  months  I  was  here,  I  sold  over  150,000  gallons  of 
wine  for  distilling  material,  because  I  felt  that  if  you're  going 
to  start  to  rebuild  a  place,  you  start  from  square  one.   That's 
where  we  started.   I  was  not  going  to  start  with  anybody's 
troubles,  and  I  told  Nestle"  that.   They  said,  "You're  the  winemaker 
and  that's  what  we've  hired.   All  right,  let's  go." 

I  got  rid  of  a  lot  of  stuff.   Then  we  replanted  grapes  in 
some  of  the  vineyards.   We  bought  grapes — those  varieties  that  we 
needed  badly.   We  started  refilling  the  tanks  with  some  wines 
that  I'd  made.   Then  we  started  thinking  about  oak  barrels  and 
aging.   There  was  no  aging  program  when  I  came  here.   They  had  about 
three  hundred  American  oak  barrels  here,  and  those  things  had  been 
around  so  long — I  guess  they'd  come  over  on  the  Ark — they  were  in 
pretty  bad  shape,  so  I  got  rid  of  all  of  them.   Then  I  wanted  to 
get  a  hold  of  some  French  oak,  because  I  felt  French  oak  might  have 
a  place  in  here.   That  was  not  original  with  me,  because  other 
people  in  the  industry  had  tried  it. 


46 


MSN:       I  was  grabbing  for  everything  I  could  think  of  to  improve  the 

quality,  from  the  grapes  in  the  field  to  the  winery  equipment  to 
handle  it,  and  some  support  staff  to  help  me  do  my  job.   Gradually 
we  started  a  turnaround  of  the  product.  We  had  to  start  item 
by  item  by  item.   One  man  from  the  University  of  California  once 
came  in  here  and  told  me,  "You  know,  Myron,  I  had  not  been  in 
this  plant  in  eighteen  years  and  I  don't  think  anybody  else  has 
either  from  the  university."  It  had  lost  the  respect  of  a  lot  of 
people  in  the  Napa  Valley. 

I  know  my  good  friend  down  the  road  here,  that  I  went  to 
school  with,  Louis  P.  Martini,  told  me  one  night  when  he  was  over 
for  dinner,  "Myron,  we're  sure  glad  that  somebody  came  into 
Beringer  and  is  trying  to  do  something  with  the  wine."  I  think  a 
lot  of  the  wineries  here  in  the  valley  felt  that  Beringer  was  sort 
of  a  dead  weight  from  a  quality  standpoint,  because  the  image  had 
been  down  so  far. 

So  I  think  that  is  probably  the  answer  to  your  question:  a 
hell  of  a  lot  of  work,  a  lot  of  hard  work.   It  may  not  be  hard  work 
so  much  as  it  is  devotion  and  time,  babysitting  with  the  wine. 
That's  what  it  amounted  to.   I  figured  it  was  my  neck,  and  I'd 
better  start  going  to  work  and  really  doing  a  job.   That's  what 
I've  tried  to  do. 


Teiser: 


MSN: 


I  know  they  have  very  definitely  brought  your  name  forward  in  the 
publications  that  the  company  puts  out,  and  identified  you  with 
the  product,  published  the  explanations  of  what  you  were  doing  as 
winemaker . 

Some  of  the  notoriety  I  got  when  I  first  came  here — if  I  do  sound 
a  bit  pompous — was  due  to  personal  effort.   I  really  worked  at 
Cresta  Blanca  in  trying  to  produce  some  wine.  We  got  recognition 
at  the  State  Fair.   Regardless  of  what  you  think  of  judging,  the 
State  Fair  was,  in  those  days,  a  good  judging.   It  was  a  good 
sounding  board.   I  got  my  share  of  medals  out  of  that  place  in 
competition  with  my  dear  friend  Brother  Tim  down  the  road  [Brother 
Timothy,  cellarmaster  at  Christian  Brothers] .   Then  I  came  here  and 
tried  to  apply  those  practices  that  I'd  used  at  Cresta  Blanca, 
which  in  turn  I  had  learned  from  my  first  boss,  Elbert  Brown,  and 
my  late  friend,  Herman  Wente.   So  why  not  put  them  to  practice? 


Herman  Wente 


Teiser: 


Where  did  you  come  into  contact  with  Herman  Wente? 


47 


MSN:       I  had  met  the  man  several  times  going  to  Wine  Institute  meetings 
before  I  went  to  Cresta  Blanca.   But  it  was  after  I  went  to 
Cresta  Blanca  and  he  found  out  that  Elbert  Brown  was  my  boss  over 
at  Shewan-Jones  and  discovered  the  connection  with  the  University 
of  California,  that  he  and  I  really  started  getting  acquainted. 

Teiser:    What  connection  with  the  University  of  California  was  that? 

MSN:       Herman  and  Brown,  I  think,  were  in  the  class  of  '14.   I  think  that 
was  the  class  that  Bill  Cruess  was  in,  too.* 

Herman  was  a  fine  man  as  far  as  white  wine  was  concerned.   He 
was  tops  in  his  day. 

Teiser:    He  was  said  to  be  a  very  fine  taster. 

MSN:       Very  good,  excellent,  excellent.   He  had  a  good  memory  and  that '  - 
what  it  takes  for  a  good  taster.   I  don't  know  whether  I'll  ever 
become  a  good  taster  or  not! 


*Dr.  Cruess  received  the  B.S.  degree  in  1911, 


48 


VIII   CHANGES  IN  WINEMAKING  AND  GRAPE  PLANTINGS 


Innovations  in  Winemaking 


MSN:       A  lot  of  the  kids  today  get  exposed  to  the  basic  principles  of 

winemaking,  but,  unfortunately,  they're  never  drilled  into  them. 
I  think  I  got  a  few  scars  on  my  back,  but  some  of  the  basic 
principles  that  are  in  practice  today,  that  I  still  use,  are 
things  that  I  learned  when  I  first  went  in  the  wine  business  in  '44, 

Teiser:    I  don't  know  if  you've  adapted  other  people's  innovations,  or  if 
you've  made  innovations  of  your  own  besides  the  botrytized  wine? 

MSN:       I'll  tell  you,  I  probably  have  adapted  a  lot  of  other  peoples'. 
I'll  be  honest  about  that.   I  would  have  to  do  a  lot  of  soul- 
searching  to  actually  come  up  with  a  percentage  of  some  of  the 
ideas  that  I  could  say,  "Actually,  I'm  the  guy  that  started  this, 
and  I'm  the  one  who  did  this."  I  heard  a  man  one  time  a  few  years 
ago  get  up  in  San  Francisco  and  attempt  to  tell  a  very  learned 
group  that  he  was  the  first  one  to  practice  cold  fermentations. 
Actually,  the  first  true  cold  fermentations  in  the  state  of 
California  were  done  by  Pete  [Peter]  Mondavi  right  over  here  at 
Charles  Krug  winery,  with  the  help  of  Professor  Bill  Cruess. 

You've  got  to  give  credit  where  credit  is  due.   I  did  a  lot  of 
work  on  sherry  with  Brown  at  Shewan-Jones .   I  did  a  lot  of  work  on 
barrel  fermentations,  and  that's  pretty  widespread  in  the  industry 
now  on  whites,  particularly  on  Chardonnays.   Just  how  much  of  my 


49 


MSN:       work  you  could  call  innovation,  I  don't  know.   For  the  most  part  I 
think  you'd  have  to  say  that  it  was  based  just  on  good  application 
of  sound  winemaking  principles.   If  I  saw  a  shortcut  here  or  there 
that  I  thought  was  better,  why  not  try  it?  That  goes  all  the  way  to 
exposure  of  Cabernet  skins  to  the  juice  after  the  fermentation  for 
various  periods  of  time,  to  prolonged  periods  and  short  periods  of 
skin  contact  with  whites,  of  which  there  are  a  million  different 
theories,  as  you  know. 

Teiser:    Do  any  of  these  things  ever  get  settled  forever? 

MSN:       No,  that's  the  thing  about  the  wine  industry.   The  wine  industry 

is  so  intriguing,  particularly  from  a  technical  point.   It's  never 
done,  it's  never  finished,  it's  never  complete.   It  is  never  going 
to  be  built  like  this  machine  here.   That'll  stand  its  form  for, 
under  the  right  environmental  conditions,  forever,  but  not  the  wine 
industry.   It  changes  in  taste. 


Sulfur  Dioxide  Theories 


MSN:       Some  of  the  things  that  we're  doing  today  in  making  wine  were 

unheard  of  even  fifteen  years  ago.   The  use  of  sulfur  dioxide,  for 
example.   The  basic  theory  on  sulfur  dioxide,  of  course,  is  that 
it  is  a  preservative  and  an  anti-oxidant .   Years  and  years  ago,  as 
soon  as  you  crushed  the  grapes  you  added  SO™.   That  was  regardless 
of  the  condition  of  the  grape.   Now  we  are  finding  out  that  maybe 
you  can  crush  the  grapes  without  the  use  of  SO™  if  they're  in 
perfect  condition,  and  then  add  the  SO-  to  the  juice  after  the  juice 
has  been  extracted  from  the  skin.   By  following  that  procedure  you 
may  eliminate  chemical  damage  in  the  sense  of  certain  bitter  and 
browning  compounds,  oxidative  compounds,  which  you  don't  want. 


Adding  Stems  during  Fermentation 

MSN:       When  I  first  went  in  the  wine  business  there  were  theories  like: 
you  should  never  crush  red  grapes  and  put  stems  in  with  them. 
Well,  we  had  to  find  out  from  the  French  people,  and  a  good  many 
years  ago,  that  with  Pinot  noir,  for  example,  a  certain  percentage 
of  the  stems  thrown  into  the  fermenting  tank  is  desirable.   Is  this 
because  of  flavor  or  is  it  because  you  want  to  add  more  tannin  to 
the  wine,  or  what  is  it?  These  things  are  still  being  studied. 


50 


Cold  Fermentat ions 


MSN:       Let's  talk  about  Chardonnay,  or  white  wines  period.   Even  as  late 
as  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago,  everybody  thought  that  if  you 
fermented  whites,  you  had  to  ferment  them  cold.   Well,  there's  a 
lot  of  different  theories  of  cold  fermentation.   Your  cold 
fermentation  might  be  45°  and  mine  might  be  60°  and  hers  might  be 
65°.   Basically,  what  we're  talking  about  is  somewhere  between  55° 
and  60°.   That  way,  if  you  have  a  nice  cold  fermentation,  you'll 
hopefully  preserve  all  these  flavoring  compounds  in  the  grape. 

Now,  through  some  research  which  we've  done  here  at  Beringer 
and  other  people  have  done  at  the  suggestion  of  the  University  of 
California — I  have  to  plug  the  University  once  in  a  while — we  have 
found  that  in  the  fermentation  of  certain  Chardonnays,  we  might 
want  to  elevate  that  temperature  up  to  75°.   Back  in  the  early 
days  when  you  were  trying  to  keep  must  cool,  we  didn't  have  the 
modern  refrigeration  that  we  have  today.  We  depended  on  the  well 
water  to  run  through  coils  and  keep  the  must  cool. 

But  the  thing  was  that  there  was  no  consistency  in  the 
operation.   In  other  words,  when  you  first  started  out  in  the 
morning  at  five  o'clock,  the  water  from  the  well  was  very,  very 
cold.   I  can  tell  you  in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  particularly 
in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley,  that  water  can  get  up  to  80°  and  85°. 
I've  seen  it  right  out  of  the  taps  at  Fresno. 

We  have  found,  not  every  time  but  a  lot  of  times,  that  in 
these  elevated  fermentation  temperatures  on  white  wines,  we  get 
better  extraction  of  flavor.   For  example,  we  do  a  lot  of  barrel 
fermentation,  same  as  everybody  else,  on  white  wines,  Chardonnay. 
There's  a  difference  in  the  wines  that  are  fermented  in  barrels 
more  than  just  putting  the  wine  into  a  barrel  for  aging,  particularly 
in  whites.   In  the  fermentation  process,  a  lot  more  extraction  goes 
on.   But  the  point  is  you  don't  have  any  coils  in  that  barrel  so 
the  temperature  goes  up  to  70°  and  75°.   If  you  told  anybody  that 
fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago,  they  would  have  said  you'd  lose  the 
flavor.   So  who  is  to  say  what  will  happen  a  few  years  from  now? 


Protein  Stabilization  Theories 


Teiser:    What  about  the  stabilization  for  bottling?  Have  there  been 
advances  in  that? 


51 


MSN: 


Teiser: 
MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


I  don't  think  there  have  really  been  too  many  recent  advances  in 
that.   We  still  depend  on  refrigeration.   I  think  we  have  to  go 
through  that.   We  still  have  grapes  that  have  a  lot  of  protein 
content,  which  produces  a  white  curtain  on  the  bottom  of  the  bottle. 
If  anybody  sees  anything  in  the  bottom  of  the  wine  bottle,  you  know 
it  just  scares  them  to  death  they're  going  to  get  poisoned. 
Tartrate  crystals  have  often  been  mistaken  for  glass! 

#1 

You  said  there  are  a  lot  of  different  theories  on  protein-- 

Oh,  yes,  a  lot  of  theories  on  protein  stabilization.   Probably  the 
most  prominent  agent  that's  used  for  protein  stabilization  in 
California  white  wines  is  bentonite,  although  there  are  other 
compounds  that  are  used,  like  combinations  of  gelatine  and  tannin. 

Egg  whites  sometimes  too? 

Egg  whites.   You  have  to  be  careful  there,  too.   You  can  drop  from 
the  frying  pan  right  back  into  the  fire  again  with  egg  whites 
sometimes.   Cold  stabilization,  chilling:  some  wineries  even  go  so 
far  as  slushing*,  which  I  don't  believe  in. 


Problems  with  Ion  Exchange  Techniques 


MSN: 


Teiser: 
MSN: 


Ion  exchange  was  a  red  hot  deal  about  twenty-five  years  ago,  and 
there  are  still  ion  exchange  units  in  this  country.   A  lot  of  them 
are  used  in  the  right  manner,  but  the  ion  exchange  system  for 
tartrate  stabilization  in  this  country,  I  think,  really  led  to  a 
very  close  scrutiny  of  the  salt  content  of  California  wines — 
particularly  one  down  the  road  on  the  Peninsula  that  had  some 
sodium  content  of  1200  parts  per  million,  because  of  the  over- 
exchange  in  the  sodium  exchange  system.   The  Wine  Institute,  of 
course,  stepped  onto  that  hot  potato  after  the  physician  back  in 
North  Carolina  or  South  Carolina  put  out  her  famous  publication 
about  sodium  content  of  California  wines. 

There  was  also  a  study  at  San  Francisco  General  Hospital. 

Yes.   Some  of  the  wineries  really  just  overdid  it.   In  other  words, 
they  lowered  the  potassium  content  far  below  what  it  should  have 
been  because  potassium,  of  course,  is  what  hooks  onto  the  tartrate 
for  the  precipitation  for  tartrate.   But  they  lowered  it  way  down 
to  ground  zero.   If  you  had  seven  or  eight  hundred  parts  per 
million,  for  example,  instead  of  lowering  the  potassium  maybe  down 
to  four  or  five  hundred  parts,  they  were  lowering  it  down  to  a 
hundred  parts.   Well,  that's  the  old  theory,  which  is  if  one  pound 
is  good,  then  two  pounds  is  better. 


*Slushing  is  when  they  take  a  wine  and  half  freeze  it.   M.S.N. 


52 


MSN:       One  of  the  best  wine  clarifiers  that  the  California  wine  industry 
ever  had  was  taken  away  because  of  the  one  pound-two  pound  theory: 
potassium  ferrocyanide,  "blue  fining."  Some  people  got  carried 
away  with  it  and  somebody  down  on  Beach  Street  picked  up  a  bottle 
of  California  dessert  wine  with  a  blue  coloring  in  the  bottom  of 
it  and  says,  "Ho,  what  is  this?"   It  didn't  take  Milton  P.  Duffy 
[of  the  California  State  Department  of  Public  Health]  long  to 
figure  that  one  out.   That  was  a  man  who  was  a  real  champion  for 
our  industry,  too,  along  with  a  Food  and  Drug  fellow  by  the  name  of 
McKay  McKinnon  in  San  Francisco.   But  Milton  P.  Duffy  was 'a  real 
champion  for  California  wines. 


Problems  with  Metal  Contamination 


MSN:       But  those  were  back  in  the  days  when  we  had  a  lot  of  copper  and 
iron  pipelines  to  transport  wine  around  wineries.   We  had  copper 
casse  and  iron  casse  problems  (clouding) .   Then  we  all  went  to 
stainless  steel. 

With  stainless  steel  a  lot  of  the  wineries  for  a  while  had  a 
lot  of  hydrogen  sulfides  in  their  wines,  which  they  never  had  when 
they  had  redwood  tanks  with  copper  valves,  because  the  wine,  in 
going  through  the  copper,  would  precipitate  out  copper  sulfides, 
the  sulfide  ion.   Sulfide  isn't  a  big  problem.   We  know  how  to 
handle  it.   What  we  do  now,  if  you  have  a  sulfide  problem,  is  add 
in — and  this  is  according  to  federal  regulations — a  small  amount  of 
copper  to  precipitate  it  out.   You're  talking  about  parts  of  a 
million,  which  is  nothing  to  worry  about  health-wise. 

But  it  shows  you  the  contrast.   Let's  take  all  the  copper 
valves  out  now  and  then  let's  put  in  stainless  steel.   So  you  go 
from  one  condition  to  another.   Louis  Martini,  that's  Louis  Sr., 
used  to  say,  "Okay,  you  guys  take  out  all  these  copper  valves, 
you're  going  to  have  sulfide  problems."  By  God,  lo  and  behold,  we 
did.   But  we've  overcome  that.   Today  it's  overcome  by  racking  the 
wines  fairly  early  and  getting  them  off  of  the  gross  lees.   You  can 
age  lees — that'll  settle  out  later — but  getting  them  off  the  gross 
lees  is-how  you  stop  all  this  gaseous  formation  (hydrogen  sulfide). 


53 


Grape  Varieties 


Teiser:    About  your  plantings  of  your  new  vineyards  here — I  should  have 

asked  you  earlier  when  you  were  discussing  the  vineyards — are  you 
changing  your  varieties? 

MSN:       That  is  the  biggest  crapshoot  in  the  world:  trying  to  advise 

somebody  about  what  to  plant.   Do  you  eat  white  bread  or  brown 
bread?  How  many  times  a  week  do  you  have  white  bread  and  do  I  have 
brown  bread?   "Well,  I'll  tell  you,  Myron,  I  used  to  eat  a  lot  of 
white  bread,  but  I  got  acquainted  with  this  neighbor  friend  of  mine 
who  had  the  best  brown  bread,  and  I've  been  eating  brown  bread  now." 
Maybe  that's  carrying  the  point  a  little  bit  too  far,  but  this  has 
been  the  situation  with  grape  planting. 

Look  at  the  Zinfandels.   How  many  of  them  in  the  past  have 
been  cut  off  and  grafted  over  to  whites?  Now  what  do  we  do?  We're 
coming  back  to  Zinfandels  simply  because  we  got  the  White  Zinfandel 
type. 

I  used  to  say  French  Colombard  was  a  good  variety.  French 
Colombard  is,  I  guess,  the  largest  white  variety  planted  in  the 
State  of  California  today. 

I  think  some  of  these  varieties  are  going  to  be  good  pillars, 
particularly  the  Chardonnay.   Not  because  it's  the  nice  thing  to 
talk  about  at  the  cocktail  party  or  the  wine  party  up  on  Nob  Hill, 
but  because  it's  a  good  strong  variety.   A  Cabernet's  always  going 
to  be  a  good  strong  variety.   The  Cabernet  Sauvignon  is  the 
strongest  red  varietal  type  that  we  have  in  this  state,  probably 
one  of  the  strongest  red  varietal  types  in  the  world.   I'm  comparing 
that,  for  example,  against  Pinot  noir,  which  you  know  you'll  find 
a  great  many  variations  of,  in  contrast  to  Cabernet  Sauvignon. 
Chenin  blanc  has  been  a  hot  number  for  years,  but  why  has  Chenin 
blanc  been  a  hot  number?  We  sell  a  lot  of  Chenin  blanc.   Charles 
Krug  over  here — Pete  Mondavi — got  a  good  reputation  for  Chenin 
blanc.   I  think  we  make  a  pretty  good  Chenin  blanc  and  a  few  other 
people  do. 

Teiser:    It  was  initially  very  high  in  residual  sugar. 

MSN:       Yes,  well,  this  is  the  point  I'm  trying  to  make:   Was  it  really  the 
grape  or  was  it  the  sugar?   Because  you're  a  sweet  tooth,  and  so  am 
I.   That's  our  native  taste.   I  don't  know  whether  that's  what 
popularized  it,  and  what  we  have  today  is  just  a  carry-over  from 
that,  or  not.   If  you  ask  somebody,  "Do  you  make  a  sweet  Chenin 
blanc  or  a  dry  Chenin  blanc?"  they'll  have  to  put  their  thinking  cap 
on  to  tell  you  how  many  wineries  make  dry  Chenin  blanc.   I  think 


54 


MSN: 


one  of  the  things  that  carried  the  Chenin  blanc  into  prominence  was 
the  sweetness.   I  really  do,  because  basically  the  grape  per  se, 
compared  to  something  like  Sauvignon  blanc,  is  really  a  very  bland 
type.   I'm  not  saying  it  can't  be  fruity,  but  basically  it's  a 
rather  bland  type. 

Grape  varieties  are  really  a  big  question  as  to  what  you're 
going  to  be  drinking  25  years  from  now.   I'll  call  you  up  when  I 
look  down  from  the  clouds  and  say,  "What  are  you  drinking?'-'  and 
you'll  say,  maybe,  "Black  Chablis."   I'll  say,  "What's  Black 
Chablis?"  I  mean,  this  is  crazy.   First  time  I  heard  of  White 
Zinfandel,  I  have  to  tell  you  honestly  as  a  wineman,  I  said  "What 
in  the  hell  is  a  White  Zinfandel?  Either  the  grape's  white  or  it's 
red,  or  black,  or  whatever  you  want  to  call  it.   A  White  Zinfandel? 
Who  are  you  kidding?"   [Brief  interruption.   Alice  A.  Nightingale, 
his  wife,  comes  in.] 

Oh,  good  morning.   Hi,  Alice.   This  is  Ruth  Teiser  and  Lisa 
Jacobson.   [introductions  are  exchanged]   Well,  you're  right  on  the 
dot. 

We  were  talking  about  grape  varieties.   We  covered  a  lot  of 
subjects  here.   I  think  that  would  be  about  all  I  could  say  about 
grape  varieties.   I  think  a  lot  of  these  things  come  and  go.   I  can 
remember  when  Muscat  was  a  big  thing,  but  now  it's  more  known  as  a 
blender  than  it  is  a  type.   It  adds  fruitiness  to  certain  types. 
People  use  maybe  two  or  three  percent  Muscat  in  a  lot  of  different 
varieties  to  give  the  wine  a  fruity  taste.   People  look  for  something 
that's  different.   When  you  consider  the  number  of  labels,  for 
example,  Chardonnay  or  Fume  or  Cabernet,  that  are  on  the  shelf  today 
confusing  the  consumer,  you  wonder  what  separates  them,  what's  the 
difference. 


Grafting 


Teiser:  Have  you  done  grafting  over — T-budding? 

MSN:  Yes. 

Teiser:  Does  it  take  in  one  year? 

MSN:  Yes,  that's  right. 

Teiser:  Does  it  work  well? 

MSN:  Yes,  it  works  pretty  good. 


55 


Teiser:    How  about  Callaway's  experiment  grafting  white  and  black  grapes 
on  the  same  vine? 

MSN:       No  comment. 
Teiser:    Didn't  try  it? 
MSN:       Never  tried  that. 

.* 

Teiser:     But  T-budding  does  work? 

MSN:       Yes. 

Teiser:    Gives  you  a  lot  of  flexibility  in  changing  your  mind? 

MSN:       Oh,  sure.   We  had  a  lot  of  varieties  when  I  first  came  here  that  we 
grafted  over.   They  had  varieties  planted  here,  for  God's  sake, 
that  only  should  have  been  planted  in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley.   For 
example,  Palominos.   What  do  you  do  with  a  Palomino?  You  make 
sherry  out  of  it.   Or  I  guess  you  could  throw  it  into  grape 
concentrate.   It's  a  very  good  sherry  grape.   They  used  to  make 
sherry  here  years  and  years  and  years  ago,  and  maybe  that's  the 
reason  they  had  it,  but  certainly  Palomino  didn't  have  any  place  in 
the  Napa  Valley  15  years  ago  or  even  15  years  before  then. 


56 


IX   DEVELOPMENT  OF  BOTRYTISED  SEMILLON  WINE 


Teiser:    Now  that  Mrs.  Nightingale  is  with  us,  let's  get  to  the  Botrytis. 

MSN:       [addressing  his  wife]   I'll  tell  you  what.   Why  don't  you  sit  over 
here — the  microphone's  right  here.   I've  got  to  go  out  for  a  couple 
of  minutes.   Ruth  can  question  you  on  the  Botrytis  and  you  can  give 
her  your  side  of  the  story.   All  right? 

AAN:       I'll  do  my  best. 

MSN:       I  could  talk  to  these  people  all  night,  Alice. 

[Mr.  Nightingale  leaves] 
Teiser:    How  did  the  idea  of  the  botrytised  wine  occur?  Whose  idea  was  it? 

AAN:       Dr.  Klayton  Nelson  and  Dr.  Maynard  Amerine  over  at  UC  Davis 

suggested  it.   They  happened  to  be  personal  friends  of  ours.   At 
the  time  that  we  started  our  work  on  Botrytis  there  were  no 
naturally  sweet  Sauterne-type  wines  like  the  famous  Chateau 
d'Yquem  of  France  made  in  California.   All  of  the  sweet  or  medium- 
sweet  Sauterne-types  in  California  at  the  time  were  made  by  using 
either  a  sweet  blending  wine  or  a  grape  concentrate.   There  was  no 
naturally  sweet  Sauterne-type  wine.   So  they  suggested  that  maybe 
it  (Botrytised)  could  be  done  in  California. 

The  first  thing  we  did  was  go  out  in  the  vineyard  and  spray, 
hoping  that  we  could  accomplish  it  there. 

Teiser:    How  did  you  know  what  to  spray?  Where  did  you  begin? 

AAN:       I  went  up  to  Davis  for  about  six  weeks  and  worked  with  Dr.  Nelson, 
whom  we  lovingly  call  Hank.   He  taught  me  all  I  needed  to  know  as 
far  as  transferring  single  spores  of  Botrytis,  what  to  look  for, 
what  it  looked  like — because  I  didn't  have  the  remotest  idea  of  what 
Botrytis  cinerea  looked  like. 


Alice  Nightingale 
At  time  of  second  interview 

March  10,  1987 


Myron  S.  Nightingale 
At  time  of  second  interview 

March  10,  1987 


57 


Necessary  Climatic  Conditions 

Teiser:    Where  do  the  original  spores  come  from? 
AAN:       They  come  from  the  vineyard. 
Teiser:    They  exist? 

AAN:       Yes,  but  only  under  the  right  climatic  conditions.   In  California 
we  do  not  have  the  right  climatic  conditions  for  them  to  grow  to 
the  extent  that  you  can  make  a  true  botrytised  wine  from  the 
vineyard,  except  in  certain  areas  and  when  we  have  a  real  wet  year. 

Teiser:    Sometimes  they  get  out  of  hand  and  cause  spoilage,  do  they  not? 

AAN:       True,  if  it  goes  too  far.   If  the  Botrytis  is  in  a  vineyard  and 

you  don't  pick  those  grapes  soon  enough,  then  you  get  what  we  call 
bunch  rot;  the  whole  bunch  just  goes  to  rot  and  shatters. 


Early  Laboratory  Experiments  at  Davis 


AAN: 


I  got  my  first  culture  of  the  fungus  from  [UC]  Davis  because 
Dr.  Nelson  had  been  working  with  the  preservation  of  table  grapes  in 
cold  storage.   If  Botrytis  gets  started  in  there,  why,  you  can 
imagine  what  happens.   They  lose  everything.   So  he  had  been 
working  with  it  quite  some  time  and  that's  the  reason  I  went  up  and 
worked  with  him  in  his  lab. 

We  experimented  for  about  six  weeks  until  we  finally  came  up 
with  the  method  that  I  now  use.   I've  improved  it  over  the  years 
and  changed  a  lot  of  things.   But  basically  it's  still  the  same 
method  that  we  used  in  1956. 


Experiments  at  Cresta  Blanca:  Perfecting  the  Technique 


AAN: 


We  lived  at  the  Cresta  Blanca  winery  in  Livermore  when  we  started 
this  work,  and  I  was  in  and  out  of  the  lab  a  lot.   When  they  first 
started  the  work,  I  wasn't  involved.   They  were  having  a  big 
problem.   They  were  trying  to  grow  it  on  aluminum  pizza  plates, 
putting  it  through  an  innoculation  chamber,  where  you  put  your 
hands  in  rubber  gloves,  and  covering  it  with  squares  of  just  plain 
windowpane  glass.   The  only  places  they  had  to  grow  it  were  shelves 
in  a  U  shape  around  the  room.   The  only  light  was  just  above. 


58 


AAN:       They  weren't  having  any  luck;  it  was  turning  sterile,  or  mutant 
stage,  just  the  color  of  white  paper.   I  don't  know  where  I  got 
the  idea,  but  I  suggested  to  Myron,  "Well,  maybe  it  needs  more  light 
to  grow.   Maybe  it  needs  oxygen."  So  they  broke  match  sticks  and 
propped  up  the  glass  plates,  and  then  they  got  contamination.   So 
that's  the  reason  I  went  to  Davis.   Myron  called  Dr.  Nelson  up  at 
Davis  and  said,  "Alice  has  a  couple  of  ideas,  what  do  you  think?" 
He  said,  "Well,  if  you  can  convince  your  company  to  send  her  up 
here  for  a  few  weeks,  why,  maybe  we  can  work  something  out'."  That's 
how  I  got  started. 

Teiser:    How  did  it  work  in  actual  winemaking  practice?  What  were  the  steps? 

AAN:       I  started  out,  every  season,  with  a  single  spore  transfer  into  tubes 
of  nutrient  media,  which  I  make  with  grape  juice,  water,  and  agar. 
It  takes  ten  to  fourteen  days  at  65°  to  68°  Fahrenheit  for  one  spore 
to  fill  that  test  tube  completely  with  growth.   It  sends  out  mycelium 
and  spores  form  on  them,  and  then  they  send  out  more  mycelium  and 
the  little  branches,  until  it  fills  the  tube. 

Once  those  tubes  are  full,  I  have  one  litre  offset  neck 
culture  bottles  that  I  put  the  same  nutrient  media  in.   The  neck  is 
covered  with  a  cotton  and  gauze  filter  disk  fastened  with  a  rubber 
band.   It  keeps  out  contamination  and  it  also  gives  me  the  opportu 
nity  to  innoculate  right  through  that.   It  allows  in  oxygen  which 
the  spore  needs  to  grow. 

I  take  about  five  of  those  tubes  for,  say,  a  hundred  bottles 
that  I'm  going  to  innoculate  and,  under  sterile  conditions,  I  wash 
those  spores  off  of  those  tubes  into  a  flask  of  sterile  water. 
Then  I  have  a  hypodermic  syringe  with  an  uptake  that  I  drop  into 
this  flask  to  innoculate  those  hundred  bottles.   It  takes  another 
ten  to  fourteen  days  for  those  bottles  to  become  fully  mature. 

Once  those  are  mature,  I  don't  have  to  worry  too  much  about 
contamination.   (Up  to  that  point,  you  really  have  to  worry  about 
contamination.)   I  just  literally  pull  off  those  disks  over  the 
neck  and  use  a  vacuum  pump.   A  lot  of  this  equipment  I  have  to  make 
myself  because  there's  none  available.   I  have  a  series  of  three 
flasks  that  I  use  for  traps,  and  I  have  to  spiral  the  glass  tubing 
so  that  I  get  a  cyclone  action  throwing  the  spores  down  to  the 
bottom  of  the  flask.   Otherwise  it's  just  like  talcum  powder:  they 
go  poof  right  into  the  air. 

The  flasks  are  connected  by  tygon  tubing  to  a  little  vacuum 
wand,  which  I  make  out  of  glass  tubing.   I  go  in  and  just  vacuum 
the  spores  off  the  surface  of  the  bottle.   Then  I  weigh  and  stopper 
the  dry  spores,  and  put  them  in  the  refrigerator  at  43°,  and  hold 
them  until  the  grapes  are  picked. 


59 


AAN: 


Teiser: 

AAN: 

Teiser: 

AAN: 


Once  the  grapes  are  picked,  I  take  the  dry  spores  and  mix  them  with 
water  and  a  wetting  agent  to  help  hold  them  in  suspension — you  have 
to  keep  stirring  it  constantly.   We  then  spray  the  grapes,  which 
are  put  on  trays  of  1/4"  hardware  cloth  supported  by  a  frame  of 
2"  X  2"s  when  they  are  placed. 

Does  the  timing  of  your  whole  operation  depend  particularly  on  the 
ripeness  of  the  grapes? 

4 

Well,  we  want  the  grapes  at  23  to  24  degrees  Brix  when  they're 
picked. 

Can  you  hold  your  material  until  they  reach  that? 
Yes,  I've  held  it  for  years. 


E  xp e riments  with  Freezing  the  Spores 


AAN: 


I've  been  experimenting  since  1980 — since  we've  been  doing  it  here 
at  Beringer — with  freezing  the  spores  on  agar.   If  you  freeze  the 
dried  spores,  they  don't  seem  to  come  back  to  life  well  enough,  but 
if  you  freeze  them  in  the  tubes  or  in  the  bottle  on  the  agar,  it 
seems  to  work  very  well.   I've  been  using  those  from  year  to  year, 
keeping  some  of  the  single  spore  tubes  frozen.   Then  I  have  those 
to  start  my  next  batch  of  spores. 

[Mr.  Nightingale  returns] 


Botrytis  and  Grape  Varieties 


Teiser:  When  you  started  this  at  Cresta  Blanca,  what  grapes  were  you  using? 

AAN:  Semillon,  only  Semillon. 

Teiser:  What  are  you  using  here  now? 

AAN:  We're  using  Semillon  and  Sauvignon  blanc. 

Teiser:  Do  you  think  that  makes  a  better  wine? 

AAN:  We've  kept  it  separate,  I  think,  until  after  fermentation.   In  '81, 
I  guess  it  was,  we  started  to  blend  half  and  half. 


60 


MSN:       Eighty-four  was  all  blended,  but  we  lost  that.   The  '85,  we 
blended  both  varieties. 

Teiser:    Do  you  do  that  on  principle,  or  because  of  certain  years  or  certain 
grapes? 

MSN:       It's  just  a  basic  arbitrary  formula  we've  come  up  with.   We  feel 
the  Semillon  and  the  Sauvignon  blanc  are  very  compatible  as  grape 
varieties.   This  is  what  has  been  done  in  some  of  the  famous 
chateaus  in  Europe. 

Teiser:    Well,  it's  apparently  a  great  success. 


Natural  Incidence  of  Botrytis 


Teiser:    Since  then,  there  have  been  higher  incidence  of  Botrytis  occurring 
naturally  at  the  proper  level  in  the  vineyards,  have  there  not? 

AAN:       Yes. 

MSN:       Well,  I'll  tell  you  what  happened,  if  you  pardon  me  for  a  second. 
When  we  started  this  work,  people  were  not  as  conscious,  I  don't 
think,  about  the  Botrytis.   A  mold  was  a  mold  and  rot  was  rot.   As 
Dr.  [A.  Dinsmoor]  Webb  at  the  University  has  said  more  than  once, 
maybe  we  didn't  look  far  enough  for  the  true  Botrytis  in  the  vine 
yards.   Maybe  it  took  something  like  this  work  here  that  we  have 
done  to  trigger  a  better  look.   We  do  know  that  it  does  not  occur 
every  year,  the  same  as  it  doesn't  occur  every  year  in  Europe*.  We 
have  found  it  in  some  very  surprising  places,  even  including 
Argentina. 

But  we  didn't  look  hard  enough.   For  example,  nobody  ever 
probably  really  took  a  look  at  the  Central  Coast  counties,  the 
Monterey  area.   Some  nice  botrytised  wines  have  come  out  of  there. 
There  have  been  some  nice  ones  to  come  out  of  this  area.   Maybe  we 
didn't  look  hard  enough  or  it  was  ignored.   The  only  unfortunate 
thing  is  that  a  lot  of  people  have  taken  advantage  of  the  word 
"Botrytis"  and  tacked  it  onto  labels  where  probably  the  only 
Botrytis  that  the  grapes  ever  saw  or  felt  was  that  they  were  in  this 
winery  here  or  somebody's  winery,  and  a  truck  of  grapes  went  down 
the  highway  there  that  has  some  Botrytis  on  it. 

That's  another  extreme:  people  not  knowing  about  Botrytis,  and 
a  lot  of  them  still  don't  know  about  it,  or  what  to  expect  or  how 
it  grows,  so  when  they  see  a  shriveled  grape  they  automatically  say 


*To  produce  sweet  wines. 


61 


MSN: 


"Ah,  Botrytis."  Well,  all  you've  got  there  is  a  raisin, 
[laughter]   But  there's  been  some  very  fine  botrytised  wines  made 
in  this  state. 

Blowing  our  own  horn  on  this  thing,  Alice  can  pretty  much 
duplicate  year  in  and  year  out.   She  has  the  spores  ready  which  she 
sprays  on  the  fruit  when  the  fruit's  ready.   After  two  weeks,  they 
are  pressed  and  I  crush  and  press  the  grapes  and  make  the  wine  out 
of  them.   This  is  the  main  advantage  of  it.   Of  course,  it's  a  very 
expensive  way  of  going  about  it.   It's  been  used  primarily  as  a 
public  relations  tool  because  to  make  enough  to  supply  the  fifty 
states,  I'd  need  another  Nestle  mountain  of  gold,  probably,  to  do 
it.   The  cost  is  prohibitive. 


First  Volume  Produced  at  Cresta  Blanca 


Teiser: 

MSN: 
Teiser: 

MSN: 


AAN: 


MSN: 


MSN: 


AAN: 


When  you  first  brought  it  out,  as  you  mentioned  earlier,  it  got 
into  the  Congressional  Record. 

Yes. 

As  I  remember,  there  was  an  event  put  on  around  its  release  at  the 
Ferry  Building. 

That's  right,  at  the  Trade  Center.   Senator  Kuchel  was  there.   That 
had  to  be  in  1959,  because  '59  was  the  first  bottling  that  we  put  out, 

In  fact,  that  bottle  you've  got  over  at  the  house  is  a  '59, 
isn't  it? 

Yes,  it's  one  of  the  originals,  with  your  signature  on  the  back 
label. 

That  bottle  has  to  be  a  '59  because  we  came  out  with  it  and  Tony 
Kahman  was  our  marketing  man  then.   Later,  he  went  to  work  for  the 
Wine  Institute.   He  is  really  the  guy  that  helped  the  most  with 
botrytised  wine  for  Cresta  Blanca.   He  recognized  a  potential  in 
this  thing  as  a  PR  tool. 

H 

I  don't  know,  when  a  woman  wakes  you  up  at  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning  and  wants  to  talk  about  Botrytis — I  don't  know — 

You're  supposed  to  have  all  the  answers. 


62 


Grand  Cru's  Botrytised  Gewilr  ztraminer 


MSN:       You  might  tell  her  that  we  use  some  of  the  original  equipment, 
Alice. 

AAN:       Yes,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we're  using  the  original  trays  that  we 

sprayed  the  grapes  on  at  Cresta  Blanca.   Grand  Cru  bought  them  and 
I  went  over  and  helped  Bob  [Robert  L.]  Magnani  to  do  it  one  year. 
This  was  before  we  started  it  here.   In  fact,  the  first  year  that 
he  decided  to  try  to  do  it,  he  did  not  use  the  method  that  I  do 
with  single  sporing  and  so  forth.   He  just  did  what  we  call  a  wash: 
washing  the  spores  off  the  bottle.   And  he  was  using  Gewurtztraminer, 
which  is  the  grape  that  he  had  mostly  and  was  his  favorite  grape. 

Some  people  liked  it,  but  it  didn't  sell  too  well.   The  main 

problem  there  is  that  Gewurtztraminer  is  too  spicey  in  contrast  to 

the  one  and  only  flavor  that  you  get  from  Botrytis.   I  think  that 
was  the  reason. 

But,  anyway,  after  he  gave  it  up  we  bought  the  trays  from 
him.   This  year  we're  going  to  get  new  trays. 


Public  Relations  Efforts 

AAN:       It's  a  very  expensive  process.   Like  Myron  was  saying,  we've 

used  it  mainly  here  as  a  PR  tool.   Up  until  the  flood  last  February, 
I  had  a  slide  presentation  that  I  used  and  gave  lectures  here  and 
there.   It  showed  all  of  my  laboratory  work  from  the  beginning, 
starting  with  the  single  spore  in  the  tubes  to  the  picking  of  the 
grapes,  and  so  forth.   Right  on  through  the  process  of  the  infection, 
how  it  takes  effect  during  the  period  of  ten  to  fourteen  days,  and 
up  to  the  pressing  of  the  grapes  and  the  juice  going  into  the 
container.   Then,  of  course,  Myron  takes  over  and  makes  the  wine. 

Teiser:    What  happened  in  the  flood? 
AAN:       Oh,  we  lost  everything. 


63 


X  THE  CALIFORNIA  WINE  INDUSTRY  IN  THE  1980S 
[Interview  3:   March  10,  1987]//// 


Nestle 's  Involvement  in  Self -Education  about  Wines 

Jacobson:   When  Nestle  first  came  in,  you  said  they  obviously  didn't  know 

much  about  the  wine  industry  and  they  gave  you  lots  of  room  to  do 
as  you  saw  fit.   Did  they  try  to  educate  themselves  about  the  wine 
industry  ever,  or  did  they  always  just  stay  out  of  it? 

MSN:       I  think  they  were  very  much  interested  in  educating  themselves  about 
it.   Three  or  four  of  the  boys  high  up  in  the  Nestle'' corporation 
spent  time  at  Davis,  not  attending  classes  but  doing  a  lot  of 
auditing  and  talking  to  professors  in  the  Department  of  Viticulture 
and  Enology.   Also,  in  attempting  to  get  better  acquainted  with  wine 
and  to  expose  me  and  some  of  my  associates  to  the  wine  industry 
world-wide,  they  even  promoted  a  trip  to  Europe.   For  a  week  or  ten 
days,  we  were  traveling  around  Europe,  visiting  wineries  in  France 
and  then  Germany. 

I  was  there  with  them  and  in  those  areas  where  they  were  a 
little  gray,  I  tried  to  explain  to  them  actually  what  was  going  on 
to  the  best  of  my  knowledge.   Of  course,  there  were  some  things  that 
some  of  the  people  were  doing  over  there  that  I  didn't  understand, 
also.   I  knew  the  general  theory  of  most  of  it  anyway.   But  they 
were  very  much  interested  in  getting  in  and  seeing  what  really  goes 
on  in  the  winery,  from  the  grape  itself  out  to  the  front  door. 


Nestle 's  Investments  in  Wine  Research 


MSN:       Another  thing  that  they  did  when  they  came  in  the  wine  business  was 
to  bring  in  engineers,  chemists,  and  biochemists  who  worked  with  me, 
One  fellow,  for  example,  spent  a  lot  of  time  on  the  aging  of  wines 


64 


MSN:       in  wood.  Another  one  spent  a  lot  of  time  on  centrifuging:  the 

separation  of  juice  from  some  of  the  grape  solids.   This  man  was 
right  out  of  the  research  laboratory  at  Marysville,  Ohio,  which  was 
the  Central  Research  Laboratory  in  the  United  States  for  the  Nestle 
company.   They  did  a  lot  of  work  for  us  regarding  use  of  wood,  for 
example,  red  oak,  white  oak,  pine,  beechwood,  etc. 

They  also  helped  us  out  with  a  lot  of  things  as  far  as 
equipment  was  concerned.   I  mean,  they  had  the  engineers  and  they 
had  this  huge  library  of  information  from  their  food  plants  all 
over  the  world.   It's  one  of  the  largest  producers  of  food  in  the 
universe.   So  there  was  a  lot  of  information  there  which  was 
beneficial  to  us. 


Educating  Nestle  about  California  Wines 


MSN:       At  the  same  time,  we  were  feeding  them  information  about  wines  and 
acquainting  these  people  with  different  grape  varieties.   I  made 
several  trips  east  in  the  formative  years  of  this  company  after 
Nestle*  took  it  over  to  do  this  very  thing,  to  show  them  that  there 
were  differences  in  California  wine. 

You  have  to  remember  one  thing:  the  Nestle  Corporation  is  a 
foreign  corporation,  very  much  oriented  for  the  imports,  for  the 
French  wines  and  German  wines.   That  was  their  background.   So  they 
were  judging  by  what  they  did  in  Europe  and  the  way  the  wines  tasted 
over  there.   It  took  a  long  time  to  convince  them  that  we  had  our 
product  that  we  made  from  our  grapes,  and  the  French  had  theirs 
that  they  make.   However,  the  pattern  is  still  there  to  the  extent 
that  we  still  make  use  of  enologists  from  France  which  the  Nestle'' 
Corporation  sends  over  here  to  advise  us,  or  help  us,  in  our 
winemaking . 

So  you  say,  "Now  that's  kind  of  contradictory."  But  in  a 
sense  it  isn't,  because  it  comes  back  to  what  I  mentioned  in  an 
earlier  interview.   There  are  so  many  California  labels  today,  the 
competition  is  so  rough  out  there,  that  if  there's  just  one  little 
thing  that  we  could  pick  up  that  would  make  our  wine  more  desirable 
than  yours,  we're  going  to  jump  onto  that.   That's  the  way  the  Nestle' 
people  operate. 

Teiser:     They  offer  advice,  but  don't  insist? 
MSN:       That's  right. 


65 


Knowledge  of  Winemaking  in  the  Big  Corporations 


Teiser: 


MSN: 


Teiser: 


MSN: 


It  strikes  me  that  there  must  be  a  contrast  between  them  and  the 
earlier  round  of  national  spirits  companies  that  came  into  the  wine 
industry,  who  didn't  understand  the  wine  business  and  wanted  to 
tell  rather  than  learn. 

This  is  true  because  they  were  looking  at  it  from  the  straight 
alcohol  point  of  view,  as  I  call  it.   It  was  a  commodity  to  sell. 
Most  of  them  had  come  out  of  the  spirits  field  and  they  thought, 
"Well,  this  is  the  way  we  sell  the  spirits,  this  is  the  way  we  make 
them.   We  know  what  the  people  like."  Actually,  all  it  amounted  to 
was  a  continuation  of  old-time  methods  and  procedures  in  wine  types: 
the  Sauternes,  the  burgundy,  the  ports,  the  sherries,  the  muscatels, 
or  whatever  you  want.   Because,  as  you  know,  back  in  those  days 
there  was  a  great  preponderance  of  dessert  wines. 

Contrast  that  with  somebody  like  the  Nestle"  people  or  other 
big  corporations  that  have  come  into  this  industry  since  those  days. 
They  are  more  interested  in  things  like,  What  makes  a  Chardonnay 
more  appealing  to  the  consumer?  What  is  the  difference  between  a 
barrel-fermented  and  a  non-barrel-fermented  Chardonnay?  Forty 
years  ago  those  people  didn't  give  a  hoot. 

I've  heard  stories  about  national  companies  requesting  that  a  winery 
send  them,  say,  two  thousand  cases  of  a  particular  vintage,  not 
understanding  that  wine  isn't  produced  the  way  spirits  are.   Is 
that — ? 

I  think  a  lot  of  that  was  occurring  in  the  early  days  of  some  of 
these  big  companies.   One  I  know  of  was  running  wine  in  the  back 
door,  and  it  was  going  out  the  front  door  by  the  gallons — to  such  an 
extent  that  it  was  far  more  than  the  yield  from  the  grapes  or  the 
area  from  which  it  was  supposed  to  be  coming.   I'm  talking 
specifically  about  Cresta  Blanca. 

I  know  and  was  told  when  I  went  to  Cresta  Blanca  in  '53  that  a 
lot  of  wines  in  the  past  had  come  in  that  winery,  not  just  from  the 
Livermore  Valley,  but  also  from  around  Elk  Grove. 

I  guess  there's  a  lot  of  people  who  assume  the  holier-than-thou 
attitude  on  a  lot  of  these  things,  but  there's  been  a  lot  of 
monkeyshines  that  have  gone  on  in  the  industry. 


66 


Movement  of  Wine  in  Bulk 


Teiser:    I  think  one  thing  the  public  doesn't  understand,  and  maybe  the 
industry  doesn't  want  to  explain  either,  is  that  as  a  matter  of 
fact  a  fair  amount  of  wine  passes  from  winery  to  winery. 

MSN:       Yes,  that's  quite  true.   There's  an  awful  lot  of  exchange.   I  was 
going  to  say  that  it's  more  prevalent  among  wineries  in  the  Central 
Valley,  but  that  isn't  true  because  there's  an  awful  lot  of  that 
going  on  in  the  North  Coast  and  Central  Coast.   The  reason  for  it 
is  simply  that  some  wineries  don't  have  a  market  for  their  product, 
or  haven't  established  one,  and  they  can't  sell  it.   There's 
nobody  out  there  with  a  big  horn  screaming  at  the  people. 

We've  bought  an  awful  lot  of  White  Zinfandel  and  we've  bought 
an  awful  lot  of  Pinot  noir  from  North  Coast  wineries.  We  can't  put 
them  out  in  the  estate  bottle,  but  we  can  put  it  out  under  a  Napa 
Valley  or  North  Coast  label  because  we  process  it  and  handle  it. 

There's  an  awful  lot  of  that  going  on.   You  can't  go  down  the 
road  and  know  that  each  bottle  you  buy  out  there  is  wine  representing 
that  individual  winery.   It  may  seem  that  way  because  of  the 
workings  of  a  winery,  but  you  could  not  get  on  the  podium  and  swear 
that  this  wine  came  out  of  X  winery,  period.   Because  if  you  dug 
into  the  records,  you  may  find  that  some  of  it  came  from  Beringer 
and  some  of  it  came  from  Robert  Mondavi. 


Maintaining  Continuity  of  Quality 


Teiser:    That's  where  the  blender,  or  whoever  is  in  control  of  bottling, 
comes  in,  isn't  it? 

MSN:       That's  where  he  comes  in.   That's  where  he  makes  the  money,  and 
that's  where  you'd  better  have  somebody  that  knows  what  they're 
doing.   You're  into  that  market  so  that  you  can  have  a  continuity 
of  quality — that's  the  key  word,  the  continuity  of  quality.   That's 
something  that  I've  always  stressed.   Some  wineries  will  buy  a  little 
quantity  of  three  and  four  thousand  gallons  and  put  them  together. 
I  try  to  shy  away  from  that  because  you  can  get  into  trouble  pretty 
fast.   If  I'm  dealing  with  your  winery  and  your  winery,  and  making 
a  blend,  and  I've  got  five  thousand  gallons  and  I  need  another  ten 
of  such  a  wine,  I'd  prefer  to  buy  that  in  maybe  a  four -and -a -six 
thousand -gallon  quantity  because  you  can  get  a  better  representation. 

Teiser:    Consistency  in  quality  is  one  of  the  things  that  the  Gallos  have 
told  a  lot  of  their  people. 


67 


MSN:       That's  the  whole  thing. 

Teiser:    I  don't  suppose  they  invented  it,  but — . 

MSN:       They've  done  a  good  job  at  it  with  their  dry  wines,  I'll  tell  you 
that.   They  put  out  some  bummers  the  same  as  the  rest  of  us,  but  I 
think  those  people  have  done  a  fantastic  job.   Absolutely  fantastic 
considering  the  volume  of  wine  that  they  handle.   When  you  think  of 
the  hundreds  of  millions  of  gallons. 


The  Wine  Industry:  A  Risky  Business 


Teiser:    Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  have  a  vineyard  of  your  own,  or  a 
winery? 

MSN:       I  never  had  any  desire  for  that.   I  guess  maybe  I  didn't  have  the 
nerve  to  do  it .   I  came  into  the  wine  business  when  I  saw  a  lot  of 
growers  going  to  the  bank  every  other  day  trying  to  renew  their 
loan.   I  saw  a  lot  of  winery  failures,  and  quite  frankly,  I  just 
never  had  the  guts  to  get  into  that  sort  of  thing.   I  had  a  couple 
opportunities,  but  I  backed  out  of  it. 

But  some  people  feel  the  risk  is  worth  it.   That  has  been 
said  by  people  that  have  money  and  people  that  don't  have  money. 
A  lot  of  people  have  gone  out  here  and  established  little  wineries 
and  struggled  along,  and  finally  made  a  go  of  it.   They'll  never 
get  rich.   They  might  make  expenses,  some  of  them.   On  the  other 
hand,  you  have  people  that  have  come  out  of  the  city,  or  wherever 
it  may  be,  with  a  lot  of  money,  and  built  a  big  home,  built  a 
winery — just  to  have  their  name  on  the  place.   You  know,  if  you've 
got  it,  why  not  flaunt  it.   Maybe  that's  your  attitude. 

Teiser:    Was  it  Andre  Tchelistchef f  who  said  the  way  to  make  a  small  fortune 
in  the  wine  industry  is  to  start  with  a  large  fortune? 

MSN:       Yes,  and  he's  100.1  percent  right. 
[Mr.  Nightingale  gets  a  pamphlet] 

Teiser:    This  is  titled  "California  Wine  Outlook."   It  is  a  Bank  of  America 
September  1973  publication. 

MSN:       There's  some  very  interesting  reading  in  there. 

Teiser:    Its  over-optimism  was  one  of  the  factors,  however,  in  the  oversupply 
of  wine,  wasn't  it? 


68 


MSN:       Yes,  that's  right.   That's  exactly  right.   They  made  some 

projections,  and  Myron  Nightingale  went  down  to  the  bank  and  he 
borrowed  a  hell  of  a  lot  of  money.   Then  he  went  to  another  expert 
and  asked  what  kind  of  grapes  he  should  plant,  and  he  planted  the 
grapes.   But  the  expert  he  went  to,  to  find  out  where  to  plant  them, 
gave  him  the  wrong  dope,  so  he  planted  them  in  the  wrong  place.   An 
awful  lot  of  that's  gone  on. 

This  [report]  is  something  I've  always  kept.  When  somebody 
starts  yelling  at  me  about  wine,  I  haul  that  out  and  throw  it  at 
them. 

Teiser:    Wells  Fargo  published  another  in  much  the  same  tenor. 

MSN:       Well,  don't  misunderstand  me.   I  don't  mean  to  be  a  pessimist  about 
this  business,  and  I  guess  that's  what  I  sound  like,  because  it's 
been  my  lifeblood  for  over  forty  years.   I've  had  a  good  living  on 
it.   I've  raised  my  family,  I've  done  a  lot  of  nice  things,  I've 
lived  comfortably.   I  wouldn't  trade  it  for  anything.   All  I'm 
saying  is  that  it  takes  a  hell  of  a  lot  of  money  and  a  lot  of  guts 
to  go  into  the  wine  business.   If  you  can  do  that  and  suffer  through 
it,  maybe  you  might  get  there,  but  I  wouldn't  want  to  start  in  the 
wine  business  under-capitalized  in  today's  market.   Or  even  fifteen 
or  twenty  years  ago! 

Teiser:    Joe  Heitz,  I  guess,  did  about  that,  twenty-five  years  ago. 

MSN:       That's  right,  and  he  did  a  lot  of  personal  hype.   In  all  due  respect 
to  Mr.  Heitz,  that's  what  it  takes. 


69 


XI  WORK  AS  BERINGER  CONSULTANT,  1983-PRESENT 


Winemaking  Responsibilities 


Teiser:    I  should  ask  you  now  to  explain  a  little  more  about  what  your 
activities  have  been  since  your  so-called  retirement. 

MSN:       I  guess  they've  been  pretty  much  the  same  as  they  were  before.   I 
don't  have  the  active  participation  that  I  once  had.   My 
responsibilities  are  a  lot  smaller.   In  fact,  I  do  pretty  much  as 
I  please.   If  they  need  me  for  something,  why,  I'm  here  to  help  them. 
If  they  don't  need  me,  then  they  don't  come  to  me  and  I  don't  go 
looking  for  trouble — not  at  this  stage  of  the  game,  I  don't. 

Teiser:    Do  you  taste? 

MSN:       Yes,  I  taste  regularly.   I  enjoy  doing  that,  but  to  me,  that  isn't 
work.   I  taste  any  amount  I  want  to,  when  I  want  to.   If  they're 
having  a  tasting  in  the  back  room  over  there  and  they  invite  me  to 
participate  in  that  tasting,  then  I  go.   Sometimes  I  don't  go;  it 
depends  on  the  tasting,  what  they're  trying  to  do  or  find  out. 
Besides  that  I  oversee  some  of  the  brands  a  little  bit  and  the 
buying  of  outside  wines,  which  I  look  at  and  have  files  on  and  make 
recommendations  on  to  the  company.   Of  course,  they  have  their  own 
winemaster,  Ed  Sbragia,  and  then  they  have  Dave  Schlottman,  who  is 
his  assistant.   I  confer  with  them  on  wines  that  they're  buying  or 
should  be  buying.   They'll  bring  wines  in  to  me  and  say,  "What  do 
you  think  of  this?"  as  far  as  quality  is  concerned  or  price  or 
whatever  for  what  we're  trying  to  do. 

We  have  actually  three  lines  now.   We  have  the  Beringer  line, 
then  we  have  this  Napa  Ridge  line,  and  the  Los  Hermanos.   So  we 
can't  possible  grow  all  the  grapes  for  that.   Los  Hermanos,  as  I've 
told  you,  is  primarily  San  Joaquin  Valley,  and  Napa  Ridge  is  all 
North  Coast,  but  90  percent  of  those  wines  are  bought.   I  participate 
in  that  program  quite  a  bit,  and  the  public  relations  trips  once  in 
a  while. 


Teiser: 
MSN: 


70 


You  didn't  go  to  the  Monterey  Wine  Festival  just  now,  did  you? 

No,  I  did  not.   But  I  do  pretty  much  as  I  please.   [laughs]   It's 
a  nice  set-up. 


Teiser:    Maybe  you  earned  it. 


Evaluation  of  Career  with  Beringer 


MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 
MSN: 


1  feel  that  I  have  put  in  some  time.   I  feel  that  I  have  made  a 
few  contributions  to  the  company.   I  get  a  great  deal  of  satisfaction 
when  I  look  around  me  and  realize  what  I  had  the  first  day  I  walked 
in  this  place.   I  was  really  scared.   God,  I  was  scared  even  at  that 
age.   But  I  was  in  it,  and  it's  just  like  you  doing  something, 
"Well,  I  got  myself  in  here  and  now  I've  got  to  work  myself  out  of 
it."  Or  you  take  the  easy  alternative  and  say,  "Forget  it."  But 
I  guess  I've  got  enough  German  blood  in  me  that's  stubborn  enough 
to  say,  "Okay,  look,  I've  accepted  this  challenge  and,  by  God,  I'm 
going  to  do  it."  That's  what  I  tried  to  do. 

Oh,  I  stubbed  my  toe  a  few  times;  we  all  do.   But  what  a  life 
it's  been  here  for  me!   I  mean,  when  I  look  back  at  what  Beringer 
has  done  for  me  and  what  the  Nestle'  people  have  done  for  me,  and 
compared  to  my  former  employer,  there's  no  comparison.   Absolutely 
no  comparison.   In  fact,  I  tell  you  quite  honestly,  when  I  first 
came  to  Beringer  in  '71  after  working  for  Schenley  for  eighteen 
years,  I  really  didn't  know  how  to  act  the  first  six  months  because 
I  was  so  used  to  having  ten  people  on  my  back  and  actually  working 
under  a  cloud  of  fear  all  the  time.   That's  what  it  was.   Schenley 
is  probably  the  greatest  high-pressure  machine  that  I  ever  worked 
for  in  my  life.   You  were  constantly  under  vigilence  in  a  sense. 
Or,  at  least,  you  felt  that  way. 

But  you  had  big  responsibilities? 

Yes,  I  had  some  big  responsibilities,  but  I  don't  think  their 
treatment  of  a  lot  of  their  employees  was  conducive  to  growth  in 
the  wine  industry. 

Is  it  your  feeling  that  other  large  companies  today  have  that  same 
pressure? 

I  think  that  pressure  exists  in  some  of  those  other  companies  today, 
particularly  a  couple  of  the  big  distillers.   Some  of  these  other 
companies,  regardless  of  what  they  are,  came  in  this  business 
during  the  last  twenty  years  and  they're  gone  now.   Some  of  those 


71 


MSN:       plants  have  had  two  or  three  owners  since.   I  don't  know  what 

we  did  to  the  Nestle  people,  but  they  came  in  here  and  they  stuck 
with  it. 

Teiser:    Maybe  you  gave  them  good  wine. 

MSN:       That  might  have  something  to  do  with  it. 


72 


XII  INDUSTRY  ACTIVITIES 


Technical  Advisory  Committee 


Teiser:    I'd  like  to  ask  you  about  your  industry  activities.   You  were 

chairman  of  the  Technical  Advisory  Committee  of  the  Wine  Institute. 
That  was  a  very  active  committee,  was  it  not? 

MSN:       Oh,  yes.   The  Wine  Institute  Technical  Advisory  Committee  in  its 
original  form  forty-some  years  ago  was  a  sounding  board  for  the 
industry.   They  met  about  every  two  or  three  months.   Everything 
from  metals  in  wines  to  protein  to  waste  disposal  to  fill  heights, 
you  name  it,  came  up  in  those  meetings.   Everybody  got  a  chance  to 
sound  off.   The  committee  meetings  were  usually  held  in  the  city  of 
San  Francisco,  till  they  started  moving  around  in  later  years. 

It  was  a  very  influential  committee  in  that  it  covered  so 
many  subjects  that  were  of  interest  to  a  young  industry.   Just 
think  how  long  Prohibition  had  been  out  the  window:  not  too  very 
long.   I  mean,  in  the  forties  we  were  still  having  problems  with 
copper  and  iron  in  the  wineries,  how  to  get  rid  of  those  metals  in 
the  wine.   What  was  the  best  method  of  transferring  wine?  Was  it 
aluminum  pipes,  stainless  steel,  or,  if  you  were  rich  and  had  a 
mountain  of  gold,  pyrex  glass?  The  committee  was  influential,  not 
that  it  came  down  and  said,  "This  is  the  way  it's  gotta  be,  bing, 
bing,  bing."  But  here  was  a  real  source  of  a  lot  of  information. 

I  was  actually  sorry  to  see  the  bust-up  of  the  committee  in 
its  original  form. 

Teiser:    Let  me  ask  you  if  the  late  Hugh  Cook  was  involved  in  it. 
MSN:       Oh,  yes,  very  much  so. 
Teiser:    He's  kind  of  forgotten  now. 


73 


MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 
Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 


Teiser: 
MSN: 


II 

He  was  a  real  bird  dog  when  it  came  to  getting  things  done  and 
getting  things  into  committee.   He  was  a  very  important  man  in  the 
Wine  Institute.   Dan  Turrentine,  who  was  later  to  become  chairman 
of  the  Wine  Advisory  Board,  was  succeeded  by  Hugh  Cook.   I  don't 
know  how  many  years  Hugh  Cook  ran  the  Technical  Advisory  Committee, 
because  he's  the  one  who  organized  the  programs.   He  would  call 
people,  "Will  you  give  a  paper  on  this  and  will  you  do  this?" 
He  was  the  one  who  held  that  committee  together. 

Hugh  not  only  did  that.   He  was  involved  in  a  lot  of  other 
committees  of  the  Wine  Institute,  but  he  was  a  hell  of  a  good  man 
on  the  Technical  Advisory  Committee. 

Did  the  Technical  Advisory  Committee  go  from  informal  comments  to 
formal  papers? 

No. 

Was  it  always  papers  from  the  beginning? 

Yes,  informal  papers.   Nothing  like  the  articles  that  appear  in  the 
American  Society  of  Enology  journal  or  anything  like  that.   Just 
primarily  informal  comments. 

As  problems  came  up,  people  gave  papers  on  them? 

Yes.   Maybe  I'd  call  on  you  to  give  a  paper  on  tartrate  deposition 
in  wines,  or  on  whether  you  should  chill  wine  and  how  you  should 
chill  it.   It  may  be  a  two-  or  three-page  paper,  but  they  were  a 
lot  of  generalities  and  information  that  you  could  take  home. 

Did  you  discuss  them  in  the  meetings? 

Oh,  yes.   We  had  some  very  interesting  discussions  on  occasion. 
Offshoots  of  the  Technical  Advisory  Committee  meeting  in  its 
original  form  are  the  regional  meetings  of  various  wine  chemists' 
groups,  which  are  still  in  existence.   They  have  one  here  in  the 
Napa  Valley,  and  I'm  sure  there's  one  at  least  or  two  in  the 
San  Joaquin  Valley.   There  used  to  be  one  in  Lodi,  one  in  the 
Fresno  area.   A  lot  of  those  studies  were  similar  to  the  discussions 
that  went  on  in  the  Technical  Advisory  Committee.   Those  were 
informal  meetings,  usually  preceded  by  a  dinner,  and  then  the 
chairman  would  say,  "Well,  we  got  so-and-so  here  to  discuss  such- 
and-such  for  us."  It  might  be  somebody  from  a  paper  company, 
Zellerbach,  or  it  might  be  somebody  from  a  chemical  company.   Those 
meetings  were  good. 


Teiser: 


Were  you  active  in  other  aspects  of  the  Wine  Institute? 


74 


MSN:       Not  an  awful  lot.   TAG  was  the  main  thing.   In  fact,  I'm  still  a 
member  of  the  TAG  in  its  present  form.   I  was  a  member  of  the 
Exhibits  Committee  for  a  long  time.   I  was  never  chairman  of  that 
committee. 


American  Society  of  Enologists  (ASEV) 

Teiser:    You  were  then  active  in  the  ASE,  now  the  ASEV,  the  American 
Society  for  Enology  and  Viticulture? 

MSN:       I  was  a  member  of  the  Enology  Committee  or  Viticulture  Committee, 
and  we  tasted  new  grape  varieties  being  developed  by  Professor 
[Harold  P.]  Olmo  over  at  Davis.   I  did  a  lot  of  that  work  for 
several  years  with  committee  members.   It  was  very  interesting 
because  you  had  crosses  of  Cabernet  and  Grenache,  and  some  other 
things  that  Olmo  dreamed  up.   Some  of  them  are  in  use  today, 
particularly  down  in  San  Joaquin  Valley. 


Charter  Meeting 

MSN:       One  thing  I've  always  been  sorry  about  was  that  I  never  went 

to  the  charter  meeting  in  '49  or  '50  at  the  Hotel  Wolf  in  Stockton. 
But  one  thing  I  have  to  cling  on  to  is 'that  Charles  Holden,  who 
was  the  founder  of  the  American  Society  of  Enologists,  came  up  to 
Cloverdale,  prior  to  that  meeting,  when  I  was  working  for  Italian 
Swiss  Colony.   I  remember  very  distinctly  his  particular  visit, 
because  we  went  out  in  my  kitchen  and  we  sat  there  in  that  kitchen. 
I  don't  remember  whether  we  had  wine  or  brandy,  or  whether  we  had 
anything.   The  important  thing  to  remember  is  that  a  lot  of  the 
basics  that  went  into  the  founding  of  the  American  Society  of 
Enologists  were  done  right  up  there  in  that  kitchen  in  Cloverdale. 
That's  something  that  I  shall  never  forget. 

When  Charles  Holden  left  my  house,  I  says,  "Well,  I'll  be 
there. Ir  Unfortunately,  the  man  I  was  working  for  at  the  Italian 
Swiss  Colony  the  day  of  that  meeting  was  in  Stockton,  and  he 
decided  that  I  should  stay  there  and  take  care  of  business  rather 
than  running  around  at  some  crazy  meeting.   You  would  know  the  name 
if  I  mentioned  it,  but  for  the  sake  of  this  discussion  I  won't 
mention  it. 


75 


Offices  Held 


MSN: 


Teiser: 
MSN: 


Teiser: 

MSN: 


Then  about  1953-54,  I  got  into  the  ASE  as,  among  other  things, 
treasurer.   I  was  treasurer  for  several  years.   All  that  amounted 
to  in  those  days  was  sending  out  notices  on  the  annual  dues, 
which  I  think  was  $10  or  $15  a  year.   Of  course,  now  it's  $45  a 
year.   Everything  goes  up.   Then  in  '61  or  '62,1  was  president. 

What  was  going  on  when  you  were  president?  Anything  special? 

I  don't  remember  anything  really  outstanding.   What  I  do  remember 
about  those  early  ASE  meetings  was  the  family  atmosphere  about 
them,  because  they  were  very  small  get-togethers.   They  were 
really  enlarged  Technical  Advisory  Committee  meetings.   Some  of  the 
first  ones  were  held  over  at  Davis,  and  they  had  just  a  few 
exhibits,  maybe  a  filter  and  a  pump  in  the  hallway  of  the  enology 
building.   Then  there  were  the  lectures  on  the  campus.   It  was  a 
very  small  operation,  but  a  good  operation. 

I  remember  one  year  we  had  a  convention  up  at  Hoberg's  when  I 
was  president.   We  had  somewhere  between  three  and  five  hundred 
people.   Boy,  I'm  telling  you,  we  thought  we  had  arrived! 

What's  happened  since?  Does  the  president  go  on  being  active? 

No,  what  happens  is  you  start  through  the  chairs  as  a  second 
vice-president.   His  job  primarily  is  arranging  for  exhibits. 
Then  the  first  vice-president's  job  is  arranging  for  papers.   The 
president's  job,  of  course,  is  general  management  of  the  organization. 
In  those  days,  and  I  don't  think  it's  a  policy  any  longer, 
following  your  year  as  president  of  the  organization,  many  would 
serve  a  year  as  chairman  of  the  policy  committee,  sort  of  an 
advisory  board  to  the  president,  which  had  three  or  four  people. 
I  was  chairman  of  that  for  a  year. 


Research  and  Promotional  Activities 


MSN:       After  that,  my  connections  with  the  society  were  not  in  official 

positions.   I  did  a  lot  of  work  for  the  society  on  a  lot  of  different 
projects. 

Teiser:    Research,  you  mean? 


76 


MSN: 


Teiser: 
MSN: 


Some  of  it  was  research,  but  basically  it  was  organizing:  attempting 
to  get  people  to  come  to  the  meetings  and  promoting  the  society. 

We  have  now  over  two  thousand  people  who  come  to  those  conventions. 

Where  before  you  met  people  down  in  the  lobby  and  you  knew 

everybody  that  was  there,  today  you  walk  into  the  lobby  and  it's 

a  fight  over  who  got  what  room  and  why  didn't  I  get  that  room  and 
that  sort  of  thing.   [laughs] 

You  have  massive  exhibits,  don't  you? 

Oh,  yes.   They  charge  quite  a  fee  for  those  exhibits,  but  the  money 
goes  for  a  good  cause.   The  society  has  come  an  awful  long  ways. 
I  mean,  we  didn't  even  have  a  budget  to  work  on  when  it  came  to 
putting  on  a  reception  for  the  president  in  those  early  years.   We 
just  didn't  have  the  reception.   I  had  a  reception  up  at  Hoberg's 
when  I  was  the  president.   I  threw  it  myself  in  a  little  room. 
There  were  twenty-five  people.   Now  the  president  has  a  great  big 
suite. 

We  contribute  a  lot  of  money  to  scholarships  and  other  areas. 
This  American  Vineyard  Foundation,  they  contribute  money  to  that. 


Teiser:    They  have  an  ongoing  publication. 

MSN:       Oh,  yes,  they  have  a  journal  which  has  gotten  world-wide  notoriety. 

Name  Change  to  Include  Viticulture 


Teiser:    They  say  they  changed  the  name  to  include  viticulture,  but  didn't 
the  organization  itself  always  include  viticulture? 

MSN:       In  the  very  early  years  it  was  a  lot  more  enology  than  it  was 

viticulture.   There  were  very  few  papers  on  viticulture.   Then,  as 
it  went  on  and  became  older,  the  tide  turned  the  other  way  to 
where  there's  a  preponderance  now  of  viticulture.   Some  of  the 
viticulturists  in  this  society  said,  "We  want  some  recognition  here, 
too,  and  we  want  a  magazine  that  we  can  publish  our  viticulture 
articles  in  that's  recognized."   So,  all  of  a  sudden  a  few  years 
back,  they  changed  the  name  to  the  American  Society  for  Enology  and 
Viticulture. 


77 


ASEV  Merit  Award 


MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 

MSN: 

Teiser: 


MSN: 


They  gave  me  my  plaque  last  year  for  which  I'm  very  proud.   I 
waited  a  long  time  for  that. 

It's  an  award  of  merit,  is  it  not? 
Yes,  it's  a  merit  award. 
They  give  one  a  year? 

Yes.   I  don't  know  who  won  it  this  year.   I  haven't  seen  any 
announcements  on  it  yet. 

I  was  about  to  ask  you  about  the  changes  since  you  entered  the 
industry.   I  think  you've  explained  them  as  you've  gone  along,  so 
I  think  I've  asked  all  the  questions  I  can  think  of.   How  about 
you,  Lisa? 

Just  ask  me  why  I'm  not  a  millionaire.   [laughter] 


Establishing  Principles  of  Quality  in  Winemaking 
Jacobson:   How  would  you  assess  your  major  contributions  to  Beringer? 


MSN: 


My  major  contributions  to  Beringer  would  be  that  I  established  a 
winery  with  respect.   By  that,  I  mean  it  was  the  rebirth  of  a  winery 
that  at  one  time  had  a  fine  name  in  the  Napa  Valley.   If  you  go 
down  and  look  at  the  wine  menus  at  the  Palace  Hotel  in  1897  or  '98, 
I  think  you'll  find  testimony  there  as  to  where  Beringer  has  been. 
I  established,  hopefully,  basic  principles  of  quality,  basic 
principles  for  continuing  the  quality.   I  hate  to  keep  coming  back 
to  that,  but  I  feel  very  strongly  about  it.   I  don't  think  it's 
enough  to  make  a  good  wine  one  year.   I  don't  think  it's  enough  to 
make  a  good  wine  two  years,  or  five  years,  or  ten  years.   I  want  to 
make  a  good  wine  as  long  as  I  can  and  as  consistent  as  I  can.   I 
think  that's  not  unique  to  me.   A  lot  of  the  other  younger  winemakers 
have  adopted  that  philosophy. 

Because  if  you  are  to  taste  wines  today,  a  block  say  of  white 
wine,  regardless  of  the  type,  compared  to  those  same  wines  25  years 
ago,  you'd  find  a  tremendous  difference.   You  don't  have  those 
peaks  and  valleys  in  quality. 


78 


MSN:       So,  summarizing,  I  would  have  to  say  that  my  strongest  contribution 
has  been  applying  good  strong  basic  winemaking  principles  that  will 
assure,  hopefully,  the  quality  of  Beringer  wines  for  a  long  time  to 
come.   I  think  that's  it  in  a  nutshell.   I  don't  think  I'll  ever 
make  an  Opus  One,  but  that's  something  else  again.   [laughs] 

Teiser:    We're  about  to  have  more  released  now. 

MSN:       You  know,  we  laugh  about  those  things,  but  let's  give  the  man  his 
just  dues.   I  have  the  highest  respect  for  Robert  Mondavi.'   I'm 
sure  that  he  may  have  some  opinions  about  me,  and  I'm  sure  that  I 
have  some  personal  opinions  about  him,  too,  but  he  and  I  are  in  the 
same  business  along  with  a  lot  of  other  people,  and  I  think  he's 
done  a  hell  of  a  good  job.   Not  only  for  the  Robert  Mondavi  people, 
but  he's  done  a  good  job  for  bringing  attention  to  the  California 
wines. 

I  get  a  bit  irritated  with  some  individuals  in  this  industry 
for  some  of  their  hype,  but  I'll  close  by  saying  what  Barnum 
said:  "There's  one  born  every  minute."   [laughter] 


Transcriber:   Anne  Schofield 
Final  Typist:   L.  G.  Dunlap 


79 


TAPE  GUIDE 


Interview  1:   February  24,  1987  1 

tape  1,  side  A  1 

tape  1,  side  B  11 

tape  2,  side  A  21 

Interview  2:  March  3,  1987                                       30 

tape  2,  side  B  30 

tape  3,  side  A  41 

tape  3,  side  B  51 

tape  4,  side  A  61 

Interview  3:  March  10,  1987                                     63 

tape  5,  side  A  63 

tape  5,  side  B  73 


80 


THE  NAPA  REGISTER 
April  19,  1984 


Long  road  for  winemaker, 
of  help  from  wife 


By  STAN  VAUGHN 
Register  Stall  Writer 

ST"  HELENA  —  After  40  years  in 
the  business,  winemaker  Myron 
Nightingale  is  finally  getting  the 
industry  recognition  he  deserves  for 
producing  fine  California  wines.  But 
to  Alice  Nightingale,  his  wife  of 
nearly  43  years,  there's  never  been 
any  doubt  about  his  talent. 

The  two  have  been  true  partners 
through  the  years,  whether  it's  been 
keeping  late  hours  at  a  winery 
during  harvest  time,  raising  their 
three  sons,  experimenting  in  new 
winemaking  techniques  or  sitting  on 
a  houseboat  trying  to  hook  a  trout. 
The  Nightingales  are  a  team. 


Myron  Nightingale  took  the  job  as 
winemaster  at  Bennger  Vineyards 
in  1971  and.  after  re-estat)lishing  the 
winery  as  one  of  the  premier  pro 
ducers  in  the  Napa  Valley,  he  has 
retired  and  taken  the  title  of  wine- 
master  emeritus.  That  doesn't 
mean,  however,  that  he  is  slowing 
down. 

Myron  graduated  from  UC  Berke 
ley  in  1941  with  a  degree  in  bacter 
iology  He  and  .-Thee  met  and  mar 
ried  in  Lindsay  while  he  was  work 
ing  in  an  olive  plant.  From  there 
they  moved  to  Southern  California, 
where  Myron  worked  making  citrus 
concentrates  for  the  British  and 
American  governments. 


It  was  in  1944  that  he  became  a 
winemaker,  going  to  work  in  Lodi 
for  the  Shewan  and  Jones  winery. 
He  moved  to  Asti  in  1949,  working  as 
a  wine  chemist  for  Italian  Swiss 
Colony,  and  in  1953  the  Nightingales 
moved  to  Livermore  and  the  Cresta 
Blanca  Wine  Co.  Then  it  was  a  move 
to  Fresno  in  the  early  1960s  and 
almost  back  to  Lodi  when  the  oppor 
tunity  at  Beringer  came  along. 

"The  late  Harry  SfV'SJi'hn  wiv 
president  of  Wine  Institute  at  the' 
lime,  steered  me  toward  Beringer 
Brothers."  Myron  recalled  one  re 
cent  afternoon.  Nestle,  the  giant 
Swiss  food  products  company,  had 

(Continued  on  F3«  2) 


"NIGHTINGALE"  is  Beringer's 
name  for  the  botrytlied  Semillon 
wine  that  Winemafter  Myron 
Nightingale  and  nil  wife,  Alice, 
have  been  producing  at  the  St. 
Helena  winery  since  I960.  The 
Nightingales  have  worked  hand-in- 
hand  on  the  project  for  many  yean, 
starting  in  the  1950s  when  Myron 


worked  for  the  Cresta  Blanca  win 
ery  in  Livermore.  The  wine,  made 
in  the  style  of  a  French  Sauterne.  is 
produced  in  very  limited  quantities. 
One  of  Nightingale']  early  effort! 
with  the  wine,  while  at  Cresta 
Blanca,  was  picked  ahead  of  the 
famed  Chateau  d'Yquem.  (Register 
photo  by  Bob  McKennei 


81 


Rare  birds  of  valley  wine  industry 


I  Continued  from  Page  1) 

jus:  purchased  Bennger  and,  after 
one  interview.  Myron  was  hired. 

"It  was  kind  of  a  dream  come  true 
for  both  of  us  because  we  always 
wanted  to  move  up  here  to  the  Napa 
Valley."  said  Myron.  "We  had  a  lot 
of  friends  up  here." 

The  opportunities  that  have  been 
presented  to  me  here  at  Bennger 
over  the  last  13  years  have,  in  a 
sense,  really  been  undreamed  of. 
For  the  first  time  in  all  the  years  I 
had  been  in  this  business.  I  really 
got  the  tools  i  wanted  to  work  with. 
Stainless  steel,  refrigeration. 
French  oak  barrels,  those  sorts  of 
things." 

Of  course,  there  was  a  time  when 
Myron  thought  he  had  made  a  mis 
take  in  taking  the  job. 

"When  Alice  and  I  first  came 
here,  we  walked  into  the  lab  and  I 
took  one  look  at  the  setup  and 
thought:  'Nightingale,  you  really 
blew  it  this  time,  because  things 
had.  for  one  reason  or  another,  gone 
to  pot. 

"Basically,  what  Nestle  bought 
was  a  small  vineyard,  which  we 
have  now  enlarged  considerably,  up 
over  2,000  acres,  a  beautiful  place 
and  a  label  they  felt  could  be 
brought  back  to  the  prestige  it  once 
had."  said  Myron 

"So,  that  has  been  the  goal,  my 
goal,  these  past  13  years,  to  re 
establish  again  the  prestige  of  Ber- 
inger.  And,  I  think  we  have  done  it," 
he  said  with  pride.  '  I  think  we  have 
made  some  inroads  in  quality  and 
have  made  some  people  stand  up 
and  take  notice. 

"1  told  them  when  I  first  came 
here  it  would  take  me  about  10  years 
to  turn  the  corner,  really  turn  the 
corner,  and  that's  just  about  what  It 


took  We  had  to  get  rid  of  a  lot  of  old 
wine,  a  lot  of  old  equipment  and  put 
in  new  equipment  and  a  helluva  lot 
of  hard  work."  Myron  said. 

It  was  in  1980.  he  believes,  "that 
our  wines  had  come  into  full  bloom, 
and  we  ve  made  improvements  in 
other  areas  since  then." 

It  was  that  year  that  Myron  re 
leased  his  first  "Private  Reserves," 
a  1977  Lemmon  Ranch  Cabernet 
bauvignon  and  a  1978  Chardonnay. 
Both  received  gold  medals  at  the 
Orange  County  Fair  that  year.  A 
long  list  of  gold  medals  has  been 
awarded  Beringer  wines  since,  and 
in  1983  Myron  was  honored  with  the 
President  s  Award  by  the  Los  Ange 
les  County  Fair.  The  award  reads: 
"To  Myron  S.  Nightingale  for  hi* 
incalcuable  contributions  to  Califor 
nia  and  her  wines." 

It  was  also  in  1980  that  Myron  and 
Alice  were  able  to  revive  some 
research  they  had  started  a  years 
before  while  at  Cresta  Blanca,  mak 
ing  a  botrytized  sermllon  —  a  sau- 
terne. 

"We  started  on  the  work  in  1956-57 
and  the  first  bottling  occured  In 
1959.  The  significance  is  that,  prior 
to  that,  California  sautemes,  so- 
called  sauternes,  you  don't  even  see 
them  on  the  market  now,  that  label 
has  disappeared,  was  that  as  far  as 
sweet  sautemes  in  California  prior 
to  that  time  had  all  been  made  by 
taking  dry  white  wine,  adding  some 
sort  of  a  concentrate  and  making 
them  sweet."  explained  Myron. 

The  process  the  Nightingales  use 
is  unique  in  the  world.  While  other 
wmemakers  let  natural  conditions 
help  produce  a  botrytis,  sometimes 
called  "Late  Harvest,"  wine,  the 
Nightingales  make  theirs  by  hand. 

Botrytis  cinerea  is  a  natural  mold 


on  grapes  which  flourishes  in  damp 
weather  The  spores  pierce  the  skin 
of  the  grapes,  allowing  the  water  to 
escape,  while  the  sugar  content  and 
natural  flavors  concentrate  and  in 
tensify. 

The  Nightingales  don't  wait  for 
Mother  Nature.  Alice  cultivates  the 
spores  through!  the  summer 
months,  then  when  the  grapes  are 
harvested  in  the  fall,  the  spores  are 
mixed  with  water  and  the  solution  is 
sprayed  on  the  fruit.  A  plastic 
covering  then  creates  the  proper 
humidity  needed  and,  38  hours  later, 
the  fruit  is  infected  with  what  is 
called  in  France  "the  noble  mold." 

"It's  very  tedious,"  Alice  said, 
explaining  her  lab  work.  She  picks 
just  the  right  strain  of  spores, 
working  with  a  transfer  needle  with 
a  knife  edge  and  a  microscope  that 
enlarges  the  spores  700  times.  It 
takes  several  weeks  for  the  spores 
to  grow.  They  are  then  harvested 
from  the  culture  bottles  and  stored 
until  the  grape  harvest. 

"This  occurs  in  the  vineyards, 
throughout  the  world,"  said  Myron. 
"I  think  one  of  the  nicest  ones  that 
has  naturally  occured  in  the  vine 
yards  I  ve  seen  was  made  by  Chuck 
Carpy  at  Freemark  Abbey  in  1973. 
He  called  it  Edelwine.  But,  it's  only 
in  certain  years  that  we  have  these 
conditions  of  moisture  and  relatively 
cool,  dry  weather  afterwards,  that 
the  fruit  can  become  infected  like 
this." 

One  reason  that  we  are  doing  It 
by  this  method,"  explained  Alice, 
"is  that  we  can  produce  this  wine 
year  after  year,  and  we  also  get  100 
percent  infection,  and  you  can't  get 
that  in  the  vineyard.  Also,  the 
bunches  of  grapes  that  we  pick  are 
checked  to  make  sure  there  are  no 


other  infections,  molds,  not  even 
botrytis.  that  comes  in  from  the 
vineyard  So  I  have  perfectly  sound 
fruit  when  it  is  sprayed,  and  by  this 
we  can  get  100  percent  of  our 
perfect  strain  of  pbtrvtis  and  100 
percent  infection." 

The  wine  they  made  with  this 
method  at  Cresta  Blanca  was  called 
Premiere  Semillon,  and  in  one  tast 
ing  it  was  picked  over  a  Chateau 
d  Yquem.  which  is  considered  one  of 
the  finest  sauterne  producers  in 
France. 

"It  was  really  a  breakthrough," 
Myron  said  of  the  results  of  that 
early  experimentation  "What  this 
thing  did,  even  more  than  making  a 
special  wine,  was  it  showed  even  in 
that  early  day,  the  rest  of  the  world 
that  we  really  could  produce  fine 
wines  out  of  California,  that  would 
draw  attention  to  California  wines. 

Beringer  s  botrytis  semillon  is 
simple  called  "Nightingale."  Alice 
said  after  40  years  in  the  wine 
industry,  "We  are  very  priviledged, 
we  feel,  that  they  named  it  after 
us." 

The  wine  retails  for  about  S3S  per 
bottle,  "and  I'll  tell  you  quite 
frankly  I  won  t  pay  S35  for  a  bottle 
of  wine."  said  Myron.  "But  if  you 
are  in  the  right  atmosphere,  and 
you've  got  the  money  to  do  it,  you 
might  be  tempted  to  try  it. 

"Some  time. when  you  get  the 
King  of  England  and  the  Queen  of 
Spam  together,  or  whoever,  and  you 
want  to  put  on  an  air.  you  really 
have,  if  you'll  pardon  my  saying  so. 
something  special  there."  Myron 
said  of  the  Nightingale  "It's  more 
than  something  marked  'private  re 
serve.'" 

Now.  just  as  they  did  in  the  early 

i  Jiunurd  oft  Page  Ii 


82 


(Continued  from  Pace  2i 

days  of  their  marriage.  Mice  and 
Myron  enjoy  their  time  together 
The  fact  that  much  of  that  time  a 
wine  related  doesn't  bother  either 
one. 

"We've  always  talked  business  at 
home.  Alice  said.  "Unlike  a  lot  of 
my  friends  in  the  wine  business.  I've 
never  objected  to  shop  talk  at  home. 
because  to  me  its  a  fascinating 
business  In  fact,  I've  threatened 
him  with  divorce  a  number  of  times 
if  he  ever  got  out  of  the  business, 
because  1  enjoy  it  so  much."  she 
said  with  mock  threatening  ster- 
ness. 

She  has  been  almost  as  involved  in 
the  business  as  her  husband,  but 
without  the  formal  education.  Alice 
married  Myron  right  after  high 
school,  yet  her  research  papers  on 
botrytis  are  studied  by  enology  stu 
dents  at  UC  Davis. 

"I've  always  had  my  nose  in 
around  the  winery."  Alice  said, 
recalling  those  early  days  in  Lodi 
when  they  actually  lived  in  the  scale 
house  at  the  winery. 


"We  had  workers  that  worked  all 
through  the  night,  and  1  always  was 
out  at  2  or  3  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
taking  them  sandwiches  and  coffee, 
and  soforth.  If  we  went  out  for  an 
evening,  we  didn  t  dare  go  to  bed 
before  we  checked  all  the  open 
fermenters.  and  that  ment  climbing 
rickety  catwalks." 

The  Nightingales  have  come  a 
long  way  since  those  early  days. 
Myron  points  to  the  technological 
changes  that  have  come,  especially 
in  the  past  20  years,  in  the  use  of 
fermentation,  refrigeration,  stain 
less  steel  tanks,  and  the  use  of 
French  oak  barrels.  And.  he  believes 
Napa  Valley  vintners  are  leading  the 
way  in  the  use  of  technology. 

"You  have  two  things  going  In  the 
Napa  Valley  The  first  thing  is  the 
premier  grape  growing  area  of 
America  is  right  here  in  the  Napa 
Valley  Believe  me.  1  think  1  can  say 
that  with  some  qualification,  be 
cause  I  have  worked  in  Sonoma, 
have  dealt  with  grapes  from  Sacra 
mento  to  Bakersfield.  and  I  have 
dealt  with  grapes  along  the  Central 
Coast  —  Santa  Barbara.  Santa 
Maria,  San  Luis  Obispo  -  I've  dealt 
with  them  all 


Because  of  the  reputation  the 
Napa  Valley  has  for  fine  wine,  there 
has  been  a  concentration  of  technol 
ogy,  science.  There  is  more  em 
phasis  on  up-to-date  technology  here 
in  the  Napa  Valley  than  any  other 
part  of  the  state,  and  I  think  that's 
what  sets  us  apart  —  technology  and 
grapes." 

He's  not  slighting  the  other  wine 
regions  of  California  when  he  neaps 
praise  on  the  Napa  Valley.  "The 
white  wines  the  San  Joaquin  Valley 
is  turning  out  today  for  jug  wines 
Beringer  s  Los  Hermanos  jug 
wines  come  from  grapes  grown 
between  Bakersfield  and  Lodi)  are 
the  best  in  the  world." 

His  work  schedule  has  been  cut 
back  somewhat  at  Beringer.  but  he 
hasn  t  lost  his  interest. 

"The  blowtorch  is  off  the  back  of 
my  head."  he  said.  "I  still,  for  the 
next  two  years,  will  be  putting  in  a 
pretty  full  week.  I  think  when  I 
really,  really  relax  will  be  the  day  I 
no  longer  can  go  fishing. 


"The  wine  business  is  my  life 
blood,  and  I  want  to  keep  active  in 
it.  But.  you  have  to  look  at  the  young 
people  coming  along,  because  you 
are  no  better  than  the  man  behind 
you.  My  role  will  be  as  an  advisor. 
We  have  to  give  way  to  youth 
because  they  will  be  the  winemakers 
of  the  future.  That's  what  my  boss 
told  me  40  years  ago. 

•  But,  I'll  tell  you  one  thing.  I've 
still  got  a  lot  of  anvils  in  my  right 
arm  and,  if  I  see  a  mistake,  I'm 
going  to  drop  the  damn  thing," 
leaving  little  doubt  that  bis  pride  in 
Beringer  will  not  wane. 


FOR  40  YEARS,  wlnef  have  played  an  Important  part  In  the 
lives  of  Alice  and  Myron  Nightingale,  above.  Myron  has  been  the 
winemaker  all  that  time  —  the  past  13  years  at  Beringer  —  but 
Alice's  interest  has  been  more  than  just  a  wifely  curiosity.  She 
has  worked  side-by-side  with  her  husband  in  developing  a 
botrytlsed  Semillon  wine  that  has  been  compared  favorably  to  the 
famed  Sauternes  of  the  French  Chateau  d'Yquem.  Retiring 
earlier  this  year,  Myron  it  now  the  "Winemaster  Emeritus"  at 
Beringer.  The  Nightingales  are  pictured  above  in  the  Beringer 
lab.  (Register  photo  by  Bob  McKcnzie) 


83 


INDEX  --  Myron  S.  Nightingale 


Almaden,   36,  38 

American  Society  of  Enologists,   74-76 

American  Society  for  Enology  and 

Viticulture,   74,  76-77 
American  Vineyard  Foundation,   76 
Amerine,  Maynard  A.   10,  11,  56 
Appert,  Nicholas,   8 

Bank  of  America,   67-68 
Harrington  Hall,  3 

Bear  Creek  Vineyard  Association,   23 
Beringer  Vineyards,   27,  36,  38-55, 

59-74,  77-78 

Beringer  label,   42,  43,  44,  69 
Beringer  family,   45 
Bioletti,  Frederic,   12 
Blangsted,  Sara,   6-7 
"blue  fining,"   52 
Botrytis,   56-62 
brandy,   14,  16-17,  26 
Bras,  Bob,   39 
Bronco  Wine  Company,   44 
Brown,  Elbert  M. ,   14-16,  10,  22,  24, 

25,  46,  47,  48 

Caddow,  Harry,   15 

California  State  Fair,   46 

Camp  Marvedel,   3 

caramel,  16 

Civilian  Conservation  Corps,   2-3 

Community  Grape  Corporation,   23 

Concannon  winery,   35 

concentrate,   18-19 

Cook,  Hugh,   72-73 

cooperage,   40,  41-42,  45 

Coppo,  Bartolomeo,   28-29 

Coppo,  Joe,   28 

Coppo,  Louis,   28 

Crawford,  CharleSj   9,  12 

Cresta  Blanca  label,   18 

Cresta  Blanca  winery,   32-35,  46,  47, 

57-58,  61-62,  65 
Cruess,  William  Vere,   4,  5,  6,  7,  8, 

10,  11,  12,  48 

Davis,  Doug,   22 
Davis,  Jill,   22 
Del  Rio  Winery,   23 
Delicate  Vineyards,   44 
Duffy,  Milton  P. ,   52 


East  Side  Winery,   23 

fermentation  techniques,   11,  44,  48, 

49,  50 

French  Colombard,   43 
Fresno  mold,   11 

Gallo  [E.  &  J.  Winery],   27,  36,  39,  44 
Gambarelli  &  Davitto,   26 
grafting,   54-55 
Grand  Cru  Vineyards,   62 
Greystone  winery,   33 

Guild  Wineries  &  Distilleries,   23,  27, 
34,  35,  36,  37 

Halperin,  Ze'ev,   9 
Hartley  brandy,   17 
Heck,  Adolph,   17,  25 
Heck,  Paul,   17,  25 
Heitz,  Joseph  E. ,   68 
Heublein,  [Inc.],   25 
Holden,  Charles,   74 
Hospice  de  Beaune ,   9 

ion  exchange ,   51 

Italian  Swiss  Colony  (ISC),   17,  24-31, 
39,  74 

Johnson,  Lucien,   34 
Jones,  Lee,   13-15,  24 
Jones,  R.  H. ,   32-33 
Joslyn,  Maynard  A.,   9-10 
Jurgens,  Peter,   38 

Kahman,  Tony,   61 

Korbel  [&  Bros.]  winery,   17,  25 

Krug,  Charles,  Winery,   53 

Lejon  label,   17,  18 

Lodi  area,   22-23 

Los  Hermanos  label,   42,  43,  44,  69 

Magnani,  Robert  L. ,   62 
Maher,  Richard  L. ,   39,  40,  41 
Marsh,  George,   4,  7,  9,  10 
Martini,  Louis  M. ,   52 
Martini,  Louis  P. ,   9,  45 
McKinnon,  McKay,   52 
Meyer,  Karl  Frederick,   4 
Miranda,  Eugene,   3 


84 


Mission  Dry  Corporation,   6-7,  38 
Mondavi,  Peter,   48,  53 
Mondavi,  Robert,   78 
Moone,  F.  Michael,   41 
Mrak,  Emil,   4,  9,  10,  11 

Napa  Ridge  label,   69 

National  Distillers,   17,  19,  24-27,  33 

Nelson,  Klayton,   56-58 

Nestle  [SA],   27,  38,  63-65,  70-71. 

See  also  Beringer 

Vineyards 
Nightingale,  Alice  A.,  (Mrs.  Myron), 

56-62  and  passim 

Ohanesian,  Aram,   9 
Olmo,  Harold  P. ,   74 

Palace  Hotel,   15 

Perelli-Minetti,  Antonio,   29 

Porter,  Seton,   27 

Prati,  Ed,   25 

Prati,  Enrico,   24,  28,  29 

protein  stabilization,   50-51 

Roma  Wine  Company,   23,  33,  35,  3 

Rosentsiel,  Lewis  R. ,   27,  33,  38 

Rossi,  Edmund  A.,   25 

Rossi,  Edmund  A. ,  Jr.,   25-26,  30,  31 

Rossi,  Robert,   25 

Rossi,  Robert,  Jr.,   25 

Saccharomvces  cerevisiae.   11 

Sbarboro,  Andrea,   30 

Sbragia,  Ed,   69 

Schenley  [Distilleries,  Inc.],   19,  27, 

32-38,  70,  71 
Schlottman,  Dave,   69 
Seagrams ,   19 
Serlis,  Harry,   38 
Shewan,  Mrs.  [Jessica  A. ],   13 
Shewan-Jones  Winery,   13,  16-19,  20-24, 

26,  47 

Sierra  Wine  Company,   44 
Simis,  Rosalyn  A.  S.,   30 
Smith,  V.  R. ,  Olive  Company,   5-6 
Souverain  [Cellars],   40 
spoilage  problems,   11 
Steinhauer,  Chet,   35 
sulfide  problems,   52 
sulfur  dioxide,   11,  49 


Technical  Advisory  Committee,   32,  72, 

74,  75 

tie-in  sales,   20 
Timothy,  Brother,   46 
Tonjum,  James,   41 
Turrentine,  Dan,   73 

University  of  California 

Food  Sciece  Department,   4,  10-12 

Fruit  Products  Division,  4,  7 
University  of  California,  Berkeley,   1, 

2,  3-5,  7,  8-12,  47 
University  of  California,  Davis,   11, 

12,  50,  63 

Vaughn,  Reese,   4,  9,  10,  11 

Webb,  A.  Dinsmoor,   60 

Wente  Bros. ,   33,  35 

Wente,  Herman,   17,  46-47 

Wetmore  family,   34 

Wine  Institute,   15,  20,  28,  32,  38, 

47,  51,  61,  72-74 
Wine  Advisory  Board,   73 
Winkler,  Albert  J. ,   11 

yeasts,   11 


Grape  varieties  mentioned  in  the 
interview 

Cabernet  Sauvignon,   42,  43,  53,  74 

Chardonnay,   42,  43,  53 

Chenin  blanc,   42,  43,  53 

Flame  Tokay,   22 

French  Colombard,   53 

Gewurztraminer ,   62 

Grenache ,   74 

Johannisberg  Riesling,   35 

Muacat ,   54 

Palomino,   55 

Pinot  noir,   53 

Sauvignon  blanc,   42,  54,  59 

Semillon,   59 

Thompson  Seedless,   17-18,  26,  35,  43- 

44 
Zinfandel,   22-23,  42-43,  53,  54 

Wines  mentined  in  the  interview 

Botrytized,   59-62 
Cabernet  Sauvignon,   49 
chablis,  43 


85 


champagne,   16,  17 

Chardonnay,   43,  48,  50,  65 

Chateau  Lejon  Red  and  White,   17 

Chenin  Blanc,  53-54 

Dubonnet,   37 

Gewurztra»iner ,   62 

muscatel,   17,  19,  20 

Pinot  Noir,   49,  66 

port,   17,  19,  35 

Sauterne-type,   56 

Semillon,   56 

sherry,   16,  17-18,  19,  35 

vermouth,   17 

white  port,  35 

White  Zinfandel,   23,  43,  44,  54,  66 


Ruth  Teiser 


Born  in  Portland,  Oregon;  came  to  the  Bay 

Area  in  1932  and  has  lived  here  ever  since. 
Stanford  University,  B.A.,  M.A.  in  English; 

further  graduate  work  in  Western  history. 
Newspaper  and  magazine  writer  in  San  Francisco 

since  1943,  writing  on  local  history  and 

business  and  social  life  of  the  Bay  Area. 
Book  reviewer  for  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle, 

1943-1974. 
Co-author  of  Winemaking  in  California,  a 

history,  1982. 
An  interviewer-editor  in  the  Regional  Oral 

History  Office  since  1965.