University of California • Berkeley
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series
Zelma R. Long
THE PAST IS THE BEGINNING OF THE FUTURE:
SIMI WINERY IN ITS SECOND CENTURY
With an Introduction by
Dr. Ann Noble
Interviews Conducted by
Carole Hicke
in 1991 and 1992
Copyright c 1992 by The Regents of the University of California
Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a modern research
technique involving an interviewee and an informed interviewer in spontaneous
conversation. The taped record is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity
and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The resulting manuscript is typed
in final form, indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable .
************************************
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement
between The Regents of the University of California and Zelma R.
Long dated September 23, 1991. The manuscript is thereby made
available for research purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The
Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part
of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University
of California, Berkeley.
Requests for permission to quote for publication should be
addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with Zelma R. Long requires that she be notified of the
request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Zelma R. Long, "The Past is the Beginning
of the Future: Simi Winery in its Second
Century," an oral history conducted in
1991 and 1992 by Carole Hicke, Regional
Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1992.
Copy no .
Zelma Long, 1991.
Photograph by David Buchholz
Cataloging Information
LONG, Zelma R. (b. 1943) Winemaker, winery executive
The Past is the Beginning of the Future: Simi Winery in its Second
Century . 1992, ix, 103 pp.
Development of the winery under Long's direction, 1979 to present;
evolution of California wine industry, 1970s -1990s; Robert Mondavi Winery,
1970s; research methods at Simi.
Introduction by Dr. Ann Noble, Professor, Department of Viticulture and
Enology, University of California, Davis.
Interviewed in 1991 and 1992 by Carole Hicke for the Wine Spectator
California Winemen Oral History Series, The Regional Oral History Office,
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
TABLE OF CONTENTS --Zelma Long
PREFACE i
INTRODUCTION --by Dr. Ann Noble vi
INTERVIEW HISTORY viii
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION lx
I BACKGROUND AND EARLY YEARS 1
Family and Childhood 1
General Education
Winemaking Studies 3
II WINEMAKING AT ROBERT MONDAVI WINERY: 1970-1979 6
Joining the Winery 6
Early Responsibilities
Change and Innovation 8
How Winemaking Evolved In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s 11
Experimentation in the 1970s 13
Becoming Head Enologist: 1972 16
Centrifuging
Cooperage 20
Vineyards and Grapes 23
Winemaking Decisions 25
III MOVING TO SIMI 29
Deciding to Join Simi 29
Simi Winery in 1979 31
IV GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE WINERY 32
Equipment
People 36
The Must Chiller
Winemaking ^3
Viticulture 45
Viticulture: The Vineyards 52
Management 59
Developing an International Business 64
V CHANGES AND CONCERNS OF THE WINE INDUSTRY 66
Linkage Between Viticulture and Winemaking 66
The Concept of Terroir
The American Appellation System
Evolution of the Use of Wine Varieties 76
Phylloxera 78
The Leading Role of California in the Worldwide Wine Industry 81
VI PROFESSIONAL AND COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES 86
TAPE GUIDE 92
APPENDICES 93
A. Resum6 and list of publication 94
B. "History of Simi Winery," 1984 99
INDEX 101
PREFACE
The California wine industry oral history series, a project of the
Regional Oral History Office, was initiated in 1969 through the action
and with the financing of the Wine Advisory Board, a state marketing
order organization which ceased operation in 1975. In 1983 it was
reinstituted as The Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral History Series
with donations from The Wine Spectator Scholarship Foundation. The
selection of those to be interviewed is made by a committee consisting of
the director of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley;
John A. De Luca, president of the Wine Institute, the statewide winery
organization; Maynard A. Amerine, Emeritus Professor of Viticulture and
Enology, University of California, Davis; the current chairman of the
board of directors of the Wine Institute; Ruth Teiser, series project
director; and Marvin R. Shanken, trustee of The Wine Spectator
Scholarship Foundation.
The purpose of the series is to record and preserve information on
California grape growing and winemaking that has existed only in the
memories of wine men. In some cases their recollections go back to the
early years of this century, before Prohibition. These recollections are
of particular value because the Prohibition period saw the disruption of
not only the industry itself but also the orderly recording and
preservation of records of its activities. Little has been written about
the industry from late in the last century until Repeal. There is a real
paucity of information on the Prohibition years (1920-1933), although
some commercial winemaking did continue under supervision of the
Prohibition Department. The material in this series on that period, as
well as the discussion of the remarkable development of the wine industry
in subsequent years (as yet treated analytically in few writings) will be
of aid to historians. Of particular value is the fact that frequently
several individuals have discussed the same subjects and events or
expressed opinions on the same ideas, each from his own point of view.
Research underlying the interviews has been conducted principally in
the University libraries at Berkeley and Davis, the California State
Library, and in the library of the Wine Institute, which has made its
collection of in many cases unique materials readily available for the
purpose .
ii
The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record
autobiographical interviews with persons who have contributed
significantly to recent California history. The office is headed by
Willa K. Baum and is under the administrative supervision of The Bancroft
Library.
Ruth Teiser
Project Director
The Wine Spectator California Winemen
Oral History Series
July 1992
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
iii
CALIFORNIA WINE INDUSTRY INTERVIEWS
Interviews Completed July 1992
Leon D. Adams, Revitalizing the California Wine Industry. 1974
Leon D. Adams, California Wine Industry Affairs: Recollections and Opinions.
1990
Maynard A. Amerine , The University of California and the State's Wine
Industry. 1971
Maynard A. Amerine, Wine Bibliographies and Taste Perception Studies.
1988
Philo Biane, Wine Making in Southern California and Recollections of Fruit
Industries . Inc . . 1972
John B. Cella, The Cella Family in the California Wine Industry. 1986
Charles Crawford, Recollections of a Career with the Gallo Winery and the
Development of the California Wine Industry. 1942-1989. 1990
Burke H. Critchfield, Carl F. Wente , and Andrew G. Frericks , The California
Wine Industry During the Depression. 1972
William V. Cruess , A Half Century of Food and Wine Technology. 1967
Jack and Jamie Peterman Davies, Rebuilding Schramsberg: The Creation of a
California Champagne House. 1990
William A. Dieppe, Almaden is My Life. 1985
Making California Port Wine: Ficklin Vineyards from 1948 to 1992. interviews
with David, Jean, Peter, and Steven Ficklin, 1992
Alfred Fromm, Marketing California Wine and Brandy. 1984
Louis Gomberg, Analytical Perspectives on the California Wine Industry. 1935-
1990. 1990
Miljenko Grgich, A Croatian- American Winemaker in the Napa Valley. 1992
Joseph E. Heitz, Creating a Winery in the Napa Valley. 1986
Maynard A. Joslyn, A Technologist Views the California Wine Industry.
1974
Amandus N. Kasimatis, A Career in California Viticulture. 1988
Morris Katz, Paul Masson Winery Operations and Management. 1944-1988. 1990
Legh F. Knowles, Jr., Beaulieu Vineyards from Family to Corporate Ownership.
1990
iv
Horace 0. Lanza and Harry Baccigaluppi , California Grape Products and Other
Wine Enterprises. 1971
Zelma R. Long, The Past is the Beginning of the Future: Simi Winery in its
Second Century. 1992
Richard Maher, California Winery ManaEement and Marketing. 1992
Louis M. Martini and Louis P. Martini, Wine Making in the Napa Valley.
1973
Louis P. Martini, A Family Winery and the California Wine Industry. 1984
Eleanor McCrea, Stony Hill Vineyards: The Creation of a Napa Valley Estate
Winery. 1990
Otto E. Meyer, California Premium Wines and Brandy. 1973
Norbert C. Mirassou and Edmund A. Mirassou, The Evolution of a Santa Clara
Vallev Winery. 1986
Peter Mondavi, Advances in Technology and Production at Charles Krug Winery.
1946-1988. 1990
Robert Mondavi, Creativity in the Wine Industry. 1985
Michael Moone , Management and Marketing at Beringer Vineyards and Wine World.
Inc. . 1990
Myron S. Nightingale, Making Wine in California. 1944-1987. 1988
Harold P. Olmo, Plant Genetics and New Grape Varieties. 1976
Cornelius Ough, Researches of an Enologist. University of California. Davis.
1950-1990. 1990
John A. Parducci, Six Decades of Making Wine in Mendocino County. California.
1992
Antonio Perelli-Minetti , A Life in Wine Making. 1975
Louis A. Petri, The Petri Family in the Wine Industry. 1971
Jefferson E. Peyser, The Law and the California Wine Industry. 1974
Lucius Powers, The Fresno Area and the California Wine Industry. 1974
Victor Repetto and Sydney J. Block, Perspectives on California Wines. 1976
Edmund A. Rossi, Italian Swiss Colony and the Wine Industry. 1971
Edmund A. Rossi, Jr., Italian Swiss Colony. 1949-1989: Recollections of a
Third-Generation California Winemaker. 1990
Arpaxat Setrakian, A. Setrakian. a Leader of the San Joaauin Valley Grape
Industry. 1977
Elie Skofis, California Wine and Brandy Maker. 1988
Andre Tchelistcheff , Grapes. Wine, and Ecology. 1983
Brother Timothy, The Christian Brothers as Wine Makers. 1974
Louis (Bob) Trinchero, California Zinfandels. a Success Story. 1992
The Wente Family and the California Wine Industry, interviews with Jean,
Carolyn, Philip, and Eric Wente, 1992.
Ernest A. Wente, Wine Making in the Livertnore Valley. 1971
Albert J. Winkler, Viticultural Research at UC Davis (1921-1971). 1973
John H. Wright, Domaine Chandon: The First French-owned California Sparkling
Wine Cellar, includes an interview with Edmond Maudiere, 1992
vi
INTRODUCTION- -by Ann C. Noble
Zelma Long is a tall, slender, and elegant individual with a shock
of blond hair. Long before the casual look was approved as a career
woman's style of dress, Zelma patented it. Beyond this superficial
description of her appearance, on talking to her, one immediately
realizes that she is a very poised, articulate, and strong person, who
can be very intensely focused or can switch gears and be ready to laugh
and enjoy life equally intensely.
I first met Zelma in the mid- '70s through University functions, such
as short courses. Over the years, I have increasingly had opportunities
to interact with her on both a professional and personal basis. As she
first emerged in the mid- '70s as a recognized enologist, the press was
eagerly reporting on her and the few other women in the wine industry,
perhaps incorrectly giving the impression that they were token women.
Zelma Long and Mary Ann Graf with a few others did serve as pioneer women
winemakers in an industry previously dominated by males. However, within
the industry, from the start Zelma and Mary Ann were recognized for their
skills, not for being female winemakers. In addition to her activities
described in this text, Zelma was the informal founder of the Goddesses,
a group of women in the wine industry and related fields, who meet to
celebrate life and their achievements. Through these rafting, hiking,
horseback riding, and camping outings I have gotten to know Zelma and
truly appreciate the intensity of her approach to her work and to life.
This oral history chronicles very well the development of Zelma' s
winemaking career, which parallels the explosive growth of the California
wine industry in numbers of wineries, personnel, capital invested, and
level of experience. It also documents her personal growth, from her
apprenticeship under Mike Grgich where she learned details of winemaking,
through the development of her own winemaking style as she integrated
what she had learned. From this synthesis of her experience, she has
structured her own winemaking philosophy and direction. For several
years , Zelma has given the last lecture in my Sensory evaluation of wine
course. Although she excites the students each year with her
presentation, her approach has changed reflecting her recent development
as a leader in the wine industry. She has shifted her emphasis from
reviewing details of winemaking, which of course is valuable information
for the students, to focusing on the importance of establishing one's
winemaking goals. This change in orientation is a valuable and exciting
one; at the University we can give students a scientific background,
through internships they can learn practical details of winery
operations, but only by seasoned thinking winemakers can they be
challenged to set their focus on a goal rather than on the details.
vii
Zelma and others in the wine industry have played a leading role in
supporting research. Without the far-sighted outlook of such individuals
and their keen interest in continually improving wine quality, the
initial dramatic contributions which the University made to improve the
quality of California wines would not be continuing today.
Ann C. Noble
Department of Viticulture and
Enology
May 1992
University of California, Davis
viii
INTERVIEW HISTORY- -Zelma R. Long
Zelma R. Long, President and Chief Executive Officer of Simi Winery,
was interviewed as part of the Wine Spectator California Winemen Oral
History Series to document the history and evolution of Simi through the
1970s and 1980s. The Simi winery, the first to be built in Healdsburg,
dates from 1890. The business was established in the 1870s, then
purchased in 1881 by the Simi brothers, Giuseppe and Pietro, who operated
it for many years . The winery survived Prohibition and continued as a
family operation until purchased in 1970 by Russell Green. By 1974 it
was owned by Scottish Newcastle, and Michael Dixon was president. Dixon
stayed on when the winery was sold to Schlieffelin & Co, which became the
property of the French Champagne company, Moet-Hennessey, in 1981.
(Moet-Hennessey now belongs to parent company LVMH Moet-Hennessey Louis
Vuitton.) In 1979 then President Dixon hired Zelma Long as winemaker and
empowered her to manage a new direction for the winery to be fueled by a
$5.5 million capital investment.
Creative, innovative, and research-oriented, Long had been head
enologist at the Robert Mondavi winery, where she participated in the
whirlwind growth that took place in the 1970s of the winery, the wine
industry in general, and knowledge of winegrowing. In her oral history,
Long emphasizes the "winegrowing" aspects --the integration of viticulture
and enology to produce the end product, wine. At Simi she brought to
bear her skills and philosophy, concentrating on aiming for the highest
quality wines, particularly Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Sauvignon
Blanc. She has written and spoken extensively about wine, and has come
to play a leadership role in the industry internationally. She has
received several awards for her accomplishments in the field.
Long was interviewed at Simi on September 22 and 23, 1991, and on
January 21, 1992. She reviewed and promptly returned the transcript,
making a few slight changes. Her assistant, Gayle Curtiss, was most
helpful in arranging appointments and furnishing photographs and other
materials. Dr. Ann Noble of the University of California at Davis, who
has worked with Long at Simi in conducting experimental research, kindly
agreed to write the introduction.
This series is part of the ongoing documenting of California history
by the Regional Oral History Office, which is under the direction of
Willa Baum, Division Head, and under the administrative direction of The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Carole Hicke
Interviewer -Editor
May 1992
Regional Oral History Office
Berkeley, California
Regional Oral History Office University of California
Room 486 The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California 94720
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I BACKGROUND AND EARLY YEARS
[Interview 1: September 23,
Family and Childhood
Hicke: I'd like to start at the beginning by asking when and where
you were born.
Long: I was born in 1943 in The Dalles, Oregon. I lived in that
town through my high school graduation. I completed college
in Oregon and then moved to California.
Hicke: Was there any member of your family who had a lot of influence
on you?
Long: With regards to wine?
Hicke: With that, but also in your general life and ways of doing
things .
Long: You know, I can't say there's a stand-out person. Of course,
your parents are always your main influence. Certainly there
were no influences relative to wine, because no one that I
knew grew grapes, drank wine, or talked or thought about wine.
Hicke: Where do your parents come from?
!This symbol (##) indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. A guide to the tapes follows the text.
Long: My parents both grew up in eastern Washington.
General Education
Hicke: You went to school in Oregon until you came to California?
Long: I went on to Oregon State University. I started studying home
economics with an intent to become a dietitian, so I was
majoring in home economics and minor ing in dietetics- -in
nutrition, actually. I really disliked home economics, so
after the first year I went to an advisor and asked what I
could major in that would allow me to continue my nutrition- -
developing my nutrition background in courses . The advisor
steered me into a general science major, which was a wonderful
major because it allowed me to study a wide range of science --
chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology- -but it wasn't so
confining or constraining that I wasn't able to study a wide
range of liberal arts courses, too.
So I majored in science and minored in nutrition. In
fact, in the long run that turned out to be a very good
background, because it was that science background that later
was going to enable me to go into the master's program at UC
[University of California] Davis without backtracking.
Hicke: Then you started an MBA [Master of Business Administration]
program, is that right?
Long: No, my education followed the path of college education,
dietetic internship for a year at UC Medical Center in San
Francisco, then a few years later returning into the master's
program in enology and viticulture at UC Davis in 1968 and
continuing in that program on a part-time basis through 1970.
The MBA work I did when I first came to Simi in the early
eighties, again on a part-time basis. Then in 1988 I went to
Stanford for two months for a program called the Stanford
Executive Program.2 I got a broad- spectrum education, which
is what I've appreciated.
2The MBA was not completed. The Stanford Executive program was.
ZL
Winemakine Studies
Hicke: You went to UC Davis, and I'd like to hear about your studies
there .
Long: I moved to the Napa Valley in 1968. At the time I moved there
I had completed my dietetic internship, I'd been working as a
dietitian, and I decided that I didn't want to pursue that
career. Even in 1968 in the Napa Valley you had a sense that
it was an area that was all about grapes and grape growing and
agriculture and winemaking, so I thought it might be fun to go
back to UC Davis. In addition, my husband's parents had
purchased some property in 1966 in the eastern hills of the
Napa Valley, and they had started to develop a vineyard. So
from '66 to '70 they were slowly planting a small parcel of
vineyard, and they were talking about wines and someday having
a winery. We actually made a little bit of wine in 1969, just
home winemaking.
Partly living in the Napa Valley and partly having this
family interest developing in vineyards and wines triggered my
interest in going back to school in winemaking. I was
thinking, "Well, if they're going to have a winery someday,
maybe I can learn how to make wine and contribute . " So I went
to Davis in '68 and applied for admission into their master's
program. Again, because of my science background I was
qualified to go into the program. I started to take classes,
and I was living in Napa Valley and commuting over there,
taking classes three days a week. That continued in '68, '69,
and '70.
Hicke: Didn't you study with Dr. [Maynard A.] Amerine?
Long: Dr. Jim [James A.] Cook was teaching viticulture, as was
[Dr.] Lloyd [A.] Lider. Amerine was teaching sensory
evaluation; Harold Berg- -Hod Berg- -was teaching wine
stability; [Dr.] Ralph [E.] Kunkee was teaching wine
microbiology, and [Dr.] Vern [Vernon L. ] Singleton was
teaching phenolics.
Hicke: You had some of the masters.
Long: Yes, but I didn't take all those courses; I didn't have Vern's
phenolics course. Our classes were very small, and it was
very easy to know those professors personally. They were
4
wonderful people, really supportive, so it was a tremendously
rich educational environment.
George [M.] Cooke was the extension enologist, and he
would come over and look at the vineyards with Bob Long's
parents, Bob, and myself. He worked with us when we were
doing our first fermentation. We felt integrated into that
department and the people there. Those were some lifelong
friendships that we established. Jim Lider, Lloyd Lider's
brother, was the Napa County extension agent at the time, and
he was the one who had made the original recommendations for
the grapes to plant at Long Vineyards. So we really knew him
before we knew his brother, who was a professor at UC Davis.
Hicke: What did you plant?
Long: It's interesting to look back. We planted a lot of
Johannisberg Riesling on Jim's recommendation. We planted a
very small amount of Chardonnay, and he really didn't
encourage us to plant more, because he felt that Chardonnay
had been very unsuccessful. [laughter] You know, it's funny
to look back. Also, in those first few years my parents-in-
law had a home in Angwin, and my husband and I bought a house
in Angwin. We traveled up and down the hill from St. Helena
to Angwin, and one of the wineries along the road was
Souverain [Cellars]. Souverain and Stony Hill, when I came to
the Napa Valley in the sixties, were two of the wineries that
were the avant garde , making new wines and fine wines .
I got to know Lee Stewart, the owner of Souverain . In
fact, his wine was the first California wine I ever tasted. I
remember Lee Stewart saying, "Chardonnay will never make a
great wine in California. It's just not that good a variety."
[laughter]
So we planted a lot of Riesling and a little Chardonnay,
and we grew those varieties for about ten years. Then, from
1979 or '80 through 1987, we proceeded to either T-bud or
replant almost all the Riesling to Chardonnay [laughs],
because Chardonnay in fact was extraordinarily successful in
that site. We've made some great Rieslings, but Chardonnay
was more of a commercial success. That pretty much mirrored
the whole pattern, and there were very good reasons for it.
In those days the Chardonnay clones that were planted in the
valley that were "unsuccessful" were unproductive, susceptible
to disease. From a farming point of view they were very
undependable and unsatisfactory. It wasn't until the more
productive clones of Chardonnay that [Dr.] Harold [Paul] Olmo
developed at Davis came into commercial use, which was pretty
much in the seventies, that Chardonnay became of more
commercial interest for a grape grower. That coincided with
more public interest and more success, and it just rolled out
from that.
Hicke: He probably had part of that right, if that clone development
hadn't taken place. Or had it already taken place by then?
Long: It's hard to know. I would say that certainly the planting
decisions of the time were made with the best information at
the time, but in fact it turned out to be just the opposite of
what worked really well.
Hicke: Why is Chardonnay so much more popular than Riesling?
Long: That's a good question. I think in a general way that it's
the flavor quality of Chardonnay that makes it unique. It has
a rich texture and flavor. As you drink good Chardonnay, it
always has the sensation of richness and silkiness, and it has
a particular personality or group of flavor components- -the
butter, honey, vanilla, coffee characteristics- -that I think
are flavors that the American public really likes; these are
all flavors that Americans like intrinsically. So the
texture, the body, and the flavor personality of Chardonnay
honed into a spectrum of tastes and sensations that just had a
broad general appeal .
II WINEMAKING AT ROBERT MONDAVI WINERY: 1970-1979
Joining the Winery
Hicke: How did you actually get into winemaking?
Long: By 1970 I had spent about two years at Davis, and I was in
the process in August of 1970 of getting ready to go back to
school to complete my master's course, with really little
thought of doing anything but that. But Mike [Miljenko]
Grgich, who was the enologist in charge of the winemaking at
Robert Mondavi, called me- -I didn't know who he was- -and left
a message that he would be interested in having me come to
work for the harvest. I called him back, and we chatted. It
turned out that Robert Mondavi was just starting the harvest,
and Mike desperately needed someone to work with him, just
for the harvest period, to do pretty basic work- -keeping some
of the winemaking records and doing the rather simple
analysis that's done around harvest. Someone at the
University had given him my name.
Hicke: I was wondering how he found it.
Long: Really, to this day I don't know who that was. I started out
by declining his offer, because my mind was on returning to
school. He called me back, and he said, "You know, this is a
really good opportunity; it's a good learning opportunity,
and you should seriously consider it." So I thought, "Well,
maybe I should give it a try." I went down and talked to
him, and I started soon after that. They had already started
to harvest, and Robert Mondavi that year, 1970, as I recall,
crushed about 1,700 tons of grapes, which would be about a
hundred thousand cases, not necessarily a small amount for
the time- -a fairly large amount- -but certainly small compared
to what they ultimately developed.
I was immediately fascinated. I was hooked.
Early Responsibilities
Hicke: So for that first crush you were keeping records?
Long: I was keeping production records and doing analysis. I would
go around with Mike every day and check each fermenter and
record the Brix and the temperature and taste it. It was a
wonderful time , because Mike was a winemaker with both the
European traditional roots of winemaking- -his family made
wine when he grew up- -and what was for that time some very
sophisticated experience that he'd had at Beaulieu [Vineyard]
for ten years working with Andre Tchelistcheff . He also
worked with Lee Stewart, so he'd been working with some very
high-quality grapes and some of the top people in the valley.
As we would go around from tank to tank recording the
information, he would talk about the wine and how it was
being made and the personality in a mixture of the technical
information and the European, rather romantic way of talking
about wine- -which you've experienced, for example, if you've
ever talked to Andre Tchelistcheff; the Europeans take a very
different way of thinking and talking about wine .
Hicke: It has a little bit to do with that mystifying and
demystifying aspect.
Long: Exactly right. They haven't lost the sense of romance and
beauty and humanity and spirituality. I think they haven't
lost it, and we- -you know, it's there for us. Intrinsically
that's what provides the attraction for the industry, but
it's not something that we talk about as easily as the
Europeans do.
Hicke: Where did Mike get that?
Long: He was Yugoslavian, and that was part of his background and
heritage.
Hicke: Did you stay on with them for the rest of the year?
Long: After harvest Mike asked me if I would consider continuing to
work part time, and I decided I would do that, because in
fact I found the winery work was completely fascinating. It
was so interesting and so different from anything I had ever
done. There were so many variables. It was very complex and
therefore intriguing and intellectually challenging.
So I continued to work part time there that first year.
Then the second harvest rolled around, and as I recall we
doubled our production from the first to the second year, so
that was a significant amount of work; that was the '71
harvest. I started to work full time, and I'm still a little
hazy about exactly when that started, but I was obviously
working full time at harvest, and after the harvest of '71 I
continued to work full time.
Change and Innovation
Long: There was a lot of physical change at Mondavi's in that time
period. When they started, the laboratory was up in the
tower, what are offices now was their barrel room, and they
had just completed what is now the main part of the winery.
So in that first year that I worked we moved into a brand-new
laboratory, and the winery continued to grow. At the same
time, the Mondavis clear through the seventies had a tendency
to try everything new that they came across. It seemed like
every year we had a new press, a new centrifuge, some new
piece of equipment. There was growth in the amount of wine
that was being produced, and there was also a lot of change,
both in the physical circumstances at the winery and in the
kinds of equipment and techniques that we were using. That
was just the start, but it was a continuing period of
tremendous change from year to year.
Hicke: All that change was basically Robert Mondavi's thrust, or was
Mike in on that, too?
Long: If I remember correctly, Mike [Michael] Mondavi worked with
Robert from the beginning in 1966, so he was really in charge
of the winemaking in a very general sense at that time, but
Mike Grgich was the person who was making all the day-to-day
decisions with the interaction of Robert Mondavi. Bob
Mondavi would come around--! was describing this daily
morning tasting of all the fermenters- -and join us on those
tastings from time to time and give his input. When we were
doing winemaking tasting decisions, he would join us with
some regularity.
Certainly through most of my tenure at Mondavi, Robert
Mondavi, particularly in the first six years, was the person
whom I thought of as giving the basic, general imprint to the
wine. Then in the years that Mike Grgich was there, he was
the person who would take the general direction and turn it
into action and interpret it into daily decisions. When Mike
left, it became my responsibility to take this general
direction and turn it into specific action on a daily basis.
Hicke: I'm particularly interested in this foment of change, because
I see that in Simi since you came here. It's clearly going
on today. Did you pick that up there, or was that Robert
Mondavi's style?
Long: It was his style. Our industry really has been a fantastic
opportunity. With his style, he had a tremendous energy and
a tremendous curiosity, so it's almost for me as if I never
knew another way. I do have this sense that the wine
industry tends to attract people either from an intellectual
or a sensual, sensory basis; it gets people either in one
place or another or both. From my perspective, the core of
what was happening there was seeking to continue to evolve
quality and style and looking at all kinds of tools to do
that. In that decade there were more winery tools- -barrels,
presses, fermenters, centrifuges- -that were used to control,
modify, manage, and enhance the winemaking process.
When I came to Simi, I saw the tools as the vineyard,
and I still do. I think the general vision that Robert
Mondavi gave the industry in that time period relative to
winemaking was the sense of, "Let's ask a lot of questions
about the process, and let's try a lot of things." In doing
that, we were able to refine our winemaking, and it was all
in the milieu of this enormous growth. In four years we went
from 1,700 to about 7,500 tons of grapes crushed, and believe
me, that is a considerable expansion. So it was a crazy,
exciting environment to work in- -both crazy and exciting.
Hicke: If there is any one way you could describe it, can you
encapsulate the reasons for his success?
10
Long: I think Mondavi's success is relevant to his vision. He
could see something and had clarity of that vision, the
intensity of belief and his confidence in that vision- -the
vision was the quality and the place of California wines in
the world. He had this vision and a great deal of confidence
to support that vision, and a tremendous amount of physical
energy to apply toward it. The physical energy wasn't just
in terms of how many hours a day you could work. It's this
positive force that motivates people to see things the way
you see them and want to achieve what you want to achieve .
It is physical energy carried to a charisma that is a
tremendously motivating force on people.
Hicke: So he was really an inspiration?
Long: For me, working at Robert Mondavi for those ten years was a
tremendous opportunity. I had an opportunity to probably try
and experience and experiment with every different kind of
grape, source of grape, every piece of winemaking equipment.
Then I also directed a research program, so we were able to
raise and answer many, many questions in winemaking. I was
able to see the result of many more techniques than we
actually used on a daily basis, so it was just an incredible
opportunity.
It was really a wonderful opportunity to work with
Robert Mondavi. I have enormous respect for him. I was
recently at the winery's twenty- fifth anniversary, and as you
listened to the past employees talk about Robert Mondavi,
they all have stories to tell. Many of them are very funny,
but they're all told with this underlying affection. I think
Mr. Mondavi often could ask for things that were impossible
to do. We used to tease him and say, "Look, we can do
anything, but we can't do everything all at once." There was
always this underlying positive expectation that each person
was really contributing and an expectation of a positive
outcome of events --and good will, just a tremendous amount of
good will.
Hicke: He has outstanding "people" skills, obviously.
Long: Yes, he does, and he certainly had outstanding people.
Hicke: What was the research program you conducted there?
11
Long: When I first started there and was really an apprentice, for
every question we answered, we probably raised three
questions --and we still do. For example, if you're making
Cabernet, what's the desirable length of fermentation? How
often should it be mixed or pumped over? How often, how
long? What would the highest fermentation temperature be?
How long should it sit on the skins before pressing? Should
we separate the press wine? With every wine, as we talked
about the whole game plan for making that wine, we would have
a hundred alternatives.
You know, in those days there was very little
experience in the industry; there wasn't the body of
knowledge that was passed down from generation to generation.
All of the people making wine in the seventies were really
young winemakers looking to get as much information as they
could through their own experience. The experiments would,
say, designate ten barrels of Chardonnay and use a different
yeast with each barrel. Or we would do small -lot winemaking
and make some variations in how we made a particular lot of
wine. They were a way for us to learn ourselves about how
the variables in winemaking affect the wine itself. They
enabled us to fine tune the winemaking process, and they
taught us about the winemaking, in that we could take
information and use it to transcend a particular situation
and allow us to make better decisions in other situations.
That research program in the first few years was
casual. Then later, by the mid- seventies, there was a
research enologist hired, and during harvest we had a small-
lots winemaker who spent time making five-, ten-, and
fifteen- gallon lots of wines with different variations. A
whole research branch of the winery developed.
How Winemaking Evolved In the 1970s. 1980s, and
Long: In general, I see three differences in the three decades of
winemaking. In the seventies I see this seeking to
understand the winemaking process in the winery. You're
dealing with a very young group of winemakers: how do we
really make wine, how do we learn how to make the decisions
in the winery, what's the proper kind of barrels and
equipment? We were exploring fermentation strategies, barrel
aging strategies, and many different things. In the eighties
12
the question became: what is it in the vineyard that we can
learn about and use that's going to impact positively the
style and quality of the wines? In the eighties there has
been a tremendous burst of experimental work in the
vineyards. In the nineties, the questions are: what are the
characteristics of each specific site, and how, in any given
vintage, can I modify my winemaking to best suit the grapes
from a particular site?
To take one variety as an example, in the 1970s we
would have been saying, "What's the best fermentation
temperature for Chardonnay? Should it be barrel -fermented or
not? What kind of barrels should it be aged in? Should it
have skin contact? How much skin contact?" In the eighties,
the questions would have evolved into, "What's the right
harvest timing for Chardonnay? What are the right sources of
Chardonnay? Are clones important? What about proper crop
load?" And then refinement of winery technique. By the
eighties, barrel fermentation and malolactic fermentation
were accepted, and we looked at nuance of skin contact,
direct to press, press separation, lees contact, lees
stirring, and really looked at the nuances in the use of
barrels. But at the same time we were raising all these
questions about the vineyard. We had refinement of
winemaking technique, and now came the basic questions of the
vineyard.
In the nineties I think we will see refinement of
viticultural technique applied to winemaking, and then we're
going to see these questions about, "Well, we're not really
talking ' Chardonnay ' when we make Chardonnay ; we ' re talking
about 'Chardonnay in 1991 from this four-acre plot of land in
northwestern Alexander Valley on rocky loam soil that's a
seven-year-old planting. ' How do we fine-tune our winemaking
to that Chardonnay?" Winemaking questions about Chardonnay
as a varietal will evolve to questions addressed to
Chardonnay in a specific site in a specific vintage. It is
called site specific winemaking. That's going to be what
happens in the next ten years . At the end of the nineties
the people who can most successfully answer that question and
practice site specific winemaking will be the best
winemakers; they'll be producing the best wines.
That's integration of winegrowing and winemaking- -
integration of the vineyard, the viticulture, the vintage,
and the winemaking process.
13
Hicke: The kit of maps with the different kinds of soil and
different clones and varieties was fascinating. I see where
that's going, but 1 don't know how you can keep track of all
that. [See maps following page 59]
Long: It's like anything else; you do little generalizations. You
don't maybe know the details of every single soil that you're
working with, but you begin to group them into certain types
and behavior patterns and so forth.
Hicke: We leaped ahead here, but that's a nice overview of how
things have gone .
Experimentation in the 1970s
Long: You were asking about the experiments and what they mean to
winemaking today. In many ways they're not directly relevant
to winemaking today. They were relevant to the time. Still
and all, they established a base of information that we
almost know instinctively now and take for granted. The
things that we do now routinely, for example with
Chardonnay--malolactic fermentation, barrel fermentation- -it
wasn't until the end of the seventies that people were more
or less using those techniques. So what we don't even think
about much now was still being developed and explored in that
time.
Hicke: It's an amazing amount of change, isn't it?
Long: It is, and what's true about that change is that you have to
come back and ask the same questions over again. For
example, the issue of skin contact- -in the seventies it was
discussed, and there was a certain general direction taken
for use of skin contact for Chardonnay because people had a
certain expectation of what Chardonnay should be like: big
and rich. The general use of new barrels in the seventies
was "the more the better," and that was all in the context of
thinking that the best Chardonnays were those big, oaky, fat,
buttery ones. In the eighties that changed. The perception
of what a good Chardonnay was changed; it evolved. So all of
the time that the winemaking was evolving, so was the palate
of the winemakers, the palate of the public, and the
understanding of what a great wine really was. What was an
appropriate technique within the style and quality goals of
14
the seventies was not necessarily appropriate in the eighties
and will not necessarily be appropriate in the nineties. The
standards change.
The change of our standards for a fine wine is not
talked about very much and is probably the most important
change. I believe that the approach should be the opposite
from the way most people talk. Most people start with the
process and end up with a product; but with wine, most
important is to start with what you want to make: what is in
your head? What's a great Cabernet, Chardonnay, Zinfandel,
whatever it is you want to make? What does it taste like,
what does it smell like, what does it feel like in your
mouth? And then you work backwards to the process, how you
can achieve your ideal .
That vision of the wine really changed in each decade,
so that as I look back on the wines of the seventies now, I
think they were very rustic wines. I mean, they were woody
Chardonnays , herbaceous Sauvignon Blancs , and astringent
Cabernets. [laughter] The decisions that were taken to make
those wines are obviously not going to be the decisions that
we would make now, so the questions have to be reexamined in
the light of new standards. I've been lucky to have been
here for a while; I can see us coming around and asking the
same questions again. But it's often the same questions set
against different standards, different expectations,
different grape material, different style goals.
Hicke: How do the goals and standards change?
Long: In the early seventies you had an inexperienced group of
winemakers and an inexperienced group of wine drinkers. As
time went one, the palate of both the consumer and the
producer have developed. We spent a lot of time in the
seventies and eighties- -myself personally and we as an
industry- -traveling around the world and bringing people in
from other parts of the world, tasting wines and developing
our taste. It would be similar to someone who has never
heard music, hears music for the first time, and then listens
to music and considers the composition and the way music is
produced- -how they would evolve over a twenty-year period.
They would be much more sensitive to the nuance and to the
harmony, the balance, the style, and the personality. Well,
the same thing happened with wine. I think the tastes of
both consumers and the winemakers became, over time, with
15
this attention to the wine on a world stage, much more
sophisticated.
And that's still happening. I interviewed for an
assistant winemaker position this year, and one of the things
we asked candidates to do was to bring us wines that they
considered to be great wines in world terms and to pour them
and talk about why they felt they were great in world terms.
Certainly in my experience and opinion, some of those people
were very on- target, and some were way off target. That was
very important to me, because that goes back to where a
person's head is; what are they thinking? The biggest
inhibitor to achievement is your mind, or the biggest
enabler. People can only do what they can see. You were
asking why Robert Mondavi could do all these things. Well,
he could see them, and some people just don't see.
In a very general way, the vision of California
winemaking has evolved and expanded and become refined over
the last twenty years.
Hicke: It is artistry in a sense, and also it's so true of an
artist- -that an artist can usually see much more than
somebody who is not an artist. But I'm still a little vague
on- -for instance, the taste of somebody learning about music
might approach that of Beethoven. In winemaking, do you get
closer and closer to Bordeaux style, or is there something
out there that you are heading for?
Long: I think that in any art or craft form there are elements of
balance and harmony. In wines, quality in my opinion is
concerned with issues of complexity, flavor concentration and
length, balance, harmony- -that is, the whole internal harmony
of the wine, how the smell of the wine relates to the taste
of the wine, the internal components of taste, the acidity,
the flavor concentration, and the tannin structure. So
balance and harmony, length, complexity, structure, ability
to age and develop- -and these characteristics can be applied
to any wine in any country of any variety. The particular
personality that the grape gives is a flavor profile that's
different with Riesling, Chardonnay, and Cabernet, and it's
different with Cabernet in Bordeaux and Cabernet in
California. But those flavor profiles can still be expressed
with complexity, balance, and harmony.
Hicke: So they're objective standards, not just subjective?
16
Long: Well, they're subjectively objective. We talk about that in
terms of difference of style and quality. There are certain
issues of quality that we think are transcendent, and you can
have differing styles and differing personalities and still
maintain those quality levels.
Hicke: That enables you to work with different varieties of grapes
and different years .
Long: And different places. When we taste here at Simi, we're
always seeking wines that we think are great wines, wines
that exhibit at a particular time those characteristics.
There are vineyards in the world that are known to do a
better job of consistently expressing a very high level of
these transcendent quality values.
It's different from trying to make one wine like
another one. Even in people --you could see someone who you
think was educated and sensitive and worked well with people,
and you could say, "I'd like to have those characteristics."
You could think about achieving some of them and still being
yourself. You can pretty easily conceptually separate the
sense of personality and quality in wine.
Hicke: That's a good explanation.
Becoming Head Enologist: 1972
Hicke: Getting back to the seventies, in '72 you became head
enologist .
Long: Yes, Mike Grgich left. Robert Mondavi had retained a
consultant, Karl Werner, who was a German. To the best of my
recollection, Karl came in '71. Mike left to go to Chateau
Montelena and to become the winemaker there. Karl had
evidently recommended that I be promoted into Mike Grgich 's
position of enologist. You know, I'm not honestly sure
whether it was '72 or 73. Mike Grgich might be able to tell,
because it was completely tied into his transition. I don't
remember if his first vintage at Chateau Montelena was '72 or
'73.
So that transition occurred, and I took over the
winemaking. Karl was there, if I recall, for a couple of
17
vintages. His area of expertise was white wines,
particularly Rieslings. He also had a long experience of
winemaking, and he was a good consultant for me. I was still
fairly young and green at the time .
Hicke: What kinds of things did you learn from him?
Long: All through that time, the thread through the early seventies
was Robert Mondavi with general style directions and
participation at the tastings. What I learned from Mike
Grgich--! always felt that Mike instilled me with basic
winemaking principles, so I learned my basic winemaking from
him. Karl provided me, at a time when I had really been
there for a short period of time and was then moved fairly
quickly into a highly responsible position, with someone I
could go to in a very specific situation and say, "This looks
like a difficult situation. Here 're the alternatives. Do
you have any input you'd like to give me?" So I would say
more than anything he supplied some professional, experienced
input .
Hicke: That was a lot of responsibility.
Long: Yes, it was. [laughs] Although, you know, I really didn't
think about it at the time. You know how it is; you just
sort of --it was such an exciting business. It was really
fascinating, totally fascinating. There really wasn't time
to worry about things , because we were so busy trying to take
care of an ever- increasing amount of wine and address all
these issues of quality in winemaking, and go through
organizational change and expansion. We were just on the go.
Hicke : What was the reason for this enormous growth?
Long: I think it was intrinsic in the industry at that time. It
would be interesting to go back- -I haven't done it recently- -
and just look at the grape acreage growth and the numbers of
wineries. When I first started in the Napa Valley, there
were very few wineries and not a lot of grape acres. So the
basic reason was the consumer out there who really wanted to
learn to drink wine and was excited about it. I think at the
same time there was the beginning of intrigue with food and
the quality of food, new restaurants, disposable income,
travel, and wine as a measure of sophistication. Wine just
grabbed other people like it grabbed me: "This is really
fascinating. "
18
That was what supported the growth at Mondavi,
particularly that the wine quality was very good, the quality
goals were high, and the marketing and sales energy were very
successful; the wines had good publicity.
Hicke: What were some of your biggest challenges?
Long: I think really the organizational challenges were the biggest
challenge. For example, in 1973 Robert Mondavi saw that
there was a lot of Zinfandel in Lodi available for purchase,
and he decided to purchase a lot of it. I think it was
within a month of harvest. He had committed to a level of
tonnage that was larger than we could actually store at the
winery, so we had to find other storage facilities and
prepare them to receive the wine- -just the sheer logistics of
doing that. There were always these organizational changes
that went on, just every year, that demanded that we both
improve quality and address these issues of growth and
organizational change. That was the core of the job; that
was the biggest challenge.
Hicke: Did you have to hire people?
Long: Oh, yes. Our winery staff grew. When I started in 1970,
there were two of us, Mike Grgich and myself. By the time I
left, there were in the winemaking department probably five
enologists, a laboratory staff of five, and an experimental
department of three people. There was constantly growing
staff.
Hicke: You had to find space for the people as well?
Long: Oh, yes, there was physical growth. We had to find space for
people, space for wines. During that time period the winery
outgrew its ability to barrel-age the wine, so barrel cellars
were developed in Napa. I think by the time I left there
were probably fifteen thousand barrels, and when I first came
there were probably three hundred.
Hicke: What about technology? Did you have to start with computers
about that time?
Long: We did. Sometime in the mid- seventies we started working
with IBM. They had what they called a process control
computer, and they were interested in what processes in the
winery they could control, which in fact were very few. But
19
we did develop a system to monitor and control fermentation
temperatures. We worked on other systems, but that was the
only thing that really became applicable. In fact, a lot of
time was spent on that function, which I think was not
particularly productive.
Centrifuging
Hicke: You talked a little bit about centrifuge; that was something
new at that time?
Long: Right. We went through changes in pressing. I worked with
three or four different kinds of presses. Nineteen seventy
was the first year they tested the centrifuges, and through
the seventies they were the primary means of clarification,
although decanters, which are another form of centrifuge,
were used towards the end of the seventies. I think in the
early seventies there was this equipment fascination: "What
can presses, centrifuges, filters, tanks, do for us?" As we
worked through some of those questions and became more
sensitive to quality issues, we were looking to a way to use
these pieces of equipment as a positive tool without over
using them.
For example, when I came to Simi I didn't really want
to centrifuge all of our juice. What I wanted to do was to
let it settle naturally by gravity and then use the
centrifuge as a backup tool. If there was a particular
condition of the skins where they didn't settle, or we had a
lot of grapes coming in in a very short period of time and
there wasn't time for everything to settle, the centrifuge
could get us through a difficult period. But it was really
sort of an aid rather than an integral part of every wine.
Hicke: Is that just because moving the juice around makes it that
much more subject to changes?
Long: Wine is really sensitive. I believe that the more you
accomplish up front, in a natural way, with the wine to
better the wine- -as the time has gone by, that would mean
moving clear back into the vineyard and saying, "What can we
accomplish in terms of grape ripeness, condition, and balance
in the vineyard first that will minimize any special handling
that we have to do in the winery? Then if we need to do
20
something in the winery, what can we do right at the
beginning before the fermentation?"
We were looking at acid adjustments in the case that
the grapes were low in acid. Acid used to be adjusted toward
the end of the winemaking process, and we've moved it up to
the beginning of the winemaking process when you have juice,
which is less sensitive than wine. The ideal now is to
achieve the acid balance we want in the vineyard before the
grapes are harvested.
People see it as a more natural handling of the wine; I
see it as just kind of a natural development of the skill of
the winemakers , more experienced, intuitive sense about what
is the best thing to do with each wine. I would say that one
of the basic principles of winemaking that I was taught by
Mike Grgich was that the less you do with the wine the
better; wine is really sensitive.
Hicke: That's standing behind this last little bit that you've told
me, that if you've got it in the grape, and you don't mess
with the grape- -
Cooperage
Hicke: Barrel fermentation and care of the barrels you talked a
little bit about with Margrit [Biever Mondavi]. Was that
important?
Long: Yes. There were three important aspects of barrels. One was
selection of barrels, one was their care, and one was the use
of them. We experimented with use for fermentation with
Chardonnay--the amount of new oak, the length of aging with
any variety. We also learned a lot about how barrels are
made and began to appreciate that the manufacturing style of
the barrels would have a tremendous impact on the wine. How
do you understand that, and how do you take that into account
in the winemaking? During that time period we experimented
with many different kinds of oaks- -American oak and French
oak from different forests- -and we came to appreciate the
kind of oak, the kind of seasoning the oak had had before it
was made into a barrel, the technique of barrel -making, and
the fact that all of those impacted the wine in some way.
21
We put a lot of attention into just caring for the
barrels, keeping them clean and fresh. That's a basic. If
you don't have good, clean, fresh barrels, you can't make
good wine. Yet it took a long time to develop a really good
system for keeping barrels in good condition when you're
handling thousands and thousands of barrels. That was
certainly as much the work of our cellarmaster at Robert
Mondavi as myself, but it was a big concern of myself because
the barrel care impacted the wines.
It's interesting about the industry — I think most
people have a good system for taking care of barrels now, and
you don't hear them say much about it. But when you go in to
talk to a group of people who are new to using barrels,
that's the first thing you talk about- -how you take care of
your barrels. If you don't take good care of your barrels,
nothing else matters. It doesn't matter what kind of wood,
what kind of cooper, what kind of wine; nothing else matters.
So that's the beginning.
In the 1990s, the questions about barrels have been
refined. There has been better understanding of some of the
coopering techniques, and some of the nuances in coopering
techniques are better appreciated. There has also been a
development, which I think is really accurate, of the sense
that the cooper is essentially like a winemaker. The cooper
is selecting the wood, aging the wood, and developing the
technique to bring that wood together in a barrel. All of
those decisions, of which there are many, result in a barrel
from the cooper that tends to have its own personality. So
we tend to find an association of personality around a
cooper, just like you'd find a style or personality of wine
around a wine .
So winemakers are now thinking, "Which variety works
with which cooper?" But they're going beyond that and
thinking, "Which vineyard--"
Long: They think about the barrel from a cooper as having its
particular personality, and they're seeking to match that
personality with a particular wine or a particular vineyard.
To come back to the questions of the nineties, they
will be, "This Chardonnay- -in this vineyard site, in this
22
vintage, with this certain style goal- -needs barrels from
which cooperage?" That's how it will be.
Hicke: [chuckles] Will the coopers start signing their barrels?
Long: The barrels are an enormously important and expensive part of
our winemaking technique , and of the wines . They give
complexity, structure, longevity, and flavor.
Hicke: When you talk about the technique of making barrels, do you
mean things like how tightly the staves are fitted together?
Long: It can be the shape of the barrel, the thickness of the
staves, the way the wood was aged after it was cut into
planks and before it was cut into staves, how it was
seasoned, the conditions under which it was seasoned. Then
what is the shape of the barrel, what is the thickness of the
stave, how are those staves bent to conform to a barrel, and
how is the inside treated? Just to give you an example that
we found at Simi, there's barrel called an export barrel that
is a thicker-walled barrel than what they call a chateau
barrel, which is the barrel they use locally in Bordeaux and
which is thinner-walled. You put the same wine in both of
those for a year and a half, and the wines are different.
The thickness of the stave of the barrel has an impact on the
wine.
Hicke: The oxygen?
Long: Presumably. Another thing is that, for example, in Burgundy
the barrels traditionally are shorter and rounder, so to get
the bend of the staves they have to spend more time over a
fire. The inside of the staves generally have a kind of a
toasted look to them; instead of a nice, light, oak color,
they would be like bread in a toaster- -kind of light brown.
That difference affects the flavor of the wine.
There are many different ways to achieve that barrel
shape. Some people dip the barrel in hot water and then fire
it; some people use steam and fire; some people cover the
barrel with a lid while they're firing it; some people use a
small, hot fire; some people use a larger, cool burning.
It's just incredible, the nuances, and what we found is that
they all have an impact on the wine.
Hicke: How many different kinds of barrels do you have here now?
23
Long: I think every winery operates in the same way. Our system
has been to work with some coopers that we really like and
whose barrels really seem to go well with our vineyards and
our wine personality.
Hicke: Are they local?
Long: No, they're European coopers. Our Chardonnay barrels are
made primarily by Francois Frere in Burgundy.
Hicke: I saw that name on the barrels; they really are signed!
Long: Yes, they are. The barrels for Cabernet are primarily from
the Taransaud cooperage in Cognac. We are constantly trying
other barrels; I think we have probably eight or ten other
barrel sources, and we may have anywhere from two to a
hundred barrels from each source. It's a never-ending
investigation.
Hicke: Yes, there are infinite numbers of combinations.
Long: Through trial and error we have established our main
suppliers of barrels that work well for us for our vineyards
and our wine style, and then we bring in other coopers to
investigate [new possibilities]. We think they add
complexity and keep a good frame of reference for the people
we are using.
Vineyards and Grapes
Hicke: You were head enologist at Mondavi for seven years?
Long: Yes, until I left in 1979, right around harvest.
Hicke: Is there anything else about those years that we should be
sure to discuss?
Long: I think we've talked about the tenor of those years, the
change, the experimentation, the growth, the opportunity to
work with grapes. Bob Mondavi brought grapes up from Santa
Maria, grapes down from Washington, so there was opportunity
to work with a real diversity. I spent more time in the
latter part of those years in the vineyards, just so I could
visualize each vineyard we were making wines from. About the
24
end of that time period I came to believe that we really had
to know more about the vineyards; that we had appropriately
addressed the winery questions, and we needed to really start
developing vineyard questions. In that time period there was
very little of that, very little.
Another thing in those years which epitomizes that was
our way of paying for grapes. We had a pretty intricate
system of Brix payment, that is, the sugar analysis of the
grapes, and a payment relative to the Brix level. There
would be some minimum Brix, and at the next highest sugar
level there would be an increase in payment. Some sugar
level would be a maximum, and then it would decline again.
It was a system that in essence said, "The sugar is the most
important thing in the grape." The other thing I saw in that
system, particularly when I first came to Simi, was that it
was a bad system [laughs], because it wasn't really true; the
sugar wasn't the most important thing. You couldn't really
say that every vineyard of Cabernet, for example, would be at
its perfect peak of ripeness between 23.5 and 24.5.
That period of the seventies was still for everyone a
period of growing grapes and making wine, so you had two
different businesses; the end product of one was grapes, and
the end product of the other was the wine, and there was the
transfer in the middle. That was an important characteristic
of those years , and by the end of the seventies there was
really a need for change.
Hicke: So presumably you made that change when you came to Simi?
Long: At Mondavi my responsibilities were not viticultural ; I
didn't purchase the grapes, I didn't even make
recommendations for what grapes to purchase. But basically
out of my own volition, I did spend time with the grape buyer
and saw the vineyards that we were getting grapes from. When
I came to Simi, I immediately had responsibilities for grape
purchase .
Just to go back to the seventies, I think there are a
lot more things that could be said about that period, but I
think if you look at it in a very general, evolutionary
sense, I think I've covered most of it. There are some more
specific things, which I addressed in my book about the
winery.
25
HIcke: What I'm asking you is for the kinds of things that you put
into it and got out of it, from your viewpoint, and you've
told me quite a lot of that.
Winemaking Decisions
Long: I'm still thinking about what could be mentioned about the
period of the seventies for me. In that time period there
was even an evolution of varieties going on. When I first
came into the winery, we were taking a lot of varieties --
Mondeuse, Mataro, Carignane, French Colombard- -that were
necessary to get the Chardonnay and Cabernet that we needed.
We were making Sylvaner, Zinfandel, and eight or nine
different kinds of wines, and as we went through that decade,
we really narrowed the kinds of wines that we were making.
There were more and more grapes that became available for the
kinds of wines that we wanted to make.
There were enormous changes in the actual winemaking
process. One of the things we really didn't talk about in
any great detail- -the Cabernet winemaking, Chardonnay
winemaking, Riesling winemaking, I think particularly in
those varieties there was a tremendous evolution in the
winemaking techniques. We talked about the equipment, about
the barrels, and about some of the research, but those were
all accessory to the central theme, which was each year,
looking at each varietal, and saying, "How are we going to
make Chardonnay this year? What do we think are the critical
issues?"
I just want to come back to this. The flow is really,
"What is it that we are trying to accomplish, and how does
that evolve over time as far as wine style and quality?" And
then, "What are we really going to do this year, and what are
the sorts of activities that fall out from that?" The
fallout might be research work, small lot work, trying new
barrels, trying a new press. Again, all that stuff is tools,
and the core, the theme, is the wine itself and the decisions
you make .
The other thread that went through the seventies for me
personally was just an evolution in my palate and my own
26
evolution of thinking what the vision of the wines should be.
In a sense, when I came to Simi I had a pretty well -formed
vision of Cabernet and Chardonnay that integrated a lot of my
experiences . We did some really wonderful things with
Riesling in that time period- -developed some new styles of
Riesling that of course I didn't bring over here, because we
weren't making Riesling at Simi.
Hicke: How were those decisions made as you came in, as you looked
at what you wanted to do?
Long: Except in the very early years, there were usually three or
four people working all together, enologists. There was a
pretty collegial atmosphere of winemaking, and I was the
leader. It was really my responsibility to identify what I
thought were the critical tasting decisions and to get the
family involved in those. The family in the early years was
Robert Mondavi, and in the later years it was Tim Mondavi.
Hicke: Just to make it very specific, you would come in and say, for
instance, "This year we need to age the Chardonnay a little
longer because of such and such"?
Long: No, it's not that way at all. First of all, your assessment
of your wines and the process is continuous; it's constantly
going on. There would be some point during the year prior to
the next harvest where you would sit down with the people who
were the primary people in the enology department and say,
"Okay, based on everything we've heard, all the input --your
opinions, the family opinions- -what do we think are the
issues with Chardonnay that we'd really like to address?
Where can we improve? Where can we evolve? Let's talk about
those, and let's talk through this process- -through this
winemaking for this grape- -and see what we think are critical
issues or new issues, and let's design some experiments, or
let's recommend a new piece of equipment. Let's go and try
something in the vineyard." It's a time when you bring out
all of this stuff that's fermenting in your head and put it
on the table, look at it, and draw up a game plan for the
next year. That's the game plan, and that's related to
certain quality and style goals.
Hicke: What about marketing information?
Long: Actually, that's something that I wasn't much involved in.
There was some decision to make a certain amount of wine, and
that was transferred to the grape buyer who bought those
27
grapes. It was my job to receive them and to make the wine.
The game plan is then turned into a specific set of
actions every day. Every day you have grapes coming in
during harvest. There's the decision to harvest, and then
how are you going to handle those grapes from the time they
appear on the scales to the time that they're shipped out of
the warehouse in a case? The handling is related to this
general game plan, but it's always being fine tuned to any
particular circumstance at any particular moment.
I've never been a teacher, but I can envision that it
might be the same if you were a teacher. You are assigned a
certain game plan for a semester, and you need to cover this
material. Let's say you are pretty happy with what you have
been doing, but you want to maybe achieve something slightly
different with this class, so you're going to modify your
teaching a little bit and employ some new techniques. Then
the class arrives, and you may completely change what you're
doing or modify your plan, or you may modify it for
particular people. It's the same thing with the grapes.
Hicke: That's a good analogy. You respond to the conditions as well
as to your game plan.
Long: Exactly right. You are absolutely responsive on a minute-by-
minute basis.
There are two more things before I go into the
eighties. I was able in the seventies to go to Europe. In
1973 my husband and I went to Germany with Karl Werner and
really looked at the German wine industry. In 1976 I went to
Germany and France with Andre Tchelistcheff and a group of
winemakers and visited Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne.
Then in 1978 Robert Mondavi made his first big trip to take
his staff with him, and again we visited Burgundy, Bordeaux,
and Champagne and Germany. In 1979 my husband and I and some
friends spent a week in Burgundy. So in that decade I had
substantive international experience, and that was very
important to my own basic development, contribution, and
concepts.
The other thing that's really important is this
development of your palate- -this combination of what you
think you want to create and your ability to taste if you are
really doing that or not.
28
Those are core issues, whether we are talking about
seventies, eighties, or nineties: the vision of style and
quality, the ability to perceive that and taste that, and
then the ability to bring together the techniques- -the
people, the equipment, the grapes, and the process to create
that wine .
When I came to Simi, I think it was a really good time
for me, because I evolved; these concepts that I've been
telling you about were pretty well formed. I knew; it was
easy to come here, and it was clear what needed to be done,
given the goals of the winery. I identified the crucial
issues as the winery and its equipment, which are your tools;
the people that you hire --the staff and the structure, which
are ultimately the most important; the grapes; and the
winemaking technique and process. Winemaking technique and
process were fairly well formed for me, but the grapes were a
big question mark because I hadn't been active in grape
acquisition.
That brings us into the next decade.
Hicke: Let me back up and ask a couple of things. Was the stimulus
for the change in the grape varieties consumer demand, or was
it the winemakers?
Long: It would have been consumer demand. It's ultimately
economics. People who grow grapes will grow what sells the
best for the highest profit, and that's going to be whatever
grape it is that the consumers are looking for out there in
the market. For the most part, in the last twenty years
that's been Chardonnay more than any other grape.
29
III MOVING TO SIMI
Deciding to Join Simi
Hicke: How did you hear about Simi, and how did they hear about you?
Long: I first heard about Simi through a friend I met in 1976 when I
went on this European trip with Andre Tchelistcheff . I met
Mary Ann Graf, whom I had heard of for many years, because she
was known to be the first woman who had graduated from the
enology department at UC Davis. Although I had known of her,
I hadn't really met her until this trip, and we became very
good friends. She was the winemaker here at Simi from '72 or
'73, and she had left Simi in early 1979. I was aware of
that, and that was about all, without giving much thought to
it.
Then I was approached by what I guess you would call a
headhunter, who said that Simi was looking for a winemaker and
that they had plans to make substantial investment in the
winery and to change and evolve the wines . They were looking
for someone to direct that program, which was interesting to
me. I hadn't worked in Sonoma County, and although Simi was
known to have produced some good Cabernets, it wasn't, in my
perception at least, an active winery on the cutting edge in
the seventies. But what he was describing was interesting
enough to consider it.
That was how it happened, with this opening discussion
and the description of an opportunity. The opportunity that
is always wonderful for any winemaker is this ability to bring
all the elements together. At Mondavi my focus had been
primarily the winemaking, so here was an opportunity to bring
30
together the grapes and the winemaking process , the people who
were involved in it, and the equipment, and they were talking
about building a new winery and a new cellar and so on and so
forth. That was a very seductive thing to consider,
naturally, for any winemaker.
In the course of talking about it, it sounded like a
really good opportunity. Those kinds of opportunities in our
business have traditionally also been risks, because it takes
a tremendous amount of capital to do those kinds of things.
Many times individuals with really good intentions as winery
owners or managers but without a realistic grasp of the
investment, you know, lay out a set of plans and expectations
and are not able to carry them through. That was the risk
that I was taking.
Hicke: After you talked to the headhunter, whom did you talk to?
Long: Michael Dixon, who was the president of Simi, and after that
the members of his board of directors. That happened over a
period of probably four to six weeks; there was a fair amount
of time to think about that and consider it. Then I took the
job.
Hicke: Do you know what it was about you that they particularly
wanted?
Long: I know in retrospect that they were looking at several
different people. It was my understanding that they were
basically setting out in a new direction with a big
investment, and they were looking for somebody who could
manage that direction- -set the direction and manage the
investment. I figured I was of interest to them because I had
had ten years of just constant new direction/new investment
and every kind of experience one could have in the wine
industry, in a winery producing outstanding wines with a great
reputation. In my mind it was simply whether I wanted the job
or not. [laughter] It never occurred to me that I wouldn't
be the best candidate- -never . It was just never my thinking.
My thinking was really always focused on, "Is this what I
really want to do?"
Hicke: Do you remember somebody calling you up and saying, "Do you
want the job? Can you start tomorrow?"
31
Long: I really don't. I think those kinds of things evolve. You
interview a group of people , you narrow down to the ones you
like, and you talk to them some more. It seemed pretty
natural .
Simi Winery in 1979
Hicke: Could you describe the winery and the status quo here when you
came?
Long: When I came there was this old stone building, and it was the
only building, so all of the winemaking functions- -the tank
fermentations, the barrel fermentations, the barrel aging, the
tank storage- -were taking place in this building. Next to the
building on the west side was a large area that had been
excavated in anticipation of building a new fermenting cellar.
The first year I was here, the fermentation tanks for the red
wines were big, open, redwood vats that held about forty tons,
and some stainless steel tanks. Considering that they were
doing- -I think that first year they did thirteen or fourteen
hundred tons --there seemed to be a very small number of tanks
to receive and hold that tonnage.
There were some old Vaslin presses, there was the
warehouse, and that was pretty much the physical status. I
came in the middle of harvest, and my job was not primarily to
run harvest but to do the planning for this fermentation
building that was supposed to happen the next year. Andre
Tchelistcheff , who had been their consultant, was here, and he
was running harvest, so during that first month I really
turned my attention to the plans .
Simi Winery
Left: Visitor center tasting
room, 1991
Below: Visitor center, 1991
Photographs by Carole Hicke
32
IV GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE WINERY
Equipment
Long: I immediately increased the size of the building.
Hicke : Why did you do that?
Long: I had quite a bit of practice at Mondavi in gauging
fermentation space needs. As we had expanded our crush, I had
developed some very good systems for estimating the number of
gallons of additional cooperage that we were going to need to
handle- -how you go about figuring that out. I laid out a
fairly complicated set of assumptions based on the number of
tons that Michael presented- -the varieties, the expected
delivery dates- -and just developed a system that identified
the total capacity and the tank size.
Hicke: They were just going by guess and by gosh?
Long: They had some basis, and I honestly don't remember what it
was. It was part of the expectation that I was going to come
in and look at all of this, so I did. We very quickly hooked
up with an engineer and a contractor and began to turn these
plans into an actual draft with floor plans and drawings. I
spent an enormous amount of time on the plans . The building
was built starting in the late spring of 1980, so between the
time I cane in September until April was all the concept, the
specific development, the ordering, the specification- -and I
had to specify and order all the tanks, hoses, barrels, pumps,
presses, and so on- -the development of the construction
drawings, a lot of the mechanical engineering details, design
33
of the laboratory, and a lot of things that aren't very
glamorous .
Long:
Hicke :
Long:
Hicke :
I believe that in a winery efficiency is quality. At the time
of harvest you have people working in the winery, and there
are only so many hours in a day, and there is only so much
physical energy. What you want your people to do is to turn
that physical energy to the things in the winemaking that make
a difference in the wine quality. For example, in running the
press you want them to be concerned about how the press is
operating, about the change in the characteristic of the juice
as it's coming out of the press and how they're going to
respond to it in the operation of the press. You don't want
them to worry about whether the press is running or not or how
they're going to get the pomace out of the press. It goes
back to the barrel care: there are some basics that you have
to get out of the way before you can really do sophisticated
winemaking.
The design of the cellar is so that it is efficient:
the floors drain, there is enough space in the aisles to work,
there are enough places to plug in your electrical cords,
there is hot and cold water at all the right places, it's safe
to work there- -all of those things that make it physically
flow during harvest. Those were a lot of the issues that we
were addressing.
It sounds like it's kind of like learning to drive; you have
to fiddle with all of these details until it becomes a routine
and you can do a certain amount without thinking.
It's not that different from designing a home. Let me come
back to the design process, since that's what I was doing at
the time. What I really started with, in working on the
winery design, were two things: what were the kind of grapes
and the volume of grapes that Michael wanted to crush, and how
did I think we should be making the wine? So the actual
winemaking process- -from that picture, everything else flowed.
The number of tanks, the type, the size, the number of
barrels, and all of the details flowed out of the picture of
those issues- -how to make the wine, and how much wine you're
going to make.
How did he make that decision?
whatever he wanted to make?
How did he come up with
34
Long: He didn't address himself to how the wine should be made.
Hicke: No, that was clearly your--
Long: He would have been doing that with the marketing- -with the
company that owned Simi.
Those were the design issues, and I liken it again to
designing a house. As an architect will tell you, the right
way to design a house is to think about how you want to use
it, how you want to live in it, what it wants to feel like,
what are the functions you want to do. Do you like to cook?
What do you have in your kitchen? How do you want to work?
Where do you want to store things? When you answer the big
questions, then the details fall into place. But a house is
eminently more liveable in the degree of details you have
addressed. Do you have a place to store everything? Is it
accessible? Is it well organized? Just so many of those
things, and the winery is exactly the same way.
Once we had established what to make and how, I was
working on the practical details of making that possible in a
working environment. I had a professional associate, Barbara
Lindblom, who had worked for me as lab director at Robert
Mondavi and then left to go to Europe. She came back right
about the time I was doing the design, and I hired her as the
lab director. She did the specific design of the laboratory,
because the laboratory is really like a kitchen. It's an
extraordinarily complex small space.
The other thing that was a benefit at Robert Mondavi was
working with winery design engineers enough to recognize that
they really don't know very much about winemaking processes,
and therefore can't be counted on to really design a
functional winery. At Simi we didn't have an architect. We
had an engineer, and he addressed himself to structural issues
and to the drawings- -pulling the whole project together and
creating the construction drawings. I had a mechanical
engineer who helped me work through all the electrical, water,
and mechanical systems. There was also refrigeration; I had
to figure out how much refrigeration we needed and then select
a system that would provide that refrigeration. That was a
big investment.
Hicke: You had an architect- -it was you.
35
Long: Right, and it wasn't that difficult. I had a tremendous
amount of background to bring to bear to that project. It was
a lot of things to do in a short period of time, but it wasn't
difficult.
That took place in 1980, and by the harvest of 1980 we
had that new fermentation cellar complete and did our first
harvest there. At the same time I had been out in the
vineyards and looking at the grapes, so that was the first
year I was really able to pull together the grapes and the
winemaking. That was a year where we had new grapes, a new
building, new people, and new techniques, and we were putting
them all together. It was really exciting.
Hicke: Did you make decisions about the varietals at that point, or
did that change more slowly?
Long: When I came to Simi we were making Gewurztraminer , Zinfandel,
Camay Beaujolais, Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Chardonnay, Rose of
Cabernet, and Chenin Blanc- -eight varieties. After 1979 what
did we make? I can't remember. I think 1980 was the last
vintage of Gewurztraminer. We dropped Camay Beaujolais; '79
was the last vintage of Camay Beaujolais. Zinfandel we
continued through 1982, and Pinot Noir I think through '81 or
'83; I can't remember.
Certainly in that time period there was a lot of
discussion about varieties and which ones we didn't want to
continue, and in that time period we picked up Sauvignon
Blanc. By 1983 we had rationalized the varieties that we were
producing.
Hicke: So that really didn't affect the kinds of equipment or the
amount of space you needed? Or did it?
Long: We did continue to change the physical features of the winery,
as you always do. I mean, you never stop. But we did another
big project in 1981; we renovated this stone building. We
completely took the cellar out, gutted the top level, put
complete new floors in it, and did a lot of structural change,
again with structural engineering supervision, to make the
building more solid and to make it more space effective. It
had been a fermentation and aging center, but it was
transformed into primarily a barrel-aging building, which it's
very nicely suited for, because it's set back in the hill,
part of it is underground, and it's got these wonderful, thick
stone walls; it's great for that.
36
That, in a way, was a much more complicated project than
designing and building the fermentation cellar, because you
are working with something that is already there, and it has a
lot of limitations- -and a lot of opportunities. We spent a
good deal of time on that, and it was a major project.
People
Hicke: We've talked about the winery equipment; what about people?
Long: When I came, there was a cellarmaster and four or five people
working in the cellar- -the cellarmaster 's assistant and a
couple of cellarmen who doubled working on the bottling crew,
warehousing, and so on. The person who at the time was
functioning as my assistant, Chris Markel, left and went to
Piper- Sonoma [Cellars] to become their sparkling winemaker, so
I hired an assistant winemaker in '81. We had a much more
expanded laboratory function, so I had a laboratory director
and a microbiologist to work with her. One of the people who
had been here in the cellar, Bill Biggers, was promoted to
cellarmaster, and our cellar staff expanded as we grew.
One of the things that really created the expansion in
personnel was the barrel aging. We haven't grown an enormous
amount in tonnage --we were crushing 1,300 tons then, and now
we're crushing 2, 600 --but in those days a very small
proportion of that tonnage was barrel aged, and now almost all
of it is. I would say it is over a tenfold increase in
barrels, and barrels are much more time-consuming to work
with; they take more labor, and they make a completely
different kind of wine. Part of the transformation in the
winemaking process itself was to move the wines out of these
big redwood tanks where they had been aged and move them into
a French-oak-barrel aging process.
As a result, we really expanded our cellar staff and
hired quite a few new people in the early eighties. A large
number of those people are still here. Right now at Simi we
have an enormously experienced and talented cellar staff, just
a fantastic crew. Winemaking from a cellar perspective- -the
people who actually receive, crush, press, rack, chill,
barrel, clean—they are the people who are physically making
the wine. Their expertise has an enormous bearing on the
37
intrinsic, basic quality of the wine. That's another one of
those basic building blocks of quality.
Through the years our laboratory has expanded, but not a
great deal. In the ten-year time period, particularly
relevant to the issues I was telling you about vineyard, we've
developed a viticulture department. When I came there was no
one; I was buying the grapes. If there was anything to do
with grapes, I was doing it, and now we have a
viticulturalist, Diane Kenworthy, who started here in 1981 on
a part-time basis and grew that job. She has a full-time
assistant and a part-time assistant. We've worked very much
through the years in developing a very strong link with the
vineyards to address some of these issues, which I'm sure
we'll get into.
Developing the team and putting it in place was very
much a part of the work of the early eighties.
Hicke: Did Michael Dixon have ideas about the people he wanted or the
kinds of people or the numbers of people?
Long: No, he didn't. He was a real pleasure to work with, because
he would provide an outline of the goals and the direction and
then let me take it from there. The working relationship was
really effective. The style at the Mondavi organization was
that a lot of people were involved in decisions, so to
implement a decision was very time consuming because so many
people had to participate in that decision. When I came here,
the only person who really had to participate in the big
decisions was Michael- - [such as] the decisions on kinds of
presses. I could involve my people, we could come to a
conclusion, I could make a recommendation, and then we would
go with it.
It was a wonderfully effective way of working, sort of,
"Let's think about it; let's think why we want to do it," and
then, "Let's do it." Of course, he would look at the reasons;
if I had something to propose, it was "Why?" as any good
executive would want to know. But he was a very supportive
person to work with and also very good in terms of this quick
ability to come to decisions and take a direction.
38
The Must Chiller
[Interview 2: September 24, 1991 ]##
Hicke: Yesterday we were talking about the status of the winery when
you came . We had covered the people and the equipment , so
today I thought we could talk about the grapes and the
winemaking. But there's one thing I wanted to go back to, and
that's the must chiller that you started. Can you tell me
about that?
Long: To step back and talk conceptually, when you start something
new- -in this case it was building a fermentation cellar; in
other cases it's starting a vineyard- -you have an opportunity
at that time to look at new ways of doing things. In 1980,
when we were designing the fermentation cellar, as I said
yesterday, we started with how much wine we wanted to make and
how we wanted to make it, and what falls out is the particular
equipment. But there were a lot of changes that were made in
that new cellar design. One, of course, was just to provide
much more fermentation space, which allowed us to receive our
grapes when they were ready to harvest.
One of the big decisions in designing any winery is how
many tanks you want to have. If you have a larger number
relative to the number of tons you're going to crush, it
allows you to receive grapes in a shorter period of time. If
you have x number of grapes to crush- -let's say a thousand
tons- -you can choose to have several different levels of
fermentation space. The greater space you provide, the more
it allows you to take in grapes in a very short period of
time. What that means is that in a few years, oftentimes one
out of ten, you have weather conditions- -sometimes it's heat,
sometimes it's rain- -that drive the harvest of the grapes and
make it critical to bring in a lot of grapes in a short period
of time.
We were fortunate to be able to afford to have a large
amount of fermentation space to allow us to bring all grapes
in quickly if needed. What happened in 1984 was that we
brought in 90 percent of our grapes in three weeks, where a
normal harvest period is six to eight weeks. The important
things in that original cellar design, as I talked about
yesterday, were to be efficient and to be good for the people
who work in it so they could focus their energy on the
winemaking, thinking about the wines rather than worrying
39
about whether the equipment was functioning, if they had
enough equipment, if it was properly designed to do its job.
The new fermentation cellar had several newly designed
pieces of equipment. One was our system for pomace removal of
the skins and seeds, which was a blowing system instead of a
screw conveyor. The benefits of that had nothing to do with
wine quality, simply ease of handling and safety. We also put
in overhead tanks, which allowed us both to do skin contact
where we needed it and to hold grapes for our presses as we
went through our press cycle .
Then we put in the must chiller in 1981. The reason for
the must chiller was first the observation that in European
wineries usually the harvest is later, the temperature is
cooler, and the grapes come in cold. In our conditions the
grapes are often cold in the morning- -they 're usually fifty or
fifty- five degrees until about noon- -but after the sun comes
out and the grapes warm up in the afternoon, they can be
eighty or eighty- five degrees. That's very dependent on the
weather. This year, 1991, they will be very cool when they
come in.
I believed that made a quality difference, so we were
able to invest in this must chiller that allowed us, as soon
as the white grapes were crushed, to chill them down.
Hicke: Did you design it?
Long: Larry Alary, who owned an industrial refrigeration company in
Healdsburg (IRAP), designed it to meet our needs.
Hicke: But there was no such thing before this?
Long: Yes, there were. There were a few must chillers around, but
very few. The use of the must chiller was not a part of
normal premium winemaking in California at that time. It has
become an intrinsic part since then.
Hicke: Is it for the same reason that people turn to night picking
now? You can do one or the other?
Long: I had a new winemaking assistant at that time, Dave Ramey. He
had just graduated from Davis and had just finished his
master's degree, if I recall correctly, and he did some
40
research for me on this must chiller. That year we took
grapes --the same grapes, Chardonnay- -in at four different
temperatures: a normal field temperature- -we selected a hot
day, so it was relatively warm, roughly seventy-five degrees- -
a little cooler, sixty-five; a little cooler, about fifty-
eight; then a little cooler about fifty. So there were four
different temperatures, and of course we used the must chiller
to get the temperatures down.
We held the grapes in our overhead tanks for twenty -four
hours, and during that twenty-four-hour period we took
samples, so we could see how the juice changed depending on
the skin contact temperature through that twenty-four hours.
Then we made wine from them.
Hicke: Keeping them separate all this time?
Long: Keeping them separate the whole time. We noticed two things.
First of all, we noticed that the phenols- -the compounds that
give wine its body and some of its aromas, and if excessive
can give astringency and bitterness- -were extracted faster at
warmer temperatures. We had known before that the longer the
crushed grapes, skins, and seeds were together, which is the
"period of skin contact," the more phenolic extraction you
got. So we knew length of time was important, but this
allowed us to quantify the role of temperature , and it turned
out in these studies that temperature was much more important
than time. We were getting in about two hours at a hot
temperature the same level of phenolic extraction that we were
getting in twenty-four hours at a cold temperature.
What we saw, then, which was new, was that temperature
was more important than time. The reason it was important,
related to our style goals- -and it goes back to the concept
that everything that you do and the judgments that you make
have to be in some framework of quality and style- -was that we
wanted to make a more delicate, elegant style of wine. As we
looked back at the Chardonnays of the seventies, they seemed a
little big, a little clumsy, a little unsophisticated.
We followed these four wines for a couple of years, and
what we saw was that in the first six months the wine made
from the long, hot skin contact was the most interesting. It
was immediately accessible, fragrant, and sort of rich and
fat. The others were lean, tight, and closed. At the end of
the year, that wine had gotten sort of heavy and clumsy, so by
the time it would have been released it had lost its charm.
After a year the next one, the roughly sixty -five -degree skin
contact, was the most interesting. It was open and with good
body and flavor, but in time that deteriorated. What we saw
was that the wine with the coldest skin contact, i.e., the
lowest phenolic extraction, was the wine that really went the
longest and in time opened up and became the most
sophisticated and refined of those wines.
So we adopted that practice of chilling the must. And
the other thing we did that was really important together with
that was to eliminate the use of S02 in the juice. The
practices of the seventies had been to add S02 to the grapes
at the crusher to inhibit oxidation of the juice. We began to
question that, saying, "We really don't want to use S02 unless
it's doing something beneficial, and is it really beneficial
to protect juice from oxidation?" What we found was that the
S02 had a beneficial effect when you didn't have a must
chiller; that is, when the grapes came in and they were warm,
you could possibly have a wild yeast fermentation start up,
and the S02 inhibited that. On the other hand, when the
grapes came in and they were cold, you didn't need to worry
about your fermentations; you were going to add the yeast, and
it was going to take off in good time.
The other question was, "Are we really concerned with
this oxidation of the juice?" What we found out was that if
we allowed the oxidation of the juice to take place in the
absence of S02, we got two benefits: one, we got lower
phenols in the wine, a more delicate wine in the mouth, longer
life; and, two, our malolactic fermentations were easier to
complete. So the must chiller not only had an impact on the
mouth feel of the wine; it allowed us to eliminate our use of
S02 prior to fermentation.
So it wasn't just one thing happening; it was a group of
winemaking goals coming together: achieving malolactic,
achieving delicacy through lower phenolics, both by
precipitating the phenolics through the oxidation of the juice
and reducing the tendency of the juice to have phenolics in
the first place by reducing the extraction from the skins.
The general direction that we saw at that time was that
we wanted lower phenolic wines, although the winery we had
designed in 1980 had allowed for fairly significant skin
contact times. Our first change was to make the skin contact
42
cold, so we basically reduced the rate of skin contact
significantly, and then over time we actually reduced the
time. We went through a major evolution in the handling of
the grapes. Of course, now we're experimenting with wild
yeast fermentations. At the beginning of the eighties we were
concerned about having wild yeast fermentation, and now we're
intrigued by the possibility that they may add to mouth
feeling complexity. That's winemaking!
It's an illustration that everything that you consider
about winemaking has to be done in the context of what your
wine goals are and what your grape material is. I've seen
through the years people talk about some part of the
winemaking process as right or wrong, and I've never felt
there was truth in that. Right or wrong is always relative to
the vineyard, the grapes, the vintage, the wine style goal.
Winemaking is really a system of decisions; it's not a series
of right and wrong decisions. It's a series of decisions that
have to fit together in a harmonious way.
One of the lessons that I've learned is that if you are
looking at the winemaking of a variety or of a site, you can't
just change one part of it. Oftentimes if you change one part
of it, the rest of the system has to change, so the series of
decisions that are made in working with wine are a system of
decisions; they're not a group of individual, isolated
decisions .
Hicke: This discovery of the relationship of temperature to
everything else was really crucial?
Long: It was crucial, and it was a major step in understanding.
People say, "What about technology and science --how does it
relate to winemaking?" It was an illustration that we had a
piece of information. People at some level had intuitively
thought that temperature was important, but we had a piece of
information that really told us what was going on and how it
affected the style. With that information, winemakers could
choose to either use it or not use it, or to use it to some
extent. That was a piece of information that would allow them
to make a whole range of choices , once they had that
understanding. The must chiller was basically a tool to allow
us to impose those controls .
People subsequently found other ways to do that- -night
harvesting, and the amount of extraction you get at night is
less because the grapes are cooler. But you have a choice
43
between night hand-harvest and night machine -harvest. You'll
get more extraction with night machine-harvest than with night
hand-harvest because the grapes are broken by the machine.
There are other systems of chilling the grapes; some wineries
have a cold tunnel that the grapes pass through. So people
have found ways to take that information and adapt it to their
own facility, their own style and way of thinking about the
wine. But it was an important new piece of information.
Hicke: I know you do a lot of writing and speaking. Do you pass
these kinds of things along that you have discovered?
Long: Yes. Over the years I've done an enormous amount of technical
discussions through the University, through our technical
groups, through Extension, and through some writing to
communicate that information. I don't do that so much any
more because I'm not in a technical position any more; I'm in
a management position. I wrote several articles on those
issues. [See appendix for list of articles by Long.]
Winemaking
Hicke: We have two other areas to cover: winemaking and the grapes.
I think you told me what was being made here.
Long: One of the things I would want to say is that we're talking
about these things separately- -the people, the equipment, the
process, and the grapes --but they're never separate, of
course. For example, the decisions on the equipment that we
were using involved the people who were working at the winery
who had input on what we needed to use and how it should be
designed. All of the pieces of winery equipment that we use
that touch the wine --the barrels, the press, the crushers --
have an impact on the composition of the wine. For example,
if you were to buy a press for a winery, you have a dozen
designs to choose from, and if you put the same grapes through
those presses at the same temperature , and you have the same
person running the presses, you'd get different result; you'd
get different juices. That's why we give a lot of attention
to the equipment.
That attention isn't just from the winemaker; it
involves the input of the people who work with these pieces of
equipment. For example, with presses at Simi: our very top
44
Hicke:
Long:
Hicke :
Long:
Hicke :
Long:
cellar people run our presses every year. They have a level
of intuitive and observational experiential knowledge that is
crucial if you're making decisions to change those pieces of
equipment. At that time our cellarmaster was Bill Biggers,
who had been at Simi for a long time and had a really critical
role in the early evolution of the winery. Barbara Lindblom,
as I mentioned, had come in and done all the design for the
laboratory facility. Then, talking about the must chiller,
Dave Ramey and his experiment- -he didn't make the decision to
do the must chiller, but it was his experimental work with it
that really showed us how important it was.
So you just can't separate; these never come in
individual pieces.
That's good to point out, although I guess we have to talk
about them separately.
How specifically do you want to talk about the winemaking?
I would like to ask you what it was here that was eventually
changed, what were the important steps.
If we're going to address the changes here at Simi- -let's say
for Chardonnay and Cabernet, because those were two varieties
that were made then and are an important part of what we are
doing now- -the first thing was that we took a complete review
of the wines themselves. The review of the wines, as I
mentioned yesterday, wasn't just a one-time review in 1979,
when the building was being designed, but an ongoing review
and evolution. Even the wines that we made and wanted to make
in 1980 aren't the same as the wines we want to make and are
making in 1990.
When you are talking about a review, you're talking about the
wines that were here?
I'm talking about a mental review. To come back again,
winemaking starts with your vision of what you want to
accomplish. You are saying, "What is it I want to do, and how
am I going to go about doing it?" From those question flow
the decisions about the process, the grapes, the equipment.
If you want to look at the physical changes, when I
came, in the process with Chardonnay there was fermentation of
Chardonnay in barrels, but it was limited. We dramatically
45
increased the amount of barrel fermentation for Chardonnay, we
increased the amount of new oak that was used in Chardonnay.
Hicke: Was there any French oak there?
Long: There was some French oak, a relatively small amount compared
to the crush. We moved to barrel aging all of the Chardonnay,
a higher percent in barrels, a higher percent of new oak. We
moved to the stirring of the yeast lees, we reduced the use of
S02 in the juice and finally eliminated it, we started to do
malolactic with the Chardonnay, we started to do some managed
skin contact with the Chardonnay. We also developed new
sources for Chardonnay grapes, and we developed a Reserve
Chardonnay. So we basically completely remade the winemaking
in terms of the grapes, the equipment we were able to use with
the Chardonnay, and the process itself.
Viticulture
Long: In the early eighties, my concerns were getting more complex
wines, and we did that by looking at grape issues, malolactic,
use of oak, barrel fermentation. In the late eighties, our
concerns have been texture and balance in the wine and flavor
concentration. Texture and balance in the wine are to some
extent vineyard and to some extent winemaking issues; flavor
concentration is primarily a vineyard issue that we are
looking at.
Another thing we've really looked at a lot in the
eighties with Chardonnay is the impact of different clones of
Chardonnay. We've had the good fortune to have some of our
growers, primarily a couple, Glen and Mary Beth Dow, who
decided, on our recommendation, to plant some different clones
of Chardonnay in their vineyard. Since we've worked with
their vineyard for ten years, we've had an opportunity to
really understand how differently Chardonnay can express
itself. It comes back to the idea of the different
personality, different aroma and flavor characteristics.
We've really studied the role of clones in flavor differences
in Chardonnay.
46
I sat down and wrote for the Vintners Club book a pretty
complete discussion about Chardonnay winemaking from a
technical point of view.
Hicke: That UC book of wine has an article on it, too.
Long: The UC book of wine talked about changes in technology in
winemkaing and the vineyard, and that was a more general
discussion. 3
Hicke : What is the the name of your book?
Long: It's Vintners Club: Fourteen Years of Wine Tastings.
The other thing that deserves a lot of mention with
Chardonnay that we talked about yesterday is this issue of
barrels. In the seventies at Mondavi we really looked at
different oaks- -Limousin, Nevers, and so on. In Simi in the
eighties, we tended to focus more on different coopers, as I
mentioned yesterday: what are the characteristics of the
coopers, and how do they relate or add to the wine?
The other issue with Chardonnay that we looked at was
ripeness- -timing of harvest. This is partly a vineyard issue,
but it's really important for winemaking, so let me touch on
it. I mentioned earlier that in the seventies it was felt
that the Brix of the grape at harvest was really the most
crucial quality factor, and the grape payments were set up
around Brix. As soon as I came to Simi and got out into the
vineyards and started tasting grapes, I recognized immediately
that there were other factors than the Brix or the sugar that
were going to impact quality. Some vineyards seemed riper,
ripeness being defined as a golden grape, a soft grape, flavor
development. Some of the grapes seemed ripe at twenty-one
Brix, and some grapes didn't seem to achieve that ripeness
until twenty-three or twenty-four. It was clear that there
were other things happening and that we had to expand our
definition of ripeness far beyond Brix.
Zelma Long, "Enological and Technological Developments," and
Zelma Long, "The Science of Growing Grapes," The University of
Calif ornia/Sotheby Book of California Wine, eds . Doris Muscatine,
Maynard A. Amerine, Bob Thompson (Berkeley: University of California
Press/Sotheby Publications, 1984)]. The Vintners book was a very
focused discussion on Chardonnay. ZL
47
In 1981, Diane Kenworthy, who is our viticulturalist ,
came to Simi on a part-time basis. She began to work with me
in the vineyards; she did the field samples. She brought with
her a technical viticulture background, and we spent about
five years developing a system to help us to say when to
harvest the grapes. It was a system of sampling, collecting
data- -sugar, acid, pH; the sugar per berry- -the actual
physiological accumulation of sugar, as opposed to sugar that
you see from rehydration or dehydration. We also developed a
system for crushing the grapes and tasting the juice, and
watching the change in the aromas, particularly of the juice.
What we saw was that there weren't any perfect numbers,
but what was important in collecting data was the evolution of
the grape. It wasn't, "Is the grape at twenty-one?" It's,
"How fast is it changing? Has it come to a plateau?" It
wasn't that the acid was at .9; it was, "How does the acid
relate to the sugar at this particular phase of its ripening,
and how does that relate to the pH?" It was more a study of
trends and interactions as a basis for harvest decisions than
specific numbers.
Hicke: Do you keep all these records on a computer?
Long: The records are still hand kept, but for many of our vineyards
we have ten years of data that show all of the sampling for
those vineyards- -that show the average Brix and the acid and
pH at harvest- -so as we sample a vineyard now we can think
about how those grapes taste, look at their relative numbers,
and see what that means in terms of the past- -how has that
vineyard behaved in the past?
Hicke: So you look at the grapes for this year, for example, and say,
"Oh, yes, they're about at the place where they were in 1984,
and that was a good year." Is that how you do it?
Long: Not exactly. The past never provides the perfect template for
a harvest decision this year. What you would be doing, for
example, would be saying, "As we look at this vineyard, it
tends to be ripe at a lower sugar and a higher pH as opposed
to that vineyard." What you're really looking to do is, "Is
this year similar or different?" If you took a decision in
isolation- -you had never worked with this vineyard at all, and
you see it's twenty-one Brix and 3 pH--what does that mean?
It's more meaningful in a context of past performance.
If you want to think of it that way, the harvest
decision is- -now I'm just talking about the sampling and the
numbers, which is maybe 40 percent of the harvest decision.
The other part of the harvest decision is what the grapes look
like in the field, how evenly ripe is the cluster, what is the
color, what is the texture, what is the condition of the vine,
do we think the vine is going to be able to continue to ripen
these grapes, what's the weather prediction, what does the
grower think?
What we did was take a harvest model that was based
completely on Brix and expand it to an essentially
multivariant model, which includes Brix, TA [titratable
acidity] , and pH in terms of trends and relationships in
history rather than in terms of specific numbers, and then
visual observation in the field of color, texture, evenness of
ripening, vine condition, etc.
H
Long: And then input from the grower, and flavor development. So a
very complex model. It's not a quantitative model; it's a
qualitative model.
The whole system of assessing ripeness and the basis for
ripeness decisions was the big change, not only for Chardonnay
but for other varieties. That was something that Diane and I
spent a tremendous amount of time developing in the early
eighties.
Hicke: That sounds very complicated but very interesting.
Long: We were talking yesterday about the teacher model; you have a
class, you have a game plan, you change your game plan. What
I'm talking about with a vineyard would be very much like
working with a person. If you met someone for the first time,
and you didn't know them at all and were in some situation
that required some action, you wouldn't have any basis on
which to understand what they were going to do. If you worked
with them for ten years and were in that situation, based on
your observations from the past you'd have a better idea of
their behavior. But it wouldn't be a perfect predictor,
because their behavior is always going to be relevant to a new
situation.
When we collect information about the vineyard, we
develop a context in which we can understand the vineyard
49
behavior, but it's never a perfect predictor of how that
vineyard's going to behave this year. This year is always a
new year and always has to be looked at as a new year. It's
true for 1991. Nineteen ninety-one is a season completely
different in its weather patterns and the vine behavior than
any season I've seen since I started wineraaking in 1970. So
the decisions of grape harvest and winemaking have to be taken
differently, but at least, because we've got collected
information, for one thing we know it's different. We'll have
a chance to see how different because we have this other
reference information.
When I was talking yesterday about the winemaking of the
nineties, that's what it's all about. It's knowing the
vineyards, knowing the vintage --the particular weather and
soil, the characteristics of the year- -and then saying, "What
do I do?", knowing that it's never going to be the same from
year to year. People say that's really complicated, but it's
not that complicated. Everybody does that every day; they
just don't realize it. And they do it primarily when they
deal with people, because people are really complicated.
Hicke: That's a good analogy. I think you'd make a wonderful teacher
because you have this way of explaining things.
Long: We were addressing the Chardonnay winemaking, and we talked
about the changes. I want to come back, before we talk about
the vineyard, and talk about the Cabernet winemaking and the
changes. When I came to Simi, as I mentioned earlier, the
Cabernet was fermented in these large, open redwood tanks with
less effective fermentation control, pressed in Vaslin
presses, and aged in primarily American oak barrels and
redwood tanks .
So for the Cabernet there were many changes. Again,
source of vineyard material for Cabernet changed very
dramatically in that ten-year period. We started out with one
vineyard, and then we expanded to an exploration of a variety
of vineyards in Sonoma County. We developed our own vineyard
in the early eighties, and that came into production, so by
the second half of the eighties most of the Cabernet and
Bordeaux varieties we were working with were from our own
vineyards .
Hicke: Was that '82 or so when you started?
50
Long: We actually planted in '83. The vines came into serious
production in '86. So the source of the grapes evolved, and
the composition of the grapes we worked with changed, because
when we planted our vineyard we planted Cabernet Sauvignon,
Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. Those grapes, with
the exception of Merlot, were not widely available, nor did we
widely use them in the early eighties. So we increased the
number of Bordeaux varieties in our Cabernet blend.
Hicke: Why did you do that?
Long: When you plant a vineyard, like when you design a winery, it's
an opportunity to try new directions that you won't have after
the vineyard has been planted. It forces you to stop and
think about what's in the future with this variety, and 1
really felt that the future was with an expanded palette of
varietals. That wasn't a new concept, in the sense that it
was very much a European model, but was relatively new to
California. Basically, those different grapes would give some
kind of balance and complexity you couldn't necessarily get
with solely Cabernet.
In that ten-year period the equipment that we handled
Cabernet with- -our crushers and presses- -changed, so we were
able to really handle the Cabernet grapes more gently, both in
crushing and pressing, which is important, because a rougher
handling of Cabernet tends to give more astringency and
bitterness. Beginning in 1982 we looked at new techniques for
mixing the tanks during fermentation.
Hicke: Mixing the tanks?
Long: When you're fermenting Cabernet you have skins, seeds, and
juice together. The skins float up to the top, and you have
to mix the tanks through the day in order to wet the skins and
extract the materials in the skins. We looked at new systems
for doing that in a way that would assure extraction but
reduce astringency. We began those experiments in '82, and by
1985 we had converted to a more gentle extraction system.
So in the early eighties we were developing different
pressing techniques and different extraction techniques during
the time the Cabernet was on its skins. When I came in 1980,
I didn't expect that we would be doing long macerations, but
in the early half of the eighties we began to explore a longer
51
time on the skins after fermentation, for Cabernet, as a way
to enhance richness, flavor complexity, and flavor life.
We dramatically changed our cooperage. As I say,
Cabernet had been aged in redwood and American oak primarily,
a small amount in French oak. We eliminated the redwood in
the winery and moved to completely French oak aging, which was
a dramatic improvement on the wines.
When Dave Ramey left as assistant winemaker in 1985 and
a new assistant winemaker came, Paul Hobbs , he implemented
some further changes, really beginning to look at press
separation for Cabernet and to be more sensitive to acid
additions- -that is, reducing the amount of acid we were
adding. In the mid-eighties he and I took a trip to Bordeaux,
and we really re -looked at the whole winemaking process for
Cabernet with a few key people in Bordeaux. The most
important observation there was that the Bordelaise winemakers
looked at Cabernet, from a sensory point of view, primarily
for mouth feel and balance rather than aromatics. The whole
sensory model for California had been aromatic oriented, I
believe. At UC Davis there was a lot of discussion about wine
aromas and different kinds of aromas- -varietal aroma, off
aromas- -but there was very little discussion about texture,
flavor concentration, flavor length, balance.
I think that without us really realizing it, the
winemaking model of the seventies was an aromatic model. If
you go back and look at the wines , you had a very intensely
perfumed Char donnay-- buttery, woody- -and you had an intensely
aromatic Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet. Those wines were
dominated more by nose, and the weakness was in the mouth.
What we really began to do was change our whole model
for winemaking from an aromatic to a mouth feel model,
thinking about the important issues being flavor
concentration- -the amount and intensity of flavor; length of
flavor- -how long it stays in the mouth; the texture of the
wine from the beginning of the time when you put it in your
mouth, through the middle, and to the end; and the balance and
interaction of components- -the harmony, the mouth impression
and how it relates to the aromatic impression.
I remember when we were on that trip in '86, we visited
Professor Gayon, who was the chairman of the enology
department at the University of Bordeaux. He said, "We
believe that the nose follows the mouth; that if you have the
52
wine you want in the mouth, the nose will come along." That
was the Bordeaux model of winemaking, and we adapted that. A
tremendous amount of attention with Cabernet particularly, but
also with Chardonnay, went to improving the mouth feel.
Certainly in the second half of the eighties, when Paul came
in as assistant winemaker and hired as his associate Tasha
McCorkle, the two of them made an important contribution to
our Cabernet and our Chardonnay in terms of texture, mouth
feel, and balance. It was something they worked on a lot.
They worked hard on that, thought a lot about it, and
implemented techniques that addressed those issues.
By the end of the eighties, with different grapes in a
completely rethought winemaking model and with revised
techniques for Cabernet, we were basically making very
different Cabernets from the early years. To me, in a way
that's the essence of winemaking- -that ability to continue to
evolve in a positive direction. You've heard me talk already
a couple of times about what I think that direction needs to
be for the nineties.
Viticulture: The Vineyards
Long: We can go ahead and talk about the vineyards now. When I came
to Simi in 1980, we had all of our Chardonnay and all of our
Cabernet under long-term contract. One of my jobs was to
review those grapes and see if we really wanted to have them.
In the case of Chardonnay we did, and we continued our
contract with our Mendocino Chardonnay, but as our Chardonnay
program grew, we began to develop grape sources outside of
Mendocino. With Cabernet we changed. We received grapes from
one source in 1980 and '81 and then began to seek other
sources for Cabernet.
So in those years from '81 to '85 I had an opportunity
to explore Cabernets from many different parts of Sonoma
County. It takes time to establish new vineyards and sources,
but certainly by '85 we had defined the vineyards that we
really wanted to work with. Cabernet was and probably always
will be more difficult to find top grapes. I think one of the
underlying reasons for the popularity of Chardonnay is that it
tends to be relatively forgiving where it grows, so it can
grow in a larger variety of soil and climate conditions and
53
produce attractive wine than Cabernet. Cabernet is relatively
particular about where it's going to grow wine well.
I believe that in the eighties we were just beginning to
understand what a good site was and what was good vineyard
management technique .
Hicke: So you were looking for better quality primarily?
Long: Yes. And, as I said, not finding it really easy; there wasn't
a vineyard every time you turned around that would meet the
quality expectations. I think at the same time it's fair to
say that we were not only looking for better grapes; we were
developing our own understanding of what a better grape really
was, what the conditions were that produced a better grape.
It turns out that a lot of those conditions were viticultural .
The vineyards we needed in the early eighties to produce
superior Cabernet had to be vineyards that naturally did that.
By the end of the eighties there were many people who had
begun to apply specific techniques in a variety of sites that
would help improve the Cabernet.
Simi hadn't had vineyards; when I came there were no
vineyards. Simi had had vineyards pre-Prohibition, and then
the vineyards were lost; they were sold to pay to keep the
winery going. Michael Dixon, certainly with my encouragement,
took a direction to begin to acquire vineyards for Simi. I
asked that we look for Cabernet vineyards, because, again, I
was finding it more difficult to buy good Cabernet. I felt
that if we wished to grow something, that would be the variety
to grow. I had found several grape sources in the Chalk Hill
area of Alexander Valley- -the southeast area- -which I liked
very much. When we heard of a piece of property becoming
available and had an opportunity to buy it, that became the
chosen site- -after, of course, a lot of investigation and so
on. Michael moved ahead and leased a vineyard that was
contiguous, so between the owned and the leased acreage we
ultimately had about 175 planted acres, of which 125 were the
Bordeaux varieties.
The early eighties was a time of tremendous ferment
viticulturally . When Diane came to work at Simi in 1981, we
spent time together in the vineyard. For me it was these
enormous questions of the vineyard: how do I figure out when
the grapes are ripe? How do I know where they're going to
grow best and under what conditions? I had quite a few
viticulture friends in the Napa Valley, and I found that they
54
had the same kinds of questions. So in 1981 we had a post-
harvest meeting at Simi, and we invited several of our
viticulture friends and Dr. Mark Kliewer, viticulturalist from
UC Davis. We put a lot of these questions out on the table.
We said, "We really need you to do some research that would
address these questions we have, which are essentially, 'What
is it that we can do in the vineyard to improve wine
quality?'"
Ultimately the answer was, "You can fund research."
[laughs] So we, these wineries, formed an association- -Simi,
Domaine Chandon, Mondavi, Beringer, [Joseph] Phelps, Christian
Brothers. We each put up money every year, and that money
went into a joint pot. We asked the UC Davis viticulture
professors to make proposals to us about research that they
were interested in doing that would address the issue of,
"What can I do in the vineyard to improve wine quality?" That
association is still continuing, with some slightly different
wineries.
Hicke: Does it have a name?
Long: It's the North Coast Viticultural Research Group. It has been
a very powerful influence for a couple of reasons. One,
wineries in the group were very powerful , they were respected
as leaders , they also purchased a lot of grapes , and they had
their own vineyards. We had so many questions in that time
period- -of course, Simi particularly, because we were starting
to plant vineyards. Our questions were, "What do we want to
do with this vineyard?" To go back to the similes, I've
likened putting in a vineyard to building a house. I mean,
when you build a house, it's a big investment, you have an
opportunity at that time to stop and think, "How do I want to
live my life? How is this house design going to suit that?"
Then you build it. You can remodel it, but you don't want to
rebuild it.
So starting a new vineyard provides a lot of opportunity
of the same kind: what is it that you really want to look at
in the next ten years? For us the answers were that we wanted
to look at these different varietals, different root stocks,
different spacings, different trellising, and different
clones. So we established a vineyard in two phases that
addressed all of those issues. Those were similar issues to
the other members of this group.
55
What I think was happening, as I mentioned earlier, is
that we came to the end of the development stage in
winemaking, and it seemed like the most essential questions of
the time were the vineyard questions. It was a very exciting
period, because we would get all of these questions out on the
table. We put in a close-spaced vineyard in 1984 which was
one of the first close-space vineyards in California.
Subsequently other wineries did that, and by, say, the mid-
eighties, most of the group had at least some experiments in
spacing, trellising, rootstock, clones, water relations. We
would not only meet to fund and hear results of the UC Davis
research work; we would exchange information about our
projects.
What we were doing was deriving fairly quickly our
knowledge of those aspects of viticulture and the impact on
the wine by, as a group, developing projects and sharing the
information. This wasn't managed; it just happened. People
were so excited about these questions and these prospects that
these things just happened.
Hicke: Was each winery doing something a little different?
Long: Each winery made its own decision about what it wanted to do.
There was no group saying, "Okay, now we're all going to do
this and that." But there was this tremendous flow of
intellectual energy that resulted in a lot of different group
projects.
Typically the research work that we funded was done in
one of our vineyards. For example, right now Dr. Deborah
Elliott-Fisk and Dr. Ann Noble from UC Davis are doing a study
in Simi's vineyards on the effect of soils and vine canopy on
Cabernet composition. That research is being funded by this
group. Through the years we've funded research in the various
members ' vineyards .
Hicke: That packet you sent me is wonderful, so maybe we'll include
some of that as illustrative material. [See appendix.]
Long: That would be terrific.
I'm talking quite a bit about this group, but I think
it's a very important group. The other thing that I saw
happen was that because we were asking the viticulture
professors at UC Davis these questions, they were beginning to
look at them more themselves. What we were doing was asking
56
them to evaluate their work in terms of the wine quality, so
the end product wasn't going to be the grape; it was going to
be the wine. We were looking at wine composition, the tasting
of wine, the levels of phenols and the quality of the phenols
as the end result of the viticultural work.
Hicke: You were stimulating the University's research.
Long: We were stimulating them, and what we noticed was that by,
say, '83, '84, '85, they were doing other research projects
that we were not funding that were addressing these issues.
Furthermore , several of us were involved on a board level in
the American Society of Enology and Viticulture, and we were
involved in the planning of the technical sessions for that
group. We created a part of the sessions, called the Forum,
and we started to bring in people from around the world to
discuss these viticultural issues. I think it was as early as
1985 that we had a symposium at Reno, where we brought in
viticulturalists from around the world to discuss these canopy
issues. So we were bringing in experts from outside the
United States, which furthered this intellectual ferment.
At the same time, the wineries that were purchasing
grapes- -Simi , Mondavi- -were starting to talk to their growers
about things: "We're doing this, we're doing that; we like
this, we like that," so the experiments that we were trying
were spreading out through the industry. It's my belief that
this very small group of people was the forerunner and the
central cell that generated most of the early viticultural
energy. The fact that we were looking at these things in our
vineyards, that these were winery leaders, and that we were
funding research and stimulating these questions on other
researchers was a very powerful combination.
The viticultural issues elucidated in the 1980s were, I
believe, most important for Cabernet. These were the issues
of canopy management- -in 1981, Richard Smart, who is a
viticulturalist in New Zealand, came through and discussed the
work that he had done, showing that if you changed the way
that the grapevine displays its leaves you can impact the
grape composition in terms of color, amount and quality of
tannins, and flavor. This was an exciting new tool; we could
train the vines, and we could have an impact on the wines.
That was really explored in great detail through the eighties.
Water relations --what are the relationships between the amount
and timing that the vine gets water to concentration of flavor
and to quality of the tannins?
57
With Cabernet in particular, the vineyard issues were
ripe fruit flavors, i.e., moving away from the herbaceous,
vegetative flavors that we saw more frequently in the early
seventies and the eighties, to the blackberry, black cherry,
cassis, very ripe fruit flavors of Cabernet- -and ripe tannins.
When Paul and I were in Bordeaux in 1986, we heard again and
again this discussion of good tannin or ripe tannin. The
Cabernet grapevine does have the ability under poor
circumstances to produce very astringent tannins, so the goal
was to display the fruit and balance the vine in such a way
that by the time the grapes were ready to harvest, the tannins
were ripe. It has nothing to do with Brix, not a lot to do
with flavor, but really with tannin quality. That was partly
in the viticulture and partly in the timing of harvest
decision.
In the second half of the eighties at Simi we developed
a link with a professor of geography and geology at UC Davis
named Deborah Elliott-Fisk. She became fascinated with
viticulture and the geography of viticulture. She came to our
vineyards, and she began to help us understand the geologic
origin of the vineyards and how that impacted the different
soils in the vineyards. She helped us go through each part of
our vineyards and explore the soils.
Michael Black, who is now vice president of vineyard
operations, was the individual who really started the vineyard
development in 1982. For example, in the mid- eighties,
working with Deborah, he and Diane went through each one of
our thirty- six blocks with a back hoe, dug pits, and came to
really understand the characteristics of the soil down three
to five feet. They began to be able to better envision the
circumstances that the vine roots were experiencing and to
respond to those circumstances with irrigation practices.
We started out in the early years looking at clones,
spacing, trellising, and canopy management, and by the second
half of the eighties we were really thinking about soils,
water management, and nutrition management of the soils and
how they affected the canopy, the balance, and the flavor
concentration. We discovered that the site that we had chosen
for our vineyards was, in Deborah's words, "one of the most
complex, if not the most complex, vineyard site in Napa or
Sonoma . "
tt
58
Hicke: The map of your vineyard shows that each little area has a
different composition.
Long: It's true, and we really didn't appreciate that when we bought
the vineyard. We were buying it more because of the area and
the climate than the soil. What that has meant to us is that
it has given us a tremendous complexity and variety within
that site, and it has made that vineyard very challenging to
manage. [laughter] In that regard we've been very fortunate
to have Michael Black, because he has really relished the
challenge of seeing the vineyard as many different parcels and
addressing each of those parcels as an individual.
Hicke: It almost looks like it's all experimental.
Long: It's almost all experimental; that's right. To some people in
that time frame that would have been overwhelming. It would
have been overwhelming to think of it in that way, but it
really hasn't been to Michael.
There's something else in this. We are talking about
vineyards, but underlying the vineyards in the eighties there
are some important developments that transcend the vineyards.
One is the rise of the viticulturalist. In the winery the
winemaking is the successful interaction of the cellarmaster- -
he really directs the people and the operations of the
equipment- -and the winemaker, the person who is thinking about
technical aspects of the winemaking process. I liken them to
the architect and the contractor; the architect designs, and
the contractor builds. In the winery you have the same kind
of thing; the winemaker designs, and the cellarmaster
implements, although it's never that clear-cut. I mean,
they're always working in each other's areas, and to the
extent that the relationship is successful, you make better
wine.
We've been fortunate at Simi to make winemaking a joint
effort, a team effort, as a priority. In the vineyards we've
traditionally had the industry equivalent of a cellarmaster- -
the vineyard manager, who in the 1970s saw his end product as
grapes , so he was concerned about a good crop and vine health
and getting the grapes harvested. But in the eighties arose
the role of the viticulturalist, which is more like the
winemaker- -a person who has technical and specialized
knowledge for winegrowing, who can tie the winemaking and
winegrowing together.
59
At Simi and at a few of the leading wineries in the
eighties, the position of viticulturalist was developed. It
was really a technical advisor to Mike and myself, who was
both developing and implementing technical ideas. Diane was
the person who was seeing the wine as the end product, then
making suggestions about how to improve that wine, and working
with Mike to tie the vineyard and the winery together. We
were very fortunate again with Michael Black as someone who
wanted to be tied to the winery and who saw the wine as the
end product. It's really important to emphasize that these
were mind sets that were unusual for that time frame- -to have
someone like Diane, who had a wine background, a love of wine,
the technical training of the viticulturalist, and the love of
the vineyard; and someone like Michael Black, who was the
vineyard manager, who was interested in seeing his end product
as wine, and who had a good relationship with the winery.
They were role models, really, in that time period.
Management
Hicke: We're talking about leadership here, too --your leadership.
This is about where you got into the management end of it.
Long: I would say probably at Robert Mondavi my greatest
contributions were enological, but at Simi in a sense my
greatest contributions have been viticultural- -not that I was
a viticulturalist or a vineyard manager, but I could see that
enormous gains we were going to make in the eighties could be
made in the vineyard. The way to do that was to begin to do
the kind of research that was going to allow us to understand
what was going on in the vineyards and to tie the vineyard and
the winery together so that the wine became the end product- -
winegrowing.
Certainly as I watched the industry change in the
eighties, I saw winemakers become more interested in
vineyards, but I still think there's a long distance to go. I
think in the industry I was the winemaker most focused on
viticulture in that decade. It was because I was personally
fascinated by the vineyards and what we could do out there to
impact the wine quality. The thread was the whole development
of this new technical viticulture.
59a
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SIMI WINERY ESTATE VINEYARDS
ALEXANDER VALLEY. SONOMA COUNTY
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in Sonoma County. Planted between I983and 1985. all 174 acres are now producing 99 acres
are Cabernet Sauvignon. 1 7 acres Cabernet Franc. 8 acres Merlot. 3 acres Petit Verdot. 26 acres
Chardonnay and 18 acres are Sauvignon Blanc.
59b
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60
The other thing that was interesting in that time
period, and I think it tied in somewhat to the tenor of the
times and this research group , was that at UC Davis for the
first time the research work done by the viticulturalists and
the enologists began to be tied together. At UC Davis there
is a Department of Enology and Viticulture, and their
professors, for the most part, had done separate work, with
the viticulturalists seeing the end product as grapes and the
enologists seeing the end product as wine. Partly because of
our research group and our emphasis on the wine being the end
product, in the 1980s there began to be joint work, which, if
you think about it, was incredible that it hadn't happened
before.
I have to say that the viticultural changes in the 1980s
were revolutionary for our industry and have provided a
completely new base for development in the nineties. People
may think we've come a long way, but I can see that we just
built a base in the eighties that will allow us to do many
more things in the nineties.
Hicke: That's one of the reasons we're here doing this, to document
all of that. I do think it was important that when you moved
into the management of the entire business you had this idea
of working together.
Long: It was important. The steps we took at that time were new
steps, but we've gone a step beyond that and created
essentially a wine -growing team, which is a structure that
further brings together in an even higher- level , interactive
mode, our winemaker; our laboratory director; our
viticulturalist ; our cellarmaster ; Michael Black, our vice
president of vineyards; and his assistant, Keith Horn- -talking
about what we're trying to accomplish, what the end goals are.
For example, we have a consultant from Bordeaux named
Michel Holland. He has grown up in Bordeaux and has a large
consulting practice located primarily in Pomerol and
St. Emilon. He was here last week, looking at the vineyards.
The focus of his visit was the condition and particular nature
of the Cabernet this vintage, for 1991, and what impact that
might have on harvest decisions and winemaking decisions.
When he was out in the vineyard, looking at the grapes,
Michael Black was there, Diane Kenworthy was there, our
vineyard manager and viticulturalist; Keith Horn, assistant
vineyard manager; Nick Goldschmidt, our winemaker; Monika
61
Chris tman, our lab director. All of these people who will be
part of that ultimate growing of the wine were together,
discussing what's going on in this vineyard and what that is
going to mean to the winemaking.
When we work with Michel, we start with the wines. He's
worked with our wines for about five years, so he knows this
is the wine we make from this piece of land; so let's go look
at this piece of land and think about the timing of the
harvest and the management of that land. When we bring in
consultants we're always doing the same thing: these are the
wines that we are making from this piece of land; let's talk
about the management of that piece of land toward the end goal
of this kind of wine. I think about it as a circle. The
circle begins with the tasting of the previous vintage by the
vineyard and winery people and an assessment of the wines from
each plot of ground- -what are their strengths, what are their
weaknesses. When the vineyard cycle starts- -pruning, the
leafing out, the bloom- -what is it in each step of the cycle
that is going to address the questions or the issues we have
with any particular piece of ground? How are we going to
change our viticulture techniques for that piece of ground?
Then harvest approaches, and we're tasting the fruit.
We're thinking, "What are the characteristics of this
particular site in this vintage, and therefore how are we
going to respond in our winemaking?" After harvest we taste
the wines again, and we say, "How did we do? Last year at
this time this site had these strengths and these weaknesses
and these questions to address; how effective were we in the
vineyard and the winery and in the two coming together in
addressing those issues, answering the questions,
strengthening the wine?"
Hicke: How many pieces of ground are we talking about?
Long: Thirty-six. [laughter] Then the question starts over again:
what about for next year? So it's this circle of interaction
that just keeps moving for the goal of quality improvements
for the wines from that vineyard.
Hicke: And this is just Cabernet that we're talking about?
Long: This is just Cabernet. But this is a good model for what I
would call sophisticated winegrowing in the 1990s, and it's
what it will take to make outstanding wines in the 1990s.
62
Hicke: This is probably impossible to say, but how many different
wines do you think you make in experimenting with all these
questions?
Long: We could count, but I would guess four hundred every year.
Hicke: Again, it looks very complicated. I think the important thing
is that this is where you're going with it.
Long: I think perhaps you can recognize from what I've said that
intrinsic in that is continuity. As far as continuity with a
vineyard site, we work with it two or three or five years.
The more we work with it, the more we understand it, the
better job we'll do, whether we're buying the grapes or
growing the grapes. Continuity with the people is important,
because they build up their understanding of the process and
of the vineyards. Ours is a business that does not benefit
from constant turnover. It's a business that in a sense is
contrary to our current culture, which is quick change and
quick decisions. That's really not what fine winemaking is
all about. It's about long-term thinking and long-term
development.
Hicke: That's another management challenge, dealing with people to
assure continuity, and with the growers.
Long: It is, there's no question about it.
Hicke: Do you find that more challenging or as interesting as just
dealing with wines as an enologist?
Long: When you look at the managing of the business, it's not that
different conceptually. You have different parts of the
business- -you have sales, your vineyards, your winemaking,
your finance administration- -and they're all parts that have
to be pulled together to grow a fine business, as we pull
together different parts of the winemaking process, the
equipment, and the grapes to make a fine wine. In the
winemaking process, the central character is the wine, in
essence. You're trying to build a system, a model, a way of
looking at things and responding that will create the kind of
wine you want. With a business, the central character is the
people. You're trying to build a group of people who will
bring the talents and the commitment to allow the business to
be what you want it to be .
63
Conceptually it's not that different. As with
winemaking, which is complicated (as you've mentioned), it's
providing that kind of an atmosphere where they have a chance
to be creative, to make a difference, to be respected, to be
heard, to be committed. That's what everyone is always trying
to do, and it's much easier said than done. It's part of the
new challenge for me, absolutely.
Hicke: And probably equally frustrating at times.
Long: Yes. [laughs]
Hicke: There are several things I want to mention here. Maybe you've
alluded to this; I know you have an image not only of what
your wine should be but of what the business should be- -what
Simi should be. All of the new buildings and everything fit
that image. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?
Long: I'll describe the image, and I can say with accuracy that this
is the image that I inherited from Michael Dixon; this is the
model he worked on. It's an image that was supported and
encouraged by Moet-Hennessy [owner of Simi], and I think it's
an image or a vision that's shared by the people here. Simi
is essentially a wine business- -not a big business but a small
business --producing an extraordinary level of quality, with
the ability to do that consistently and to continue to improve
and evolve both the quality and the style. There are not that
many wineries that have actually been able to do that
successfully over time.
Some of our most wonderful memories are of winemakers
who come into our tasting room unannounced and taste through
the wines and then say, "Every one of your wines is
excellent." That's not that easy to accomplish. Recently I
did a tasting with Brian Croser, an Australian winemaker, and
we tasted 1980 through 1990 Chardonnay Reserve with the
winemaking staff. Those wines were outstanding. They were
all still wonderful. They were different; some were stronger,
some had evolved in a more exciting way. But they were all
still wonderful wines. It was just very special to stop and
look back on those wines .
So that's the core and motivating force for the people
here- -to do something, to be involved in something that is
really high quality, whether it's the business itself or the
wine itself. From a business point of view, because we're a
small business, that quality and the reputation for quality is
64
really crucial for us to be profitable, because we're not
turning out millions of cases of wine.
Developing an International Business
Hicke: That brings me to my next question, which is how this more
international marketing goal developed.
Long: First of all, Michael Dixon, our former chairman, is British,
so he has international roots. Of course, our ownership is
French, so the winery was very internationally rooted. You
have to say that the wine business is international; wines are
produced all over the world. I don't know exactly what date,
but I would guess around the mid-eighties, Michael started to
develop our export business.
When I was getting ready to transition into the
presidency in 1988, I was sent to Stanford for a program
called the Stanford Executive Program. It was a two-month
program for 180 executives, half of whom were from outside the
United States. That was key for me in not only hearing about
but feeling the international energy and economic activity in
the sense of the linkage of the world in an economic sense. I
came back convinced that our export program was crucial to
Simi for the long term.
I think at that time Moet, our mother company, had some
questions about that. They really said, "Your primary focus
should be in the United States," but their vision has changed,
too, so they see Simi as a winery that needs to be developing
its international market in business.
Hicke: Your persuasion?
Long: I think Michael and I felt the same and equally strongly, and
we basically just kept going in that direction. I can't say
what changed at Moet, but it's natural of Moet, who themselves
have been extraordinarily successful because of international
sales, to see it that way. Perhaps it was just giving them a
little bit of time to work it through in their own minds.
Hicke: We haven't talked at all about the relationship of Moet and
when they took over Schieffelin [& Co] or when Schieffelin
bought out--
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Long: Schieffelin bought Simi in 1976, before I came. Michael Dixon
had purchased Simi for Scottish & Newcastle [Vintners], I
think in '74, and then he sold Simi to Schieffelin- -not
Schieffelin & Somerset- -in 1976 and stayed on as the business
manager and president.
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V CHANGES AND CONCERNS OF THE WINE INDUSTRY
[Interview 2: January 2, 1992 ]////
Linkage Between Viticulture and Winemaking
Hicke: Let's start with some of the notes you made as you were
reviewing the first part of the transcript. I think the first
thing you wanted to talk about was the linkage between the
vineyard and the winemaking.
Long: when I came into the industry in 1970, the roles of the
vineyard and the winery were very different from the way they
are today. I want to go back and review the evolution,
because I think it's significant for our California history.
In 1970, the vineyard was farmed primarily by an owner or a
manager of that vineyard; wineries had a much lower percentage
of ownership in the grapes that they crushed than they do now.
The end product of the vineyard was seen to be the grapes.
The grapes were delivered to the winery, and the winemaker
would would begin to develop an understanding of those grapes
only when they showed up on the doorstep at harvest. Then it
was the winemaker 's responsibility to make them into wine.
The most interesting thing about that structure was that
it reflected the University. The University of California at
Davis 's Department of Enology and Viticulture, in its very
name, would imply the integration of those two disciplines,
but in fact at that time they were quite separate. They were
physically in the same department, and of course they
interacted with each other, but the research was quite
separate. There were not research projects that were done
jointly between enologists and viticulturalists . Most of the
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time the evaluation of the viticultural work was in terms of
either tonnage (yield) or vine health, or the Brix, acid, and
pH of the grapes. There was very little translation of the
viticultural experimental work into the sensory aspects of
wine. Then there were the winemaking experiments, and they
were evaluated by a very rigorous sensory evaluation system.
These separate roles, in industry and university,
continued through the seventies. As I've mentioned earlier,
in the seventies the winery would pay for grapes on the basis
of Brix. Brix was the implied desired end product of grape
growing .
In the eighties, the attitude on the part of the winery
toward the vineyard began to change. Over that ten-year
period, winemakers were more active in the vineyard; they were
seeking to understand the viticulture and the implications of
viticulture on wine composition and quality. In the early
eighties, Dr. Richard Smart came from Australia, for example,
and said that the way that you manipulate the canopy or leaves
over the Cabernet fruit while it's ripening has a major impact
on tannin quality, perception of texture, color, and on flavor
development. In essence, he was saying that if you change
canopy in the vineyard, you're going to change your wine
composition and quality. That was a very powerful linkage,
and I think it was the trigger for the development in the
eighties of our North Coast Viticultural Research Group, which
was a group that began to see the end product of viticultural
efforts as the wine , not the grapes .
In the eighties these changes were also reflected at the
University; the enologists and viticulturalists began to
collaborate more on projects. The viticulturalists began to
make and evaluate wine as an outcome of the different
experiments, and they began to struggle with the concept, "How
do I quantify the results of the viticultural effort in terms
of wine?" That's not a simple thing to do. Let me just give
you an example. You're a winemaker; you're reading a piece of
technical literature about some work a viticulturalist did in
canopy management. He's trying to communicate to you that it
made a great difference in the wine, but how can you quantify
that?
The challenge is that it is still difficult to
scientifically quantify the taste of wine. Dr. Ann Noble,
whose area of research at UC Davis is sensory evaluation, has
worked out a system that can begin to describe the
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personality- -i.e. , flavors, and aromas--of wines differently
in a quantifiable way. She has begun to really address this
problem.
In California, we have come an enormous distance in the
linkage of the vineyard and the winery. What remains to be
done, not only in California but around the world, is to find
a way to quantifiably communicate the results of scientific
and viticultural efforts in the wine. The way our Research
Group quantifies results is by tasting the wines. We
financially support the viticulturalists' research and say,
"We're interested in the wine as the end product of your
work." How do we evaluate the work? We taste it. But of
course if you are a scientist, you can't rely on people around
the world tasting the wines you've made; you have to find a
way to quantify them and to effectively, scientifically,
communicate results.
Hicke : Are you talking about the wheel that she developed?
Long: Dr. Noble developed an aroma wheel, but she has also developed
what I call a "spider diagram," which is a way of identifying
not only the particular aroma components a wine has, but the
amount of each of those components- -and then displaying it
visually. So you can begin to try to envision the different
personalities of the wine.
Hicke: Do you have to do this on a computer?
Long: Yes. The computer is used extensively in her work.
What I'm describing is a scientific technique. It's not
something I see being used in a winery, because we quantify
the efforts of our own vineyard-viticultural work by tasting
the wine. But in the larger picture, it is important that the
world of science find a way to communicate more effectively
about wine aromas, flavor, balance, and personality.
In the decade of the nineties, I see a continuation in
this movement of the linkage of the vineyard and the winery.
One example of better linkage is the developing role of the
viticulturalist, who is the technical person in the vineyard
who sees wine as the end product. Here at Simi we're putting
a tremendous amount of emphasis and energy on the ability of
the whole winemaking team to understand what's happening in
the vineyard and to be able to give effective feedback to the
vineyard managers about the nature of the wines, their
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strengths and weaknesses, so that the vineyard people have an
essential grasp of the wines. For example, if I say to our
winemaking and wine growing team, "We need to improve the
quality of the Cabernet Franc from our vineyard," it's
essential that everyone have a common understanding of what
that wine is like --what its strengths and weaknesses are --so
each individual can envision how to support growth and
development of that wine in their area of expertise.
Improvement might come from a change in pruning, the watering
process, the timing of harvest; from analyzing some of the
components of the wine in order to get a better understanding;
or from the vinification. But that wine won't reach its
ultimate quality level until all of the thinking of the
vineyard and the winery is integrated toward the particular
goal of quality, composition, flavor, and structure.
Everybody must have a common understanding.
Hicke: How do you actually do this? Do you have daily or weekly
meetings when the winemakers go out to the vineyards?
Long: We're developing two teams- -a winemaking and a winegrowing
team. The winemaking team members are our cellarmaster ,
laboratory director, winemaker, assistant winemaker, and
viticulturalist . Two of those, the winemaker and the
viticulturalist , are also on the winegrowing team, with our
vineyard manager and his assistant. These teams develop
specific goals, based on our winery quality orientation, and
work together to achieve them.
It is important to bring the vineyard people into the
winery and have them taste the wines and observe the
winemaking process, so they begin to have (for example) their
own intimate sense that: "These are our grapes from this
hillside 'Block 10,' and the wine tastes of deep berry
flavors, good tannin, delicious." They're not waving goodbye
to the grapes as they go into the gondola and go out to the
winery; they're maintaining their continuity of relationship
and seeing those grapes transformed into wine. They're
beginning to think of that plot of land in terms of the wine
and not the grapes .
The most important change is changing people's thinking.
That's the first thing you have to do. When the people in the
vineyard look at a piece of land, they have to see in their
mind's eye and taste the wine from that land. The people in
the winery, when they look at a wine, have to see the soil and
the vines that it came from. Until those people can have
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those visions, you won't get a complete linkage, and you won't
make the best wine from that piece of land.
Hicke: It's also absolutely necessary that the winery own the
vineyard, then, isn't it?
Long: Your ability to achieve complete linkage is increased a
hundredfold if you own the land. We found, though, that we
can enhance our ability to work with a grower by working with
their piece of land for a long time. Most of our Chardonnay
growers, for example, have been working with us for ten years.
We have been in those vineyards many times and know the owner-
managers, and in most cases we have established a close
relationship with them. We know their vineyards; we can close
our eyes and see the land, the grapes, over many years. That
enhances our ability to do a better job. We want also to
develop the linkage the other way, so for each vineyard that
we buy grapes from, we taste that wine with the owner-manager
and talk about it- -taste it in a context of the other wines of
that variety that we make. It's not as powerful a linkage our
own vineyard, but it's still a good linkage, with potential
for more development.
The Concept of Terroir
Hicke: Does this bring us to the concept of terroir?
Long: Terroir is a French word, and it has often been misunderstood
to mean "soil." The French talk a lot about how crucial
terroir is to their wines; how terroir creates the wine's
personality. Terroir really means "vine environment." It is
everything- -soil , climate- -that the wine sees and experiences.
I'm sure you're familiar with this feeling in very traditional
winegrowing areas that there are distinctive personality
differences in wines from one plot of land to another. Why
would that be? The more I've thought about terroir, the more
impressed I've been with the degree of difference that is
possible from one site to another.
First, consider the soil. For example, in Sonoma County
there are sixty different kinds of bedrock which generate
soil. That's enormous diversity. But if you go onto a site
and dig down with a backhoe , the soil is never one layer. It
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can be two, three, or five layers, and they can each be a
different depth. From the perspective of the vine's root, the
number of layers it hits, their depth, composition, and water-
holding capacity are going to make a major difference to the
vine. There are not only the big differences in soils, there
are the differences just in terms of the layers, the depth,
the water-holding capacity, the ability to drain, and the
nutritional value in each of those layers.
I have seen soils in other parts of the world that are
very uniform from top to bottom, and they don't provide a
great deal of variety for the vines. Sometimes you see soil
with two layers; or you have what we call a clay pan, a hard
layer that the vine roots can't penetrate. Underneath the
soil, in ways you can't see, is an enormous diversity of
conditions that impact what the vine roots are going to be
doing.
Above the ground you have the conditions of sun: how
many days of sunlight will the vine experience in a growing
season- -in the ripening season. How long are the days?
what's the angle of the sun? What is the heat, both during
the day and during the night? Heat during the night is really
important, because the vine has a significantly different
metabolic response to cool nights than warm nights. So
sunlight, temperature, and moisture- -if you read a graph you
could see so many inches of water a year. But does that come
in three major rainstorms? Does it come in the form of mist,
ten days out of thirty? For example, Willamette Valley in
Oregon and Sonoma County have a very similar total rainfall,
but the weather patterns for that rainfall are totally
different. We get all of our rain in the winter and spring,
and they get it throughout the year, more frequently, with
less hard rains, more gentle rain and mist. We get it a few
times in hard rainfall. Those variations make major
differences to the growing conditions of the plant. Their
plants in the summer have water naturally, and ours don't, so
we have to irrigate. They have more cloudy days. The amount
and timing of water is important.
Wind is another factor. Wind can remove the water from
the vine and from the soil, and it can cause the vine to close
down its respiration. If you're in a windy site, the vine is
going to have less ripening time than it would in the same
site with all the same conditions except no wind. Also,
there's what we call exposure- -the direction that the vines
are facing. On a hillside, if they are facing north, south,
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east, or west, it will dramatically impact the heat units they
experience and the timing of those heat units.
So suddenly you start thinking, "Nothing about sites is
the same; everything is different." And it's true. It's
amazing. One of the things I love about wine in today's era,
when everyone is sensitive to the environment- -wine is
something that is very responsive to environment. All of our
food supply is responsive to environment, but we don't
appreciate that as much, because agricultural produce is very
transitory. But wine isn't, so these environmental
differences that affect the grapes are translated into wine,
and you can read them. Wine is very special in that regard.
It freezes in time, the environment of the moment and the
human effort of the moment.
Hicke: You can't keep a tomato from one year to the next.
Long: No, and you can't taste the difference twenty years later.
And you can't line up twenty-five tomatoes from around the
world or from different parts of California and taste them,
but you can do that with wine.
So this is the concept of terroir, which is integrated
into the idea of the linkage of the vineyard and the winery.
The more we really understand the growing conditions for our
vines, the better job we can do in viticulture, responding to
those growing conditions, and in the winery, responding to the
particular characteristics of that site. That's been a big
transition. When I was in Davis in 1970, it was felt that
climate- -weather- -was the most important influence on the
vine, and soil was very much played down. In Europe, there is
a reverent feeling toward the soil and the impact it has. But
it is everything together; you have to understand that it's
the whole environment of the vine, the whole ecosystem, that
is affecting the wine.
Hicke: Then everything like irrigation, canopy management,
trellising, and so forth, is part of the management of the
terroir?
Long: That's right. There are appropriate responses to a particular
terroir- -a particular vine environment. It wasn't that long
ago- -ten or twelve years ago- -when we were treating all
vineyards as if they were the same --the pattern of planting
and selection of rootstock. There was no thought to clones;
there was little thought to row direction, except to the
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contour of the land. Spacing was the same and trellising very
similar. So it was only a short time ago that we were
relatively unresponsive to that idea of the environment and
terroir.
Hicke: That's a huge step forward, I would think.
Long: One of the actions we've taken in our Simi vineyard, in a
pragmatic way, to deal with the understanding of the soils, is
to go through each of our different sub-plots of land, which
are usually two or three acres, with a backhoe , dig down four
or five feet, and look at the nature of the soil. When the
vineyard manager is irrigating, for example, he has in mind
what kind of soil is down there for the roots. Is the water
going to be retained or not? He knows now that some areas
have to have more water because they're so well drained, and
in some cases we found clay pan, so he has had to go in and
break it up. It helps him understand why some areas were very
weak in growth and some very strong. So that was a very
practical response to the idea of understanding terroir and
using that information in vineyard management.
The American Appellation System
Hicke: Which of your topics shall we discuss next?
Long: Why don't we talk about the American appellation system and
how that ties into terroir. Then perhaps we can talk about
phylloxera; we'd still be in the vineyard area.
I believe it was in 1978 when the BATF [Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms] implemented a system for
defining geographical areas of grape growing. We are required
legally to put the origin of the grapes on the bottle. Up to
that time the origin had been in terms of a state or a county.
Although people used Napa Valley, there wasn't really any
regulation as to what Napa Valley was. Of course, the county
lines were fairly clear. The BATF decided to develop a
nonpolitical appellation; a political appellation is one whose
lines are defined by county or state boundaries.
The viticultural appellation was defined by geography
and historical use. To apply for a viticultural appellation,
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a group of people had to get together and say, "We believe we
have a viticultural appellation, and we'd like to formalize
it." They had to show that the name they were proposing had
historical use, as the Napa Valley did, as Alexander Valley
did. And they had to show that there were geographical,
geological, climate boundaries to that appellation. This is
very congruent with the European appellation system that
defines specific viticultural areas in terms of their
geography .
I don't know the exact number, but there are over a
hundred viticultural appellations in the United States, and
the number is continuing to grow. At the same time, I believe
that currently appellations are primarily locators for people.
In other words, in the traditional European system, an
appellation of, for example, Pauillac in the Medoc in
Bordeaux, is meant to mean, "This is a particular piece of
ground that will produce wines that are uniquely distinctive
within this area."
But our geographical boundaries for viticultural areas
encompass a tremendous diversity within the area. So within
Alexander Valley, Napa Valley, Willamette Valley in Oregon,
Columbia Valley in Washington, there is enormous terroir
diversity. Our appellation system is still primarily a
communication device for the location and the geography of the
area rather than an appellation with a consistent terroir,
producing a wine of consistent personality.
To go back to the European reference, within their
appellations they are only allowed to grow only certain
specific varieties. We haven't allowed such a restriction,
and I don't believe it makes sense to do so. I mentioned
earlier Dr. Deborah Elliott-Fisk, who is a geography professor
at UC Davis. One of the very interesting things she has told
me is that in Sonoma County there are sixty different kinds of
bedrock, and that in the whole of Bordeaux there may be four
to six kinds of bedrock. One of the reasons we have so much
geological diversity is because of our location at the
intersection of the Continental Plate and the Pacific Plate.
Over eons of time there has been volcanic activity, upheaval,
uplift, and fragmenting of soils. In the whole coastal area
of California- -Central Coast, Napa, and Sonoma- -we have such a
diversity of terroirs that I'm not sure we'll ever be able to
form viticultural appellations that have a unique terroir
unless they're very, very tiny.
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It does, however, explain our ability to grow a large
number of wine varieties successfully. Again going back to
the traditional model in Europe , there are Chardonnay and
Pinot noir in Burgundy, Cabernet and Sauvignan blanc in
Bordeaux. Europeans come to Sonoma County and wonder how we
can grow all of these different grape varieties. But when you
think about the enormous geological and climate diversity- -at
the coast it's often foggy, and so cold you can hardly ripen a
grape, and if you go sixty or eighty miles inland, it's very
warm, and you think of all the interplay between the coolness
and the warmness in that sixty miles and how that's affected
by the site, the soil, and the exposure, you can conceptualize
a thousand different possibilities for growing grapes.
Hicke : So what is the value in the appellation?
Long: I think that's a good question. Our industry has tended to
some extent to look to Europe as a model, and even our wine
consumers do. They see the appellations in Europe as the
model for saying, "This is the best site for Chardonnay and
Cabernet." To the extent that anyone has that same
expectation of our appellations, it is an inappropriate
expectation. The function, therefore, is more as a locator:
this is where Alexander Valley is, these are the boundaries,
and now you know where the vineyards are. All it really says
about the vineyards is that that is where they are.
Hicke: It doesn't really say anything about the wine?
Long: Except in a more general way. A general comment you could
make, for example, about Russian River Valley versus Napa
Valley, is that if you know the location, you know that
Russian River Valley is closer to the coast and therefore
likely to have more ocean influence. You can make general
comments, but you're not going to be able to say, "Oh, yes,
the Chardonnay growing in this appellation is always this
way. "
Hicke: Very interesting.
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Evolution of the Use of Wine Varieties
Long: Why don't I talk about varieties? I thought it would be worth
tracing the history of the use of wine varieties in the period
of time that I've been in the industry. When I came into the
industry in 1970, at Robert Mondavi there was tremendous focus
on crushing the new fine varieties- -Pinot noir, Cabernet,
Chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc--and there was relatively little
of them planted.
a
Long: I remember that oftentimes we would have a grower who would
bring in Chardonnay, and then we would get their Mondeuse,
Mataro, and Sylvaner in addition. To get the varieties we
wanted, we had to take a varieties which at that time we
considered not very interesting. As a result, ultimately old
vineyards were pulled down, and many of these old,
"uninteresting" varieties were removed. I just recently had a
discussion with Lou Preston of Preston Vineyard in Dry Creek,
and he said that when he bought his property in the Dry Creek
Valley, he pulled out his old vineyards. Now he wishes he
hadn ' t .
That's the interesting thing about the way the varieties
have evolved. We started in the early seventies with old
varieties and old vineyards and very few Chardonnays ,
Cabernets, and Sauvignon blancs. In the seventies there was
an enormous wave of planting, and many of those old vines were
removed. People made many different kinds of wine. Yes,
there were Chardonnay and Cabernet, but there were also
Sylvaner, Riesling, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Gewurztraminer--
quite a variety of wines produced in that decade.
By the eighties we saw a significant consolidation of
varieties. In California it was estimated that many, probably
the majority, of wineries were producing Chardonnay, and there
were many of them producing two or three different
Chardonnays. So with 770 wineries, people estimated as many
as 1,000 to 1,200 Chardonnays being made. That same
phenomenon occurred to a lesser extent with Cabernet. We had
a strong varietal focus, not only in terms of making the
varietals but in terms of growing them; the number of
varietals was reduced. If you wanted to buy a California
Gewurztraminer , you would have had a much more difficult time
finding it.
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By the end of the eighties, there was a reversal of that
trend, and there was a renaissance of some of the older
varieties. The wine that I knew in California as Mataro, in
France is more correctly known as Mourvedre , which is a fine
red grape component of the Rhone wines. People began planting
these new varieties, and the focus was on the red and white
varieties of the Rhone. An interest is beginning to develop
in planting some Italian varieties- -Nebbiolo, Sangiovese,
Refosco--and I think probably a potential for developing some
Spanish varieties. You can see that the eighties were the
turning point; we saw consolidation and then a reinvigoration
of interest in old varieties. I think that's a very healthy
direction, because we have a solid, classic base now in
Chardonnay, Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, and to a lesser
extent Pinot Noir and Zinfandel. There is also opportunity to
develop new interest in wines --in blended wines out of these
varieties .
Hicke: Like Heritage?
Long: Heritage is a classic blend of Cabernet, Cabernet Franc, Petit
Verdot, Herlot, or Halbec . Those varieties have been with us
through much of the eighties, but I would view the varietals
of the Rhone, Italy, and to a lesser extent Spain as the new
direction.
Hicke: Is this just because winemakers or customers, or both, got
bored with what they were growing?
Long: I think there has been a certain sense of being overwhelmed
with a flood of Cabernet and Chardonnay, and not everyone can
excel with these wines. Hany times a small winery will seek a
particular niche where they can excel. Take Navarro, in
Anderson Valley, as an example; they make great
Gewurztraminer. Navarro is not a big winery, and there's not
a huge demand for Gewurztraminer ; but there is a demand for a
small amount of fine Gewurztraminer, and they've found that
niche and have developed it.
Hicke: Is it dry?
Long: I believe they make both sweet and dry Gewurztraminer. That's
been a very successful strategy for them, and it has offered
the consumer a wonderful alternative wine to choose from. I
think it's a very healthy development for the business.
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Hicke: I guess Randall Grahm was probably way out in front- -
Long: Randall was certainly the leader with regard to the Rhone wine
development.
Phylloxera
Long: Let's talk about what has happened to date with phylloxera.
In the early eighties, a small portion of a vineyard in Napa
Valley was found to be dying. Upon investigation, it was
discovered that the vines were dying of phylloxera. On
further investigation, it was discovered that its rootstock
was not A x R y/1 rootstock. During the planting in the early
seventies there were some inadvertent mixups of rootstock.
After you plant a vineyard and graft onto it- -you can't easily
look at a vineyard and know what rootstock it is. If a
nurseryman gives you two thousand A x R rootstocks, you
really don't know for sure that they are A x R until they leaf
out. In our old system of developing vineyards, we would
plant a rootstock, allow it to grow, and then graft onto it in
the vineyard. So the grafter could at least check the nature
of the rootstock.
In the new systems of development, you take a stick of
rootstock and a stick of the grape variety, and you graft them
together when they are dormant. When you plant the graft, you
see only the wine varietal, so it is a little more difficult
to monitor the rootstock. But it was known in the planting
boom in the seventies that there was some mixing of rootstock
in the vineyards. So when they found this vineyard going down
to phylloxera and looked at the rootstock and found it wasn't
a known resistant rootstock, that was a satisfactory
explanation.
It was in 1985- -I understand this from reading- -that it
was first identified that a vine on A x R #1 rootstock was
dying of phylloxera. That was hard to accept, because A x R
rootstock had been used over the years with great success. It
had been selected from a whole panoply of rootstocks in the
early part of the century because it produced good wine, was
easy to graft, grew well in the vineyard, and so on. In the
second half of the eighties there was additional investigation
to determine: "Is this true, that A x R y/1 is susceptible to
phylloxera?" The University believed that to come out and
say, "Gee, A x R #1 rootstock is going down to phylloxera"
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would create a big problem if not first thoroughly
investigated. The University viticulturalists had been the
original people recommending A x R, and they were the people
investigating this phylloxera problem.
In the second half of the eighties, a different biotype
of phylloxera was identified. If two phylloxera bugs were put
on the same A x R #1 root, it would resist one of them and not
the other one. The new biotype was responsible for the death
of the A x R-based vines.
Hicke: You mean it was different from what had hit a hundred years
ago or from what had hit in the seventies?
Long: Phylloxera is always present in the vineyard to some extent.
It's just that some rootstock have the ability to co-exist
with the phylloxera.
Hicke: And now there was this new type appearing?
Long: Now we have a new biotype. The result is that the biotype is
devastating the rootstock; it is killing the A x R #1
rootstock. The primary area that was infected was Napa
Valley. It's not clear how that happened, because in the
second half of the eighties the vineyard owners in the Napa
Valley experienced outbreaks- -it was almost like measles.
Within two or three years, all of a sudden there were infected
spots through many of the vineyards in the valley. Many
explanations have been suggested: the flood of '86; maybe it
was spread that way, but that didn't make sense because
hillsides had problems. Maybe there was so much vineyard
development that an original infection was carried by
equipment. Maybe it was in a nursery unbeknownst, and when
plant material was taken from the nursery and planted in
vineyards it spread. I don't think anyone will ever know
exactly what happened. It just seemed to spring up.
Infected vineyards have experienced about a threefold
increase every year. If you have one vine that dies from
phylloxera one year, next year you will have three, then nine,
then twenty-seven. As we look forward, we think that by 1994
or 1995 there is going to be dramatic removal of vineyards as
a result of this geometric progression.
Hicke: Is it coming into your vineyards?
80
Long: We have it at Sirai in a small area. As soon as we heard from
our viticultural friends what was going on in Napa, we
instituted a program to search for phylloxera and discovered
it in a few vines two years ago, and we monitor its progress.
It seems, from other people's experience, that the rate of
increase in any one site depends on the soil conditions. It
seems to spread faster in a heavier clay or moist soil than in
the very dry, rocky, or sandy soil. It's hard to project,
really, the rate of the vineyards going down on any one site
until you have a several years of data.
Sonoma County is about five years — I'm guessing—behind
Napa in terms of infection rate. Most people who have thought
about this subject believe that in ten years, 85 percent of
the vineyards in Napa and Sonoma will be replanted.
Hicke : I've heard people express the thought that a lot of these
vines are old and the vineyards would have to be replanted
anyway .
Long: I think there are some positive aspects. In the last twelve
years, because of all the work I've told you about, we've
learned an enormous amount about our vineyards . This gives us
an opportunity to replant the vineyards in the sense of what I
was saying: here's a site, what are the proper roots tocks,
varietals, clones, row spacing, trellising, row orientation?
As we pull out all the vineyards in Napa and Sonoma and
replant them in a more sophisticated, thoughtful, terroir-
responsive way, we can enormously improve our quality. And we
will, but of course it's a great expense, and it's over a long
term. But that is the direction that things will move.
Hicke: Is there another rootstock that's resistent?
Long: We can't go through this discussion without saying that
there's an enormous amount of controversy over this. Some of
the nature of the controversy is that the University wasn't
pro-active enough in talking about this problem earlier; that
they took too long to withdraw their recommendation of A x R.
Some of the controversy is over whether there really is a
biotype. The Europeans are particularly critical of American
viticulture, because their experience was that many years ago
when they planted A x R rootstock, it declined to phylloxera
very quickly.
Hicke: Oh, really? I didn't know that.
81
Long: They never had the experience that we did of thirty to forty
years of effective operations of A x R. Their stance is, "We
figured this out a long time ago. Why didn't you?"
[laughter] They really have the lifted eyebrow toward the
biotype explanation. But frankly, when you stop and think
about phylloxera, I suspect that if there were adequate
research done- -and there hasn't been any- -that you would find
there are dozens of biotypes. There's no reason to think that
phylloxera is exactly the same around the world; there's no
other biological system that is that way.
The Leading Role of California in the Worldwide Wine Industry
Long: Another subject I wanted to talk about, which I believe in
very strongly, is the leading role that California has taken
in the change of winemaking around the world. At the time
that I was first in the business in the seventies, I was
fortunate to do some traveling. At that time, particularly in
Europe, there was a sense of great tradition, a sense that
things were done as they always had been done , and that the
best way to make wine and grow grapes was known and therefore
not under investigation. [laughs] But California became so
enormously successful, particularly in varietal development- -I
look at Chardonnay in a sense as a new variety. It's true
that the Chardonnay grape is grown and made into wine as White
Burgundy in Burgundy, but our particular style,
characteristics, and universal appeal of our California
Chardonnay, and the fact that it has been marketed as a
varietal, have been enormously powerful. That's a California
achievement.
In the seventies California was considered, by the rest
of the world, a charming curiosity in terms of the wines that
were produced, and our activities and wines were considered to
be rustic. But California drive, energy, enthusiasm, and
investigation traveled around the world, with Calif ornians
constantly setting new sights; revolving our palate; setting
higher standards of quality, greater sophistication in
winemaking and grape growing. We have created wines in the
eighties that were considered to be significantly more
sophisticated than those in the seventies and are significant
competitors on the world scene.
82
In the eighties, we saw, around the world, vineyards
being planted to Chardonnay. In fact, it happened earlier
than that. I was in Eugene, Oregon, in 1976 at the first
Cool-Climate Symposium, which pulled together people making
wines in cool climates around the world. I was very
interested to hear the Canadians say they were planting
Chardonnay, and also the Swiss, the Italians, the Australians,
and the New Zealanders . By the end of the seventies the rest
of the world was paying attention to what we were doing, and
they were beginning to emulate our varietal development.
When Californians first went to Burgundy to buy
barrels, the Burgundian wineries didn't really know where the
wood for the barrels came from; they weren't really aware of
the techniques for making the barrels. Because of our
questions and our interest, and also our discovery that these
things made a difference- -type of wood, type of coopering,
etc. --French winemakers are not only highly aware of these
differences now, but they've studied them in their
universities and are applying them to their winemaking. This
illustrates Californians leading the way in important
winemaking details previously unnoticed.
As a result, we have a world scene that is much more
competitive. There are many, many more good wines being made
from every country, and I think the average quality level of
the wines around the world has gone up significantly.
Concurrent with that- -I don't know if it's a cause or an
effect- -is that the consumer around the world is demanding
better wines. So level of consumption of the old "jug" wines
is continuing to decline, and the demand for these finer wines
is continuing to increase.
If you stand back and look at that whole picture of
about twenty-two years, there is an enormous change in the
world scene in wine --what's grown, what's made, the quality,
how it's done, the whole attitude toward it. When I first
traveled, you would go into a chateau in Bordeaux, and they
wouldn't think about doing anything different from their
traditional practices. Now, first of all, the next generation
is running the chateau; and, secondly, this young generation
did its internship in winemaking either in California or in
Australia. They probably have a little side project- -a little
winery in California or Australia in addition to their
chateau. So it's fascinating. There's much more travel of
the winemakers. Our winemaker, Nick Goldschmidt, is a good
example. He is from New Zealand, learned viticulture there,
83
studied enology in Australia, came to the United States and
worked in California, went to England and worked in the wine
trade in England, went to South America and made wine in South
America. That's not an atypical winemaker.
Hicke : Do you see any particular people or wineries in California
that took the leadership in this evolution?
Long: Certainly, going back to Robert Mondavi- -he was the first man
there beating the drums about the quality of California wine
relative to world wine , and he was never afraid to compare his
wine to other people's. I remember some of the tastings.
He'd bring out [Domaine de la] Romance -Conti and put his Pinot
Noir up against it, and everybody would giggle. Nonetheless,
what a fabulously successful individual, focusing the
attention on California and what was happening in California.
Supporting him were all the wineries that enthusiastically and
energetically sought new and better ways of making wine and
shared their information. That sharing of information from a
technical point of view gave us enormous power to move the
whole industry forward, quickly.
Hicke: That was the California development?
Long: Yes. And that North Coast Viticultural Research Group that I
mentioned earlier- -Simi, Beringer, Mondavi, Domaine Chandon,
Phelps, and Jordon--is just one example of that. Actually,
you see that somewhat now in Bordeaux; some of the first
growths are banding together and sharing information. But
that was a concept totally foreign in many other countries ,
and we were fortunate to be so willing to work together that
way.
Hicke: Do you think California is going to maintain its leadership,
or is it now, as you've indicated, such a worldwide industry
that they're sharing all over?
Long: I think California, as good as our wines are now, has
tremendous potential to grow: quality and style. What we have
done well is to have at the forefront of each variety certain
wines that say: "This is the wine of the future. This is the
Chardonnay of the future, the Cabernet of the future; these
are the new varietals of the future." At Simi, our way of
thinking about what we're doing is to be on that cutting edge
in terms of style and quality with Cabernet, Chardonnay, and
Sauvignon Blanc. In many cases those are blended varietals,
84
Sauvignon Blanc blended with Semillon and Cabernet blended
with Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. We have an
ability to continue to develop. As good as our wines are,
they can be better; they can be more sophisticated; they can
have more evolution; and, partly because of our climate- -our
terroir- -we can successfully develop many other varieties.
In fact, I think we've been somewhat subject to and have
tended to accept other people's opinions about our climate
that were based on their own experiences.
Hicke : When you say, "we," do you mean at Simi?
Long: We in California have been used to Europeans visiting and
saying our climate is too hot, too dry. "You shouldn't
irrigate your vineyards, because we don't. Your climate is
too hot because it is different from ours." There are a
hundred examples: "You're not right because you're not like
us." The more I've traveled around the world and looked at
climates, the more I've come to believe that we do have a very
special place. We have a climate that's warm enough to ripen
the grapes but cool at nights for flavor and color
development; we have a long growing season, so we don't have
the problems with frost that they experience in Washington
State, for example, where last year they lost a significant
portion of their crop, or in Europe, which last year lost a
significant portion of their crop. We don't have rain as
frequently during the summer, so we don't have to apply the
level of chemicals- -fungicides- -to protect the grapes. We
don't have that rain pressure for mold development as
frequently as other countries. We don't have hail; you know,
we never think about hail. Argentina and Burgundy lose
significant amounts of crop from time to time to hail.
So from a strictly agricultural point of view, to have a
crop and not lose it to some nasty weather event every year,
to have the kind of weather that really enhances quality, this
is one of the best places in the world to grow wines. I think
we've tended to accept other people's criticism without
standing back and saying, "Hey, wait a minute." Ultimately,
the wines tell the tale. In our climate that is "too warm,"
where we "irrigated when we shouldn't," et cetera, we've been
able to produce wines that, tasted blind, are as good or
better than most any around the world.
Hicke: That is the final test.
85
Long: That is, in fact, the final test. [laughter]
Hicke: Are there some other things that we haven't covered?
Long: The only other thing we haven't covered is the role of the
winemaker and how that has evolved. Certainly in the
seventies the winemaker was seen and conceived as the person
who had the full grasp of the winemaking process. In the
eighties, the winemaker was the person who had a grasp of the
winemaking process but needed to be out in the vineyard. In
the nineties, the winemaker is the leader of a small group, a
team, that has a full grasp of winemaking and winegrowing.
The level of sophistication that we need to have in our
winegrowing and winemaking to achieve these cutting- edge
wines, to make the greatest wine from each vineyard site,
requires a group of people who have a common goal and
understanding of the wine and the vines. In that group is
someone who is extraordinarily knowledgeable about
viticulture, extraordinarily able to manage the vineyards,
extraordinarily knowledgeable about the winemaking process ,
the cellar work, the quality control, and the wine
composition. If you take that group of people, and they share
a common goal , then you have much more power to achieve this
goal than you would in just one person.
What I'm saying is that the degree of sophistication and
understanding to grow and make a number of wines at a very
high quality level is such that it's often beyond the scope of
one person to do .
85a.
S I M I
S^^v ^
750ml.
ALEXANDER VALLEY
1988
ALC. 13.3%
BY VOL.
S I M I
MENDOCINO COUNTY 29, „
S O N O M A COUNT Y 58%
NAPA COUNTY 13%
750ml.
1990
ALC 134%
BY VOL
86
VI PROFESSIONAL AND COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES
Hicke: I have a few questions left. I'd like to hear a little about
your professional and community activities. You've told me a
few things. For instance, you received the Masi International
Award for 1991.
Long: Masi is an Italian winery that has selected, every other year,
someone from around the world who--
ff
Long: --has made significant contributions in the wine industry. I
was honored to receive that award in 1991. In 1989 I received
what is called the WAFI award [Wine and Food Achievement
Award] . The northern California chapter of the American
Institute of Wine and Food (AIWF) conceived a program to
recognize and honor people who contributed in the area of wine
and food. Some of the people, for example, have developed new
sausages or new cheeses . Every year they have one award for a
winemaker, and I received their first winemaker award.
Hicke: These are for your work in the industry? Can you tell me what
they recognized you for specifically?
Long: When they gave the award, they didn't say, "This is for this
particular activity." It was for the duration of my career:
"You have created leadership in winemaking and viticulture
which has resulted in outstanding wines, and we're honoring
you for that achievement."
Hicke: I wanted to ask you about Women for Wine Sense, too, and women
in the wine industry. What are the important things to
document about that? I think you were a founding member.
87
Long: I've been on the board of directors of Women for Wine Sense.
The organization was founded by Michaela Rodeno of St. Supery
and Julie Williams of Frog's Leap. I've been peripherally
active in that group. I've written a group of what we call
beliefs and concerns that communicate how we feel about wine
being incorporated into our lives as women. I led a group of
women to put that together so that when we speak publicly, we
have a consistent way to communicate how we feel about issues.
I have spoken on behalf of the group in several venues, but
the concept and leadership of that group is credited to those
two women. And there has been a large number of women very
active and invested in that organization.
The idea of the organization came from the fact that
wine in the public media was receiving such consistent
criticism that you began to feel guilty if you ever drank any
alcoholic beverages. But we see wine, first, as the result of
artistic, creative efforts --an aesthetic experience for people
who consume it, something to really enhance life, something
that has great historical and religious traditions, and
something that has a healthy role in life. Its health impact
is well documented by scientific studies; wine consumption
scientifically is a positive health factor for men and a
neutral health factor for women. It will enhance a man's
longevity if it is consumed in moderation.
None of that sense- -the feeling of quality, of history,
of its healthy role, of the addition to life's quality- -was
being effectively communicated. Often women were taking the
brunt of being "problems" because they were consuming wine
during pregnancy and so on. The group was formed to take a
more positive personal view of wine and its place in our
society.
Hicke: It sounds like it has less to do with women than it has to do
with some of the other aspects of the industry. In other
words, you're not focusing on equal opportunity for women.
Long: That's right. That group has nothing to do with that. The
group was formed to some extent out of frustration that the
rest of the industry didn't seem to be able to effectively
speak up positively on behalf of wine. Most of the people in
the group are owners or active in wineries, and they feel very
strongly about wine. They're very proud of what they've done,
and I feel the same way.
88
It's hard for a culture that's never had wine to really
communicate what wine is. It's too easy to see it only as an
alcoholic beverage. It's really difficult to understand how
complex a beverage it is, which is the essence of what we've
been talking about- -its reflection and responsiveness to
environment, the complexities of winemaking well done, the
levels of quality that are possible, the personalities that
can be expressed through wine, the enormous variety that can
be produced around the world, and the cultural history that
it's had.
Hicke : You were founder and president of American Vineyard
Foundation.
Long: The American Vineyard Foundation was formed to help finance
research in enology and viticulture. Like any other business,
we need to constantly reinvest back into the development of
our business- -or , to put it another way, the improved
understanding of growing and making wine. The people who
primarily do that kind of research in California would be the
professors of enology and viticulture at UC Davis and at the
California State University at Fresno. The industry has
always supported them to a greater or lesser extent, and that
foundation was founded to ensure a continuing supply of
research funds and a mechanism to raise, receive, and disburse
those funds .
Hicke: So it's a fundraising organization?
Long: Yes, and it was started at that time because of the need at
that time. Then a marketing order was passed in the state of
California that provided the research funds. As that
marketing order ceased, the American Vineyard Foundation again
came to the forefront to receive and disburse research funds.
Hicke: You were president of Napa Valley Wine Technical Group in '76.
Long: Both Napa and Sonoma counties have technical associations that
meet once a month and generally have a speaker talk about a
technical subject and also provide a social forum for the
members. I was a member of that group starting in the early
seventies and subsequently became president. When I first
came to Simi I was a member of the Steering Committee for the
Sonoma County Wine Technical Group.
89
Hicke: You were on the board of the American Society for Enology and
Viticulture.
Long: Right. It was the American Society for Enology and
Viticulture that originally saw a need to form the American
Vineyard Foundation. It was as a board member that I took
responsibility to start up the American Vineyard Foundation.
I was also on the Industry Advisory Committee for FPMS
[Foundation Plant Material Service] , which is the foundation
nursery for the American wine industry. As a board, we had a
number of major projects. One was assuring that the vine
material that was in the older vineyards at Davis was saved.
One was creating a new position in the Department of Enology
and Viticulture for grapevine development. Another, which the
committee is still working on, is to develop a more effective
system to import and evaluate grapevine material from around
the world and then get it out to the industry in the forms of
varieties or clones that we can use and experiment with.
Then I was on the National Grape Crop Advisory Council,
which is a Department of Agriculture committee that looks at
the grape crop with a national perspective, to see what needs
to be done to protect and develop that crop.
Hicke: And you were on the School of Agriculture Policy Advisory
Committee at Davis.
Long: That was a brief stint for the more general agricultural
issues. Now I'm on the Industry Advisory Council for the
Department of Enology and Viticulture, which focuses on the
development of that department and its interaction with the
industry, and it also helps the department with any larger
issues that it may have. It provides advice and direction,
communication and support, and probably at some juncture,
fundraising for a new building.
Hicke: United Winegrowers of Sonoma County?
Long: United Winegrowers would be in shorthand the county political
action committee for the wine and grape industry. Its members
are both grape growers and wineries, and the focus is to
protect agriculture in Sonoma County. I am a director of that
organization.
Hicke: Do you have a representative in Sacramento?
90
Hicke: Do you have a representative in Sacramento?
Long: No. Our focus has been primarily within Sonoma County. We
have a part-time executive director who has worked for the
House Committee of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. and was
raised in an agricultural community. He has both a good
agriculture and political background. More than anything, he
has developed and maintained good relationships between our
wine grape community and the county. If the county is
thinking about doing something that might impact our
community, they will seek us out for guidance and input.
We've been an effective organization, and we have good working
relationships with our county officials. The county has real
concerns about protecting agriculture, so it's very positive.
Hicke: I think you've talked about the strengths and the challenges
that we are facing today. What about taxes and the anti-
alcohol movement?
Long: I think the challenges for California are to continue in the
direction that we have set. We've taken a leadership position
in terms of wine around the world, and our challenge is to
maintain that in a world where there is communication and
competition. I think we can do that; there's no question in
my mind. In the short term, in the first half of the
nineties, we have challenges that are economic, primarily as a
result of the recession. I think certainly health and alcohol
concerns are there in the background, and they have impacted
people's drinking habits to some extent. Some of those
concerns are appropriate in our society, such as the concerns
of drunk driving. General health concerns are appropriate,
but a real, honest view of health would incorporate moderate
wine consumption. I think maybe the biggest problem is that
alcohol has been painted as completely negative, which of
course it's not, any more than any food substance is neither
wholly positive nor negative.
I feel that those issues will resolve themselves, that a
balanced picture will be communicated and is beginning to be
seen. I don't think the picture has been balanced in the last
five years; it's mostly been anti-alcohol, and that's not a
balanced picture. But a recent 60 Minutes TV program
discussed "the French paradox"- -that French people have a
high -fat diet, drink wine, and have a very low incidence of
cardiovascular disease. French doctors feel the linkage
between wine consumption and low cardiovascular disease is an
important causal relationship.
91
And there are demographic studies that show a real
linkage between alcoholism and societal restrictiveness
towards alcohol consumption. Demographically , the more
restrictive a society is toward alcohol, the more alcoholism
they have and a higher rate of death from alcohol -related
problems. That kind of information is beginning to come out,
so I'm confident that we will restore our balance of
perspective.
Phylloxera is an economic problem for the industry, and
the state of our financial institutions in the United States
is a problem for the industry, because they're in such a weak
position. The banks are pulling out their financial support
from small businesses, like wineries, and putting it into
government paper and secure investments, and that really
doesn't help our businesses grow and develop. But, again, I
feel confident in time that will change.
I think the big challenges are the next few years, and I
think the biggest challenge, in a sense, is not to be so
distracted by the economic problems that we don't continue our
march in quality wine development, which is what has
established us in a leadership position in the world.
Hicke: This has been a wonderful interview. You are so thoughtful
and reflective about everything that you are doing and that is
going on. It's really a great contribution to the documenting
of wine history. Thank you very much.
Transcriber: Judy Smith
Zelma Long, President, Simi Winery, 1991.
Photograph by David Buchholz
92
TAPE GUIDE -- Zelma Long
Interview 1: September 23, 1991
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93
APPEND I CES--Zelma Long
A. Resume and list of publication 94
B. "History of Simi Winery," 1984 99
94
Appendix A
ZELHA R. LONG
President/Chief Executive Officer
simi Winery
16275 Healdsburg Avenue/ P. O. Box 698
Healdsburg, California 95448
707/433-6981
Educational Background;
1988 Stanford Executive Program, Graduate School of Business
Stanford University, Stanford, California
1982-1983 Part-time graduate student at Golden Gate University, San
Francisco, California, working toward an M.B.A. degree
1968-1970 Graduate program in Enology and Viticulture at the University
of California, Davis
1965 Graduated from Oregon State University with a Bachelor of
Science Degree, majoring in science and minor ing in nutrition
Employment Background;
1990-Present President and Chief Executive Officer, Simi Winery
1989 President, Simi Winery
1979-1988 Senior Vice President/Winemaker, Member Board of Directors,
Simi Winery
1970-1979 Chief Enologist, Robert Mondavi Winery, Napa Valley,
California
1967-1968 Professional dietitian and teaching dietitian, Highland
Alameda Hospital, Oakland, California
1965 Dietetic Internship, University of California Medical Center,
San Francisco, California
Business and Professional Affiliations;
1977-Present Co-owner and co-winemaker of Long Vineyards, Napa Valley,
California
1981-Present Member, North Coast Viticultural Research Group
1989-Present Member, Department of Viticulture and Enology Industry
Advisory Committee, University of California, Davis
1990-Present Member, Womens1 Forum, Bay Area, California
1990-Present Director, Women for Wine Sense
95
ZELMA R. LONG
Page 2
1990-Present Director, United Winegrowers, Sonoma County
1991
Member - Board of Trustees,
Foundation, U.C. Davis
California Agricultural
1987
1987
1987
1985
1983-
1982-
1981-
•1989
•1989
•1989
-1990
1984
1983
1982
Member, School of Agriculture Policy Advisory Committee,
University of California, Davis
Member, Foundation Plant Material Science Industry Advisory
Committee, University of California, Davis
Member, Vitis Cocp Advisory Committee, Advisory Group to the
National Plant Germplasm System U.S.D.A.
Member, California Regional Water Quality Control Board, North
Coast Region
Board Member, American Vineyard Foundation
Director, American Society of Enology and Viticulture
Founder and President of the American Vineyard Foundation
Past Director, Sonoma County Wine Technical Group
Past President, Napa Valley Wine Technical Group
Past Member, Technical Advisory Committee, California Winegrowers
Publications;
Co-authored and presented a paper at the 1986 Sixth Australian Wine
Industry Technical Conference, "Juice Oxidation in California
Chardonnay," Z. Long, B. Lindblom
Authored and presented a paper at the 1986 Sixth Australian Wine
Industry Technical Conference, "Manipulation of Grape Flavor in the
Vineyard, California North Coast Region," Z. Long
Co-authored an article for Wines and Vines. November 1986:
Oxidation Experiments at Simi Winery," Z. Long, B. Lindblom
"Juic«
Authored two chapters on "The Science of Growing Grapes," anc
"Enological and Technical Development," University of California^
Sotheby Book of California Wine. 1984
~' ' '
Authored an article for Practical Winery. July/August, 1984:
"Monitoring Sugar per Berry"
96
ZELMA R. LONG
Page 3
Authored and presented a paper for the Bulletin of the Society of
Medical Friends of Wine, February, 1983, Vol. 25, "The New Geography of
Wine"
Co-authored and presented a paper at the 1981 American Society for
Enology and Viticulture Convention, "A Study of Compositional
Differences in Cabernet Sauvignon as a Function of Press Types and
Cycles," Z. Long, B. Lindblom, R. Boulton
Authored a chapter entitled, "White Table Wine Production in
California's North Coast Region," Wine Production Technology In The
United States, by Maynard A. Amerine, American Chemical Society, 1981
Authored a chapter entitled, "Chardonnay, " Vintners Club; Fourteen
Years of Wine Tastings. 1973-1987. edited by Mary-Ellen McNeil-Draper,
Vintners ' Press
Authored and presented a paper: "Future of Controlled Appellations: Are
They in the Interest of the Consumer?", Masters of Wine Symposium,
Cambridge, England, July 1990
Lectures/Panel Discussions;
Lecture, "Botrytis in Northern California Coastal Vineyards," Focus on
Chardonnay Symposium, Burgundy, France, July 1990
Lecture, "Chardonnay: Two Perspectives from the Opposite Sides of the
Pacific," Tokyo, Japan, June 1990
Lecture, "Use of Barrels in Winemaking," Cape Estate Winegrowers,
Capetown, South Africa, January 1990
Panel member, discussion on "Malolactic Fermentation," Cool Climate
Symposium for Viticulture and Enology, Auckland, New Zealand,
January 1988
Panel member, discussion on "Relative Merits of Wine Production in
Traditional Areas like Europe compared to 'New World' Countries, such as
Australia, America, New Zealand...," Cool Climate Symposium for
Viticulture and Enology, Auckland, New Zealand, January 1988
"Quality Control: Why It Is Important and How To Set Standards,"
University of California Extension, Davis, April 1987
"Use of Sulfur Dioxide," Focus on Chardonnay Symposium, Sonoma-Cutrer
Vineyards, July 1986
"Oxidative Handling of White Must and Other Current SO2 Practices,"
University of California, Davis, April 1986
97
ZELMA R. LONG
Page 4
"Vineyard Assessment," University of California Extension, Davis,
April 1986
Co-lecturer, Chardonnay Style Seminar, "Grape Maturity," "Vineyard
Selection," "Phenolics Control," New York, November 1985
Maintaining Creativity in Winemaking, " Napa School of Cellaring,
July 1985
"Use of Aroma Assessment and Berry Sugar to Test Harvest Parameters at
Simi Winery," Eastern Grape Growers Conference, Rochester, New York, ;
November 1984
"Testing Benevolent Vineyard Stress and Other Practices to Improve Wine
Quality in North Coast Vineyards," Eastern Grape Growers Conference,
Rochester, New York, November 1984
j
"Production Planning for the Crush," University of California, Davis,!
November 1984
"What is Ph? and How to Teach It," Society of Wine Educators Conference,
San Luis Obispo, August 1984
Moderator for Sonoma County Wine Showcase, August 1984
"Phenolics," Napa Valley School of Cellaring, July 1984
"North Coast California," The International Symposium on Cool Climate
Viticultural and Enology, Eugene, Oregon, June 1984
"Oxygen in Winemaking - Enemy or Friend?", Simi Winery Seminar,
May 1984
"Grape Maturity," University of California, Davis, April 1984
Panel member, discussion on "California Regions, Climates, and Graj
Varieties," California Wine Experience, San Francisco, October 1983
"Simi Winery's Approach to Assessing Grape Maturity," Napa Valley Wine
Technical Group, June 1983
"Women in Agr iculture/ Winemaking, " Fifth Annual Women in Agricultui
Seminar, University of California, Davis, February 1983
Panel member, discussion on "Fashion and Future of Food," moderated b}
Julia Child, Southern California Culinary Guild, Santa Barbara,
California, January 1983
"Why the American Vineyard Foundation?", California Wine Festiva]
Monterey, December 1982
98
ZELMA R. LONG
Page 5
"Advances in Wine From the Vineyard," Simi Winery Wine Writers Seminar,
August 1982
"Ph and Vineyard Advances," Simi Winery Wine Writers Seminar, August
1981
"Wine Quality Has Three Aspects," Society of Wine Educators Conference,
Santa Rosa Junior College, August 1981
"Red and White Winemaking and Barrel Aging," Simi Winery Seminar,
August 1981
"How I Went About Designing a Fermentation Cellar," California Society
of Professional Engineers, May 1981
"White Table Wine Production in California's North Coast Region, Wine
Industry Technical Seminar, 1981
Panel member, "Women: Involved from Vine to Glass," Sixth Annual Wine
Symposium, Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, April 1981
"Estimating Winery Cooperage Needs," Filtration Conference, Monterey,
February 1980
Lecture, "Oxidative Handling of Chardannay, and Advances in
Viticulture," Adelaide, Australia
Awards :
1991 MASI Award, International Award for Enology, Viticulture and Wine
Marketing, presented by Masi, Verona, Italy
1989 Wine and Food Achievement Award, First Winemaker recipient;
Northern California Chapter, American Society of Wine and Food
Professional Wine Judging;
1991, 1980 North West Enological Society
1989-1990 Oregon State Fair
(updated August 23, 1991)
C: \WP50\PROJ\ZRESUME
99 .
Appendix B / Q g U_
SIMI
SINCE 1876
HISTORY OF SIMI WINERY
On December 6. 1 88 1 . two Italian immigrant brothers. Giuseppe and Pietro Simi. purchased a winery
on Front Street near the train depot in Healdsburg. California, for S2.250 in gold coin and named it "Simi
Winery. Although Pietro had been making wines at their San Francisco produce business since 1876. this
purchase marked the brothers commitment to winemaking as a separate enterprise.
Pietro continued running the San Francisco business whiJe Guiseppe took responsibility for the winery.
Within a year he had increased its capacity to 1 00.000 gallons, making it the third largest of the Healdsburg-
Windsor area s seven wineries.
As the settlement of California increased, the brothers business flourished and they continued to ex
pand. In 188 3 they purchased 126 acres of land north of Healdsburg. A new cellar made of hand-hewn stone
was completed there in 1 890 with a capacity of 200.000 gallons Guiseppe named it "Montepulciano Winery "
in honor of the wine district in Italy where he was bom. This winery is now Simi s aging cellar.
The brothers holdings grew to include the original Simi Winery in south Healdsburg. the Montepul
ciano Winery in north Healdsburg surrounded by 1 26 acres of grapes, a 360 acre tract called "King Ranch
to the north of Montepulciano. and 200 more acres to the south.
Then, in the midst of doubling Montepuloano's capacity to 400.000 gallons both brothers died— Pietro
in |uly and Guiseppe in August 1904. Although it must have been a staggering blow to the families, the
businesses continued. Pietros family assumed control of the San Francisco store and warehouse, and
Guiseppe s teenage daughter Isabelle took charge of the wine and vineyard operations.
Isabelle had been very dose to her father, weighing in grapes and going on business trips with him
from the age of 1 2. Although she had the support of her older half-brother Louis and experienced employees
it was nevertheless an amazing undertaking for someone her age But she met the challenge and managed
the business alone until her marriage to Fred Haigh. a Healdsburg bank teller, in 1908. Over the years he
came to share in the direction of the Simi business and finally resigned from the bank in 1915.
Then came Prohibition. The United States Congress declared it illegal to manufacture wine after May
1. 1919. or to sell or distribute any alcoholic beverages after |une 30. 1919. No one in the thriving wine in
dustry seemed to realize the havoc this amendment would cause. Fred Haigh. like many winery operators,
believed such a law would be short-lived. He refused to sell Simi s half million gallons of wine on hand before
the deadline, keeping the winery full as Prohibition went into effect Simi continued to work the vineyards
and made small amounts of sacramental wines under strict government control, but the financial consequences
of restricted business for the 1 4 years of Prohibition were the eventual loss of most lands and vineyards through
forced sale or foreclosure.
Repeal arrived on December 1933. Much of the first wine produced to satisfy the new demand was
very young and of poor quality— but not at Simi. Because Guiseppes rigid quality standards maintained
by Isabelle. included harvesting grapes at a minimum of 22 ° Brix and aging the red wines at least five to seven
years, and because Fred Haigh had decided not to sell Simi s wine 14 years earlier. Simi had good wines
SIMI WINERY. PO BOX 698 HEALDSBURC CALIFORNIA 95448 • (707) 433-t^KI • TWX SIO 740-4244
100
immediately available. Some were exceptional. Those that had not survived the many years of aging were
sold for brandy-making or vinegar
The original Simi winery in south Healdsburg had ceased production after the 1906 earthquake and
ail wines were made at Montepulciano. During the reorganization following Repeal. Isabelle decided to label
ail wines with "Simi" rather than the difficult to pronounce "Montepulciano."
In 1936 she had one of the winery's enormous redwood champagne tanks rolled outside along the
road and created a retail tasting room which can still be seen today.
By 1938 Parrot & Company had been named the exclusive distributor of Simi Wines. When the Hotel
Del Monte, a famous old Monterey resort, began to experience difficulty getting fine wines from Europe during
World War II. they enlisted |ohn Parrot s help in locating a high quality California wine. Their red wines soon
carried the Simi name
While it had never been the family's practice to seek publicity or promote their wines. Parrot manag
ed to convince Isabelle to enter the 1 93 5 wines in the 1 94 1 California State Fair. Simi took Gold Medals, the
top award, for its 'California Cabernet." "California Zinfandel. and "California Burgundy." and a Silver Medal
(2nd placet for its 'Pink Champagne." The winery s reputation for quality was established overnight and its
wines rapidly appeared on the menus of San Franciscos most fashionable restaurants
Publicity began to fade when Simi's relationship with Parrot ended in 1 948. Fred Haigh became seriously
ill. An only child. Vivien, had joined the family business following Prohibition under parental pressure. Now
more responsibility fell on her shoulders Upon Fred s death in 1 954. mother and daughter carried on: when
Vivien died in 1968. Isabelle. still tenacious in spirit although around 80 years old. continued alone. Finally.
in 1970 Russell Green, a former President of Signal Oil Company who had moved to the Alexander Vfelley
and planted vineyards, took note of the winery s neglected and disorganized condition and convinced Isabelle
to sell Simi to him.
Isabelle still did not abandon what had been so much a part of her life. Through three subsequent
ownership changes she could be found seated on her stool in the tasting room recounting Simi s history to
visitors. She died at her home in Healdsburg October 16. 1981.
Russell Green brought Simi into the modern winemaking world. He added the first stainless steel tanks
and built a new. larger tasting room and office building. During the reorganization, he discovered old wines.
including cases of the famous 1935 Cabernet Sauvignon. forgotten in dark comers of the vast stone winery.
He hired consulting enologistAndre'Tchelistcheff and in 1972 they took the forward-looking step of appoint
ing Mary Ann Graf as Winemaker. Acknowledged as America s first woman college-trained winemaker. her
appointment was a milestone for women in a then male-dominated industry.
Eventually Russell Green grew tired of the heavy demands the winery placed upon him. In August of
1974 he sold Simi to Scottish & Newcastle Vintners, a California-based subsidiary of a Scottish brewing com
pany. Its Chairman. Michael Dixon. had spent two years looking for the right California winery to buy. He
had become so involved with Simi that when Scottish & Newcastle decided to divest itself of all foreign in
vestments and sold the winery to Schieffelin & Co.. a New York based wine and spirits importer, in May 1976.
he agreed to remain as President of Simi.
Under Schieffelin s ownership, a 3-year. $5.5 million expansion and renovation was begun. In August
of 1 980 a 1 4 .000 square foot fermentation cellar was completed, increasing Simi s capacity to 1 50.000 cases.
Fifty-six temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks ranging in size from 500 to 1 2 .000 gallons filled the new
cellar. Four custom-designed 4 . 500 gallon stainless steel tanks elevated 20 feet above the floor directly over
a state-of-the-art bladder press allowed the skins of white grapes to remain in contact with the juice to ab
sorb the grape flavors and aromas concentrated in the skins.
The historic stone cellar was renovated. Its three-foot thick stone walls, ideal for maintaining a cool
temperature year-round, were stabilized. Concrete floors and drains were replaced on the lower levels Wooden
floors and support beams were replaced throughout to assure that all four levels within the ancient struc
ture were capable of holding the more than 7.000 60-gallon new French oak barrels purchased over the next
few years. A new slant-beam concrete tile root covered the complex. It was a tremendous effort and no small
expense, an indication of Simi s total dedication to excellence.
On lanuary 6. 1981. Moet-Hennessy. Frances second largest wine and spirits company, purchased
Schieffelin. its U.S. distributor, and thereby acquired Simi. Moet-Hennessy s reputation for high-quality lux
ury products with strong traditions of fine workmanship, enhanced Simi s stature and made its future even
more promising.
101
INDEX- -Zelma R. Long
A x R rootstock, 78-80
Alary, Larry, 39
American Society for Enology and
Viticulture, 56
American Vineyard Foundation, 88
Amerine, Maynard, 3
appellation, American system of,
73-75
Beringer winery, 54, 83
Biever, Margrit, 20
Biggers, , 36, 44
Black, Michael, 57-60
Bureau of Alcohol , Tobacco , and
Firearms, 73
centrifuging, 19-20
Christman, Monika, 60-61
Cooke , George M. , 4
cooperage, 9, 11-13, 18, 20-23,
25, 32, 33, 36, 43-46, 49, 51,
82
Croser, Brian, 63
Dixon, Michael, 30, 37, 53, 63-65
Domaine Chandon winery, 54, 83
Dow, Glen and Mary Beth, 45
Elliott-Fisk, Deborah, 55, 57, 74
equipment, 8, 10, 11, 19, 25, 26,
28, 30, 32, 35. 36, 38-45, 50,
58, 62, 79
must chiller, 38-41
flavor, 5, 15, 22, 41, 45, 46,
48, 51, 56, 57, 67-69, 84
fermentation, 38-42, 44-45, 50-51
Foundation Plant Material Service,
89
"French paradox," 90
Goldschmidt, Nick, 60, 82-83
Graf, Mary Ann, 29
Grahm, Randall, 77
Grgich, Miljenko (Mike), 6-9,
16-18, 20, 59
Hobbs, Paul, 51, 52, 57
Horn, Keith, 60
Industry Advisory Council for the
Department of Enology and
Viticulture, UC Davis, 89
Kenworthy, Diane, 37, 47, 48, 53,
57, 59, 60
Kliewer, Mark, 54
Lider, Lloyd, 3, 4
Lider, Jim, 4
Lindblom, Barbara, 34, 44
Long, Zelma R.
as Mondavi head enologist, 16-28
family and childhood, 1
education, 2, 3
joins Simi, 29
professional activities and
awards, 86-91
Markel, Chris, 36
Masi International Award, 86
McCorkle, Tasha, 52
Moet-Hennessy, 63, 64
Mondavi, Michael, 8
Mondavi, Robert, 6, 8-10, 15-17,
23, 27, 83
Mondavi, Robert, Winery, 6-28,
29, 32, 34, 46, 54, 56, 59, 76
change and innovation, 8
vineyards and grapes, 23
Napa Valley Wine Technical Group,
88
National Grape Crop Advisory
Council, 89
Navarro River Vineyards, 77
Noble, Ann, 55, 67, 68
North Coast Viticultural Research
Group, 54, 67, 83
Olmo, Harold Paul, 5
102
Phelps (Joseph) Vineyards, 54, 83
phylloxera, 78-81, 91
Policy Advisory Committee,
School of Agriculture, UC Davis,
89
Preston, Lou, 76
Ramey, Dave, 39, 44, 51
research, 10, 11, 25, 40, 54-56,
59, 60, 66-68, 81, 83, 88
Holland, Michel, 60-61
Scottish & Newcastle Vintners, 65
Schieffelin & Co. , 64, 65
Simi Winery, 31-65
growth of, 32-36
image of, 63
in 1979, 31
international business
development, 64
Smart, Richard, 56, 67
Sonoma County Wine Technical
Group, 88
Stanford Executive Program, 64
Stewart, Leland, 4, 7
Stony Hill winery, 4
Tchelistcheff, Andre,, 7, 27, 29,
31
terroir, 70-75
United Winegrowers of Sonoma
County, 89
University of California at Davis,
2-6, 29, 39, 51, 54, 55, 57, 60,
66, 67, 72, 74, 88, 89
vineyards ,
close-spaced, 55
importance of in winemaking,
68, passim.
Vintners Club: Fourteen Years of
Wine Tastings, 46
viticulture, 2, 3, 9, 12, 23-24,
37-39, 45, 47, 52-57, 59-61, 72,
80, 82, 85, 86, 88, 89
integration with winemaking, 66-
70
Werner, Karl, 16, 17, 27
winemaker, changes in role, 85
winemaking, 3, 6-13, 15-18, 20,
22, 25, 26, 28-31, 33-36, 38, 39,
41-46, 49, 51, 52, 55, 58, 60-63,
66-69, 81, 82, 85, 86, 88
temperature in, 39-42
evolution of, 11-13
site specific, 12
Women for Wine Sense , 86
Grapes Mentioned in Interview:
Cabernet Franc, 50, 77, 84
Cabernet Sauvignon, 49-50, 52,
53, 55-57, 61, 75-77
Carignane, 25
Chardonnay, 4, 5, 40, 45, 46, 52,
53, 75-77, 81
French Colombard, 25
Malbec, 77
Mataro, 76, 77
Merlot, 50, 77
Mondeuse , 26,76
Mourvedre , 76
Nebbiolo, 77
Petit Verdot, 50, 77
Pinot noir, 35, 75-77, 83
Refosco, 77
Riesling, 4, 5, 15, 25, 26, 76
Sangiovese, 77
Sauvignon blanc , 35, 51, 76, 77,
83
Semillon, 84
Sylvaner, 76
Wines Mentioned in Interview:
Cabernet Franc, 50, 69, 77, 83
Cabernet Sauvignon, 11, 14, 15,
23-26, 29, 35, 44, 60, 61, 67,
69, 75-77, 83-84
Chardonnay, 4, 5, 11-15, 20, 21,
23, 25, 26, 28, 35, 40, 44-46,
48, 49, 51, 52, 63, 70, 75-77,
81-83
103
Chenin Blanc, 35
Camay Beaujolais, 35
Gewurztraminer, 35, 76, 77
Malbec, 77
Mataro, 77
Heritage, 77
Merlot, 50, 77, 83, 84
Pinot Noir, 35, 77, 83
Petit Verdot, 50, 77, 83
Petite Sirah, 76
Riesling, 4, 5, 15, 25, 26, 76
Rose of Cabernet, 35
Sauvignon Blanc, 14, 51, 76, 77
Sylvaner, 25, 76
Zinfandel, 14, 18, 25, 35, 76, 77
Carole E. Hicke
B.A. , University of Iowa; economics
M.A. , San Francisco State University; U.S. history with emphasis on the
American West; thesis: "James Rolph, Mayor of San Francisco."
Interviewer/editor/writer, 1978 -present, for business and law firm
histories, specializing in oral history techniques. Independently
employed.
Interviewer-editor, Regional Oral History Office, University of California,
Berkeley, 1985 to present, specializing in California legal, political, and
business histories.
Author: Heller. Ehrman. White & McAuliffe: A Century of Service to Clients
and Community. 1991.
Editor (1980-1985) newsletters of two professional historical associations:
Western Association of Women Historians and Coordinating Committee for
Women in the Historical Profession.
Visiting lecturer, San Francisco State University in U.S. history, history
of California, history of Hawaii, legal oral history.
77105
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