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FINE WINE

Napa and the sense of community

Bruce Cakebread

Having meals with owners and representatives of wineries tends to proceed along familiar lines. Bottles of wine are opened with every course and you are walked through the repast with tasting notes, viticultural practices, wine-making techniques and a potted history of the winery.

In this respect, the lunch with Bruce Cakebread, President and COO of Cakebread Cellars, at the upscale Italian restaurant Prego at Taj Coromandel, is refreshingly different. He seems less keen on showcasing his wines than talking about the region in which they originate, the Napa Valley in California, which has emerged as one of the finest wine-producing regions in the world.

All right, so Bruce is a member of the board of directors of the Napa Valley Vinters, a trade organisation with a membership of some 325 wineries that promotes the region. But I suspect that such altruism also stems from the history and culture of the Napa Valley viticultural area.

The first commercial winery was established as far back as 1861, but it was only in the middle of the next century that Napa — thanks partly to the introduction of new wine-making techniques — began to develop the reputation it deserves. Today, it attracts some 4.7 million visitors a year and has emerged as the second-most popular tourist spot in the U.S. after Disneyland.

The collective effort to promote the region is a result of many things. First of all, geography. Bounded by mountains, the valley is a small and narrow stretch some 30 miles long. “If I go and see a film in Napa, the chances are that I will know almost everyone there,” says Bruce, with a possible touch of exaggeration to emphasise the sense of community.

Second, there was the challenge of trying to get the world’s notice. It was Napa that convinced the world that top-quality wines could be produced outside France. Other new-world countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and Chile have had an easier path to acceptance. The list of vinters who spent a lifetime promoting Napa is a very long one. It includes Bruce’s father Jack and, of course, the legendary Robert Mondavi, who — with a mixture of innovation, great products and a flair for publicity — convinced the world that Napa could compete with the best in the world.

Failures played their role in cementing the idea that Napa has a common future.

The Valley had to cope with phylloxera, the infamous root louse that blighted vineyards. In the 1920s, Prohibition forced the closure of many wineries, and a decade later, the Great Depression brought the wine business to almost a grinding halt.

What about successes? Were they shared too? There is a wonderful moment in “Bottle Shock”, the feature film on the Judgment of Paris of 1976, the blind wine tasting that sent shockwaves through the world when nine French experts declared that Napa Valley wines were just as good, in fact sometimes even better, than the best the French had to offer.

A group of Napa vinters gathers in a barn to sponsor the trip of Bo Barrett — whose Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena ends up besting the best from Burgundy — to France for the event. “I will not go for myself but to represent Napa,” he is shown as saying, or words to this effect.

Bruce Cakebread says that sense of community is still present in Napa — something that sets it apart and something that needs to be preserved. He thinks it survives despite the number of wineries and that they are of such varying size (Mondavi has been bought over by a multi-national).

And Cakebread Cellar’s wines? Well, we have a Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay that reflect the Californian style — lean, dry and flinty — and made in a manner that keeps acid levels high and sugar levels either low or non-existent.

And, we finish with a hearty Cabernet Sauvignon that is deep and expressive.

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