Olympic athletes aren’t the only ones vying for gold in China this summer: A team of Napa Valley winemaking families is in the process of setting up a Chinese distribution network. Dan and Marguerite Capp of Twin Creeks Vineyard/Lakeside Wine Company in Wooden Valley have already traveled to Beijing to open an office for their new company, California-Asia Wine Exchange.
Chinese wine drinkers recognize the Napa name, Capp says, but adds, “frankly, it’s being misused over there.” He cites the 30-page wine list he saw at one of Shanghai’s top restaurants, which extolled the virtues of the Napa Valley without including a single wine from Napa or Sonoma counties. “That’s a representation of what we have over there right now,” Capp says. “And that’s disgusting.”
The Chinese venture began with a chance encounter in Italy between an attorney friend of the Capps and a coach for the Chinese Olympic boxing team, who’d found little good wine to drink in the world’s most populous country. Encouraged by their friend, the Capps made contact with the coach and his wife, and in March of this year, the Napa couple made their first trip to China. During their visit, the Capps met coaches and athletes from China’s Olympic team, some of whom agreed to endorse the couple’s wines. The Napans also met with top officials for transportation, tourism and trade, who control many restaurants in China—and 25,000 government-owned hotels, Capp says. “We had no idea that this was going happen to us, but it did.”
Independent distribution in the emerging Chinese market is an appealing prospect for small producers like the Capps, who’ve been battered by an increasingly consolidated industry. After starting out primarily as Merlot growers, selling to vintners like Mondavi, Beaulieu, Sterling and Beringer, “we kind of got forced into the wine business,” says Capp. The Capps’ grapes wound up in award-winning wines, but their business was faltering: “One by one, these wineries changed hands and consolidated, and we started losing contracts. The coup de grace was when the movie ‘Sideways’ came out.” The film that gave Pinot Noir its close-up also laid a dead hand on sales of Merlot, which made up 60 percent of the Capps’ production. More wineries canceled their contracts, and the Capps decided to crush their own grapes, bottling Merlot, Barbera and Cabernet Sauvignon under the label name Interlude.
When it came to distributing their wines, though, the Capps discovered the “big guys” still get the lion’s share of the attention, while small producers wind up at the bottom of the list—if they make it at all. California-Asia Wine Exchange will be different, Capp says. “We aren’t going to deal with international corporations. We’re going to be independent. That’s the whole crux of what I’m trying to do.”
The Capps have their sights—and their hopes—set high. But they believe in their products: “Everything that’s associated with our label was a big hit in China,” Capp says.
“From the preliminary research we’ve done, everybody loves our label over there, and everybody loves our wine.”
The Mondavi Legacy
That’s the kind of confidence once embodied by Robert Mondavi, who helped show the Western world that wines from California could equal any produced in the finest European chateaux. On the morning of May 16, at age 93, Mondavi slipped into eternity at his Yountville home. His death left many reflecting on a legacy that includes not only the thriving Napa wine industry he championed, but a family tradition of large-scale philanthropy.
Mondavi thought big, endowing a concert hall at U.C. Davis and engendering COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts in Napa. With his support, the Oxbow School was founded to offer intensive studio-arts training to talented teenagers from all backgrounds, while the Napa Valley Opera House was revived from a derelict hulk to one of the region’s most acoustically perfect small theaters. Mondavi’s generosity has helped to transform Napa County; it’s safe to say that the new Oxbow Public Market, which is quickly becoming a magnet for tourists as well as a hang-out for locals, would never have been built if Mondavi hadn’t taken chance after chance with COPIA, the Opera House and the Oxbow School.
Mondavi also co-founded both the Napa Valley Vintners (NVV) association, in 1944, and the group’s annual auction, beginning in 1981. This year’s Auction Napa Valley took place June 8, raising $10.35 million for local charities. After a slow start that had emcee Jay Leno and auctioneer Fritz Hatton earning every cent of their fees, bidders ginned up an impressive 5 percent increase over last year’s haul. The money will go to Napa County nonprofits that provide health care, affordable housing and other human services to some of the community’s neediest, including children and seniors, throughout the valleys. NVV spokesman Terry Hall says the winemakers’ group has donated nearly $78 million since the auction began.
Will next year’s auction bring another increase? Or was it Robert Mondavi’s ebullient spirit, lingering to make sure all was well, that spurred bidders on under cloudy economic skies? We’ll know the first answer next June; the second is for the ages.
