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Maya Dalla Valle landed a coveted gig in January: head winemaker at one in all Napa Valley’s most extremely regarded wineries. Granted, it’s her household’s vineyard, Dalla Valle Vineyards, and her first identify is emblazoned on the flagship cuvee. The job, presumably, was hers for the taking — although her mom, as if to keep away from any look of nepotism, is fast to notice her daughter’s objectively spectacular {qualifications}, together with two grasp’s levels and stints at well-known European wineries like Ornellaia, Petrus and Latour. Nonetheless, the 33-year-old’s appointment marks a big new period for Dalla Valle, and possibly additionally for a bigger section of luxurious Napa Valley wine.
Dalla Valle is extensively thought of one in all Napa’s so-called “cult” Cabernet producers, a label utilized to an unique set of wineries which are as well-known for his or her highly effective reds as for his or her prodigious costs. Together with estates like Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Colgin and Bryant, Dalla Valle got here to prominence within the early Nineteen Nineties, thanks largely to a then-rare 100-point rating from the wine critic Robert Parker, and helped outline a complete period of luxurious wine. With their limited-production bottlings, auras of exclusivity and wealthy, ripe Cabernets, the cult wineries elevated Napa Valley’s standing: All of the sudden, Bordeaux wasn’t the one wine value accumulating.
However occasions are altering. It’s not a given {that a} vineyard like Dalla Valle, whose wines promote for between $100 and $425 per bottle, may have a captive viewers without end. Millennials are not drinking wine on the similar charges that their mother and father did at their age, and people who do might gravitate to natural wine or esoteric grape varieties as a substitute of blue-chip Napa Cab. Right this moment’s wine shopper desires to have the ability to go to the property whose wines they accumulate, however Dalla Valle’s zoning allow prohibits them from internet hosting guests for tastings.
Latest developments replicate the truth that the cult wineries are in a state of flux. A number of of them have sold to new owners. One was embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with an ex-employee who alleged the vineyard was in monetary bother. One other has lately been battling with neighbors over a proposal to broaden its tasting-room capability. Dalla Valle has largely stayed out of the information, which is simply how Maya and her mom, Naoko, would like to maintain it. However the existential query is as pressing for them as any of their friends: how you can convey their well-known identify into a brand new period, evolving sufficient to remain recent however not a lot that they alienate their longtime following.
“We did properly for a very long time being mysterious, however there’s so many different actually good wines on the market now,” says Maya. “Now, for those who’re mysterious, folks will simply neglect about you. Now we have to constantly be considering — how will we keep related?”
In the meantime, the posh Napa wine market has turn into far more aggressive. If Dalla Valle was as soon as a part of a small group of wineries working in a sure value tier, it’s now in a a lot bigger group; Dozens of Napa producers promote wines for $200 or extra. Can the market maintain all of them? Possibly not without end. Maya acknowledges that “there’s going to be a self-correcting interval.” It’s now her job to make sure that Dalla Valle Vineyards survives it.
Till Maya joined the household enterprise, Naoko had been operating Dalla Valle largely by herself for 25 years.
A local of Kobe, Japan, Naoko was residing in Tokyo within the late ’70s and early ’80s when she met Gustav Dalla Valle, an imposing, boisterous Italian who had based the diving-equipment empire Scubapro. He and Naoko married in 1981, shortly after he’d bought Scubapro, and the 2 moved tothe Caribbean island of Mustique, the place a newly retired Gustav might go diving day-after-day.
Life in Mustique was luxurious — that they had a butler, a prepare dinner, a maid, a gardener — however quickly they began splitting their time with Napa Valley. Some buddies wished to open a resort and spa in California, and Gustav and Naoko had been alleged to scout attainable places.
That they might begin a vineyard in Napa was not instantly apparent. Gustav, in accordance with Naoko, thrust himself into this new wine-centric neighborhood with attribute zeal anyway. They purchased a home within the jap hillsides above Oakville that had a small Zinfandel winery. Gustav was thrilled. “He was like a little bit child,” Naoko says. “He wished to present the fruit away.” The resort venture by no means materialized.
Doug Shafer, whose Shafer Vineyards is about 4 miles south of the Dalla Valle property, remembers when he started seeing this tall Italian newcomer round city within the mid-’80s. “This man was a presence,“ Shafer says. “Visually, he was simply dashing, with this lengthy, silver hair swept again. His eyes had been simply dancing, glowing, inquisitive.”
Inside a number of years, the phrase was out about this dashing Italian man’s winery. In 1986, Gustav and Naoko completed building on a vineyard subsequent to their house. They grafted Cabernet Sauvignon onto the Zinfandel vines. They planted a brand new parcel with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc grapes, naming it after their daughter — Maya’s Winery. They charged what appeared like astronomical costs for the time: $25 for the Dalla Valle Cabernet, and $45 for the Maya’s Winery Cabernet.
For an unproven vineyard, that pricing scheme was dangerous. Gustav, although, had a go-big-or-go-home mentality, Naoko says. “Scubapro was just like the Rolls-Royce of scuba tools,” she says. “We had this concept — if we had been going to make wine, it was going to be the identical.”
The positioning, with its bright-red, basalt-rich, volcanic soils, was sure to provide distinctive wines. However the wines had been equally formed by the alternatives that the Dalla Valles and their employees, particularly the winemaker Heidi Barrett, made in these early years.
Though Napa Valley’s future was already tied to the Cabernet Sauvignon grape, by the late Nineteen Eighties many winemakers had been realizing that it wanted a mixing companion if the valley’s wines had been to compete with the multi-grape blends widespread in Bordeaux. Most individuals’s guess was on Merlot. The Dalla Valles as a substitute guess on the delicate, delicate, floral Cabernet Franc.
“Cab Franc ended up being a profitable hand, whereas Merlot didn’t as a lot,” Jim Laube, the longtime Wine Spectator critic, says. “It added a unique sort of fragrant profile. If Cab Sauv is the bass participant, Franc could be the string.”
The vineyard was on the ascent, and in late 1995, Parker awarded an ideal 100 factors to the 1992 Maya — a star-making flip in these days. It was bittersweet: Gustav had battled most cancers for eight years, and his well being was in decline. Conscious of his sickness, Parker faxed over his evaluate of the wine earlier than it was printed in order that Gustav might see it. He died a month later.
At this level, with Gustav gone and an 8-year-old to lift, it might need regarded to an outsider like Naoko was sure to promote the property. She insists that she by no means wished to. “I’d come to like this winemaking life,” she says. And she or he’d come to really feel that sustaining the vineyard was one of the best ways of honoring her husband’s reminiscence.
Apart from, enterprise was trying up. After the 100-point rating, the wines grew to become an in a single day sensation. The telephones and faxes buzzed with orders; Naoko rapidly ran out of stock. “Folks had been providing to commerce us vehicles,” Naoko says, in change for her wine.
In the meantime, Naoko had a significant drawback on her arms: The winery was dying. Because of some unhealthy recommendation from a winery advisor, some vines had been improperly grafted, leading to a phenomenon often called scion rooting during which the highest a part of the vine takes root within the soil, rendering the rootstock ineffective. The deadly grape louse phylloxera was slowly overtaking the crops.
In these early months following Gustav’s dying, Naoko made some daring govt selections. She fired Barrett, who was extensively thought of answerable for elevating Dalla Valle to its sterling popularity. Barrett had taken on a big roster of different vineyard shoppers; Naoko told Wine Spectator that Barrett “is an excellent winemaker … however she is busy.” Barrett described it as “a shock.” In Barrett’s place, she employed Mia Klein and Tony Soter, two winemakers who had been already domestically well-known.
By 1997, Naoko started planning a expensive replanting of the complete winery, a choice that meant monetary sacrifice however would in the end be essential to the enterprise’ long-term success. It could take a decade earlier than the positioning was fully replanted and bearing sufficient fruit to make constant volumes of wine. There have been years in there the place they had been in a position to make just a few hundred instances (in comparison with their typical output of three,000); in 2004, Maya’s Winery yielded nothing.
Naoko stayed the course. “She was a quiet pressure,” says Shafer. “She was robust, saved a gradual hand.” Whereas he was alive, Gustav had been the face of the vineyard — the flashy, gregarious, thunderous character. The calmer, gentler Naoko turned out to be simply as highly effective, possibly much more highly effective, of a guiding pressure for the vineyard. Dalla Valle’s popularity for constantly lovely wines didn’t falter.
Rising up, Maya by no means wished to turn into a winemaker. She felt what many children from small cities really feel: eager to get out. “I wished to do my very own exploring and never spend my total life right here,” she says. She studied worldwide relations in faculty, hoping to work for a nongovernmental group abroad. However as she entered maturity, two issues modified her thoughts. First, she discovered she cherished “science, rising issues and dealing with my arms,” she says, a discovery made whereas working the harvest season at Neyers Vineyards in Napa after she graduated in 2009.
Second, it grew to become clear to her that the trajectory of any family-owned wine property can actually go solely one in all two methods: The children can take over, or the household can promote. And within the years after Maya graduated from faculty, increasingly more had been promoting.
Naoko by no means pressured her to turn into a winemaker, Maya says. “She would have been pleased to proceed operating the vineyards so long as she might after which promote it. However once I considered that, I simply couldn’t come to phrases with the concept of this turning into half of a bigger group of wineries.”
That feeling intensified when Maya labored and attended faculty in Europe, the place many wineries have remained inside a household for tons of of years. She got here to see that form of continuity as “essential by way of sustaining integrity” not only for the person wineries, however for total areas. If all of Napa Valley had been taken over by companies, would its wines lose a few of their status?
Most youngsters who take over their mother and father’ wineries find yourself on the enterprise aspect; it’s much less widespread to see somebody doing the day-to-day cellar work, which could be bodily grueling, involving lengthy days of handbook labor. Naoko nonetheless has a penchant for retaining well-known winemaking consultants on the payroll — Andy Erickson, a former winemaker at Screaming Eagle, and Michel Rolland, who advises greater than 150 wineries world wide. But on any given day, Maya is the one driving the tractor by means of the vines, typically trailed by her two Corgis. Although she’ll need to deal with the enterprise aspect of issues finally, when she takes over from her mom, she’s all the time been primarily drawn to the hands-on aspect.
The brand new Dalla Valle in cost has not been shy about introducing modifications — typically to Naoko’s chagrin. On Maya’s watch, the vineyard has adopted some practices that really feel extra aligned with stylish younger winemakers than with the luxury-wine institution.
Maya now ferments the wines with native yeasts, reasonably than inoculating them with cultured strains, that are seen as extra predictable. She is ageing a few of her wines in clay amphora, which she believes can imbue the wines with “a mineral purity,” she says, reasonably than the normal oak barrels. To her, these are a part of the fixed work of making an attempt to raise the standard of the wines, a endless R&D course of. However, if solely by the way, her modifications might have the added impact of constructing Dalla Valle really feel extra present to a brand new era of wine customers who’re drawn to a way of experimentation.
Most important, Maya has transformed the property to biodynamic farming, a routine that goes a number of steps past natural and is much from normal apply amongst Napa’s elite wineries. It’s a transfer that exhibits her identification with a youthful era of climate- and sustainability-focused vintners. As an alternative of utilizing artificial fungicides to keep at bay fungal points within the vines, a biodynamic philosophy would possibly name for the applying of a tea created from the the horsetail plant, which has been used as a homeopathic treatment for kidney issues since historic occasions. It’s sometimes dearer to farm biodynamically, and to the uninitiated seems to be a little bit dangerous (what if the horsetail tea doesn’t work?). Maya says she’s already seen significant enhancements.
In sizzling years, for instance, the grapes will typically get sunburned, displaying little brown freckles on the skins and doubtlessly diminishing the standard of the ensuing wine. However underneath the biodynamic routine, Maya has began making use of a stinging-nettle tonic to the grapes when a warmth spike begins. It appears to have eradicated the sunburn points and permits her to keep away from spraying a synthetic-chemical remedy.
In distinction with winemakers at another unique estates, who intently guard their commerce secrets and techniques, Maya has developed a popularity inside her neighborhood for openness. “She’s not afraid to speak concerning the challenges she’s handled the place different folks may not be open to revealing them,” says her peer Meghan Zobeck, winemaker at Burgess Cellars. When Zobeck got here to Maya with questions on utilizing amphora, Maya was trustworthy about a few of her misgivings. “She’s a pure skeptic,” Zobeck says. (Finally, although, Zobeck was taken sufficient by Maya’s amphora-aged Cabernet Franc that she purchased a vessel herself.)
That guileless openness could also be an inheritance from Gustav, however Maya additionally displays her mom’s sense of restraint. Lately, she quietly shaped a partnership with Ornellaia, the ultra-prestigious Tuscan vineyard the place she was as soon as a harvest intern. Collectively, she and Ornellaia winemaker Axel Heinz have produced a Napa Valley wine referred to as DVO. Going into enterprise with Ornellaia is an enormous deal, but Maya treats the event with attribute understatement. “She doesn’t do a ton of self-promotion of any type, after which instantly you hear Maya has shaped a partnership with Ornellaia,” Zobeck says. “She’s simply doing issues with out numerous pomp and circumstance.”
None of Maya’s modifications but symbolize a reinvention of the wheel, and the pillars of the enterprise mannequin stay, such because the requirement that Dalla Valle mailing-list members purchase three bottles of wine per yr or else they lose their spot. However to her credit score, Maya seems sanguine concerning the challenges that stay forward, together with local weather change. In contrast to lots of her friends, who concern a public-relations backlash about smoke-tainted wines, she talks candidly concerning the risk that her 2020 wines might have been impacted by wildfire smoke. (To my palate, they tasted clear.)
With Maya simply six months into her new position, it’s too quickly to know whether or not the modifications she’s implementing now will show too edgy for Dalla Valle’s longtime buyer base. To date, her selections appear to have been canny. Although scores fueled Dalla Valle’s fame at first, the brand new protocols like biodynamic farming and amphora ageing appear designed to achieve a unique form of viewers than the normal critics. Right this moment a 100-point Cabernet shouldn’t be exhausting to search out, with critics doling out good scores far more often than they did within the early Nineteen Nineties, and excessive scores not drive gross sales as powerfully. To construct a profitable high-end wine enterprise at present is a way more nebulous, fragmented enterprise, requiring an attraction to folks on many various platforms reasonably than by means of a small handful of particular person raters. How precisely to drag that off is a query that neither Maya nor the California wine business at massive has discovered but. Nonetheless, Maya’s selections thus far present that she is aware of Dalla Valle received’t stay related by staying the identical without end.
She muses freely about what the long run would possibly maintain. Even if Dalla Valle has by no means made white wines, Maya desires to plant Carricante on the property, an obscure white grape selection from Sicily. And her subsequent mission, she says, is to convey sheep, llamas and chickens into the winery, to offer grazing for the duvet crop and pure fertilization. And …
Her mom lastly interjects. “OK, Maya!” she exclaims. “That’s sufficient modifications.”
Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Electronic mail: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley
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