Cult Wine in Napa Opened by the Family Who Makes it

This is Grace Martin, my daughter, 27 years old, full-time in the business, next generation. It's very exciting to have her aboard. And we're tasting a bottle from her birth year. It's a 1997 Coruscant Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. It's very special to share this with you. Not only was it a terrific vintage, and I used to say that one of the reasons that 94 and 97 were so good is that they were your birth years, you and your sister. But 97 was a terrific vintage. It was a beautiful vintage. And these wines are very long-lived. And there's a wonderful sort of window to drink them between 20 and 30 years in the bottle. So this should be in a really pretty place. Cheers. I've had maybe a couple of these in my whole life. Both my parents collected quite a few 97s, given the years. Yeah, they did a lot of trading early on. But we don't often get to taste the Coruscant one. We also don't often drink our wine very much. So it's always very, very special when we do. Well, we love to taste all the wines of the world. And I need to, it informs my winemaking. So it's really actually very important for me to do that. So you're right, we very seldom drink our own wines. Well, it's been in the bottle long enough. They're so long-lived that even at 27 years old, they're still fairly fruit-driven. There's a lot of fruit. But they've been in the bottle long enough to develop a beautiful floral perfume, which is... Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a lot more fruit forward than I was expecting. 97 was a fairly warm vintage. And so, tended to make wine that was perhaps more fruit-driven than some vintages for Coruscant Cabernet. But it still has the Coruscant balance, which is moderate alcohol, good snappery, natural acidity, all those things that help it age. Well, 97 was a challenge. Well, it was, I mean, you were the second born in three and a half years. And we were working on our use permit to build this winery. And William, your dad, my husband, designed the winery and we were applying for a use permit. And then we, starting in 99, built it. So it was a busy time. I was born in June. So very close to harvest. Well, that too, that too. And that year was so warm and so early that I actually had grapes in August, the end of August. So it was a challenge. Quick turnaround time. So special, it's so floral. It's got lots of kind of dried roses, a lot of red fruit still, black cherries as well. It's got this earthier quality that I love with some more time in the bottle. Because it still has the backbone of the fruit, but it's just showing so many other things now. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's funny. I used to say that these wines would be 20 or 30 year ageability. And these wines are just screaming past 30. This is 27 years old and it's still youthful. Very, yeah. Especially for a 750. Yeah. One of my greatest joys is that it works well to work with my daughters. I think half of it is us understanding that Grace and her sister need agency. And luckily for us, they're both very competent and motivated. And so really it's just a matter of, it's such, we're so grateful for the help. Yeah. But recognizing that we won't be here forever and there needs to be a transition and we need to be sure that you have real work to do. So in fact, she and her sister have designed a new label and we bottle, they do the blend and they designed the label. And right now it's very small, but it's a chance for them to make wine. And have a little bit more agency and something we can just play around with a little bit. It's yours. Yeah. I also think though that there's something really wonderful in being able to work with family because you've, at least for me, you've spent so much time in your life, especially for me, learning how to work with somebody. And so I think that, I mean, it doesn't always work, I'm sure, but I think that it's given us more of a shorthand than anything else in terms of being respectful, but also getting to spend time with your family too. We travel a lot together and we always have, often to wine regions as long as they could walk. And I think that's also been really very valuable. In fact, they still want to travel with us and do. Every holiday season we go someplace cool. Yeah, we were actually just in Germany a couple months ago. It was just the three of us, so my sister and you and I. It was a WSET trip by Napa Valley Wine Academy. Yeah. And I love German wines, I love Riesling, but I had never been to a wine country in Germany. I've been to most of the other wine regions in Europe, but I'd never been to Germany. It was really incredible. And I think what stood out to me as well was that we were meeting with so many families who had been second, third, fifth generation, and getting to hear kind of the stories and the generational knowledge that comes with that was really special because growing up here, I never saw that at all actually. It's very unusual for next generation to be involved or even thinking about being involved because I went to school with a lot of kids from families in the business and nobody really was even thinking about it at the time. So we're very lucky, very, very lucky. But both of you had to, went away to school, studied what you needed to study, acting in your case, engineering in Rose's case, went off and did what you needed to do. Found some space, yeah. And then we're very, very fortunate that you've circled back. Yeah. I think you have to leave though. Yeah. I think especially a place like this, it's a very unique bubble in a lot of ways and being able to go out and I think also just experience the world of wine because it kind of puts us in context in a way that I don't think you would get unless you left. Yeah, because I was working in New York in restaurants kind of right before I moved back and came back into the business, so. Yeah, Union Square Cafe, which is one of the top wine programs in the country. Yeah. Yeah, but it was kind of, it was really a wonderful opportunity to be able to taste just lots of different things because, I mean, we have the wines we love today. For Olo, perhaps, yeah. I think that's what I so much enjoyed about going to New York is I grew up in wine. I grew up drinking a lot of wine, but it was nice to be able to fall in love with it in a different context, I think. So coming back into it, it was just so exciting and so fun to be able to put everything together in a way that very few people get the opportunity to. But it's just so gratifying to know, especially in light of what happens in Europe where it really can be fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh generation and that matters. Wine speaks of time and place and it makes me sad that it's so hard for our culture to have a sense of that continuity as farmers. And that's what we really are, we're farmers first. Yeah, and I think you were kind of hoping and dreaming of my sister and I being involved for longer than you let on. I remember really early on in the pandemic, my sister and I were both home and she is so excited. She's like, I have this video we're all gonna watch from La Palle with a tasting and all of that. And the topic was next generation. And all of the people in it were 20th generation. Yeah, and just listening to all of their stories and it's very subtle. Well, I was afraid, frankly, to let you guys know how much I would love to have you come into the business because I know when I graduated from college, I ran away screaming. Granted, it wasn't quite this, it wasn't this attractive. It was Riverside, California and my dad was an attorney but I just think it was really important for this to be your decision to come back. This is an extremely difficult business and it takes, you've gotta be passionate. You've gotta be a little crazy. You've gotta be very patient and anybody that's not all of those things won't make it. So it had to come from you. The alternative is for a small family business to soon not be a small family business and that would be very heartbreaking to me. But I always, at least for the last five, 10 years, I always figured I would have an assistant by the time I was 70 and start transferring knowledge to somebody that could carry it forward over time. Right about as I'm turning 70, these guys are coming into the business so the transition's a little different than I anticipated but very exciting, very gratifying. I so wanted daughters when I had children. I was an older mom, I was late 30s, early 40s and there were challenges in that but I think I was a much better mom and I so wanted daughters because I thought I had more to give them than I would've been happy with sons, of course, but I think I had more to give daughters. I think you also always envisioned the future of this winery somehow being led by a woman. Even when, for a long time we would have meetings, we would talk about estate planning and that kind of thing and there was always a short list of winemakers that you were really interested in, yeah. That I could bring along and they were all women, that was important to me. Why do you think Grace has been able to take hold of employee issues and? I come at it from a different generational standpoint and I think one of the things that I was looking at when I first got back into the winery after a couple years was just taking a look at all of our, what is our branding, how are we talking to people? So looking at that in the hospitality, looking at that in the marketing and all of that and just being excited to try new things and see what's working and what's not working. So I think I've made a lot of changes in that way that took a little bit longer, I think, to come around because I think a lot of people here were very set in their ways because you do something for, what, you, never. So it was kind of a slower transition but I would say that's one of the things that I wouldn't say we ever disagreed on but I think it took longer to come around, yeah. You know, I got pretty good at social media 20 years ago but I don't have time for it and it's changed so much. Grace is doing it now and it's so much better. She still goes rogue sometimes. Every so often, I did just last week. Yeah. I was chastised for it. But I also really appreciate the fact that we have lots of very long-term employees so I think we've taken good care of people but I think that Grace is really focused on that and has more time to spend on taking care of people which I really value. When I first came back into the business, I was focusing a little bit on kind of filling in the gaps, if that makes sense, of looking at it, of how it was all running. I spent a lot of time working in all of the different aspects to get a sense of it all but then figuring out what we could. Do better. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because we're really, really fortunate to have so many people who've been with us for a long time. Yeah. There are a lot of places to work here. It's a lot of work. Yeah. Small family wineries or small family businesses of any kind are one form of infinity. You can't possibly do it all. Well, for me, frankly, I don't know what I'd do. There's nothing else I wanna do than what I'm doing now which is grow grapes and make world-class wine. So I'm just so fortunate to be able to do that. We've had proposals at least once a year over many, many years but frankly, there is no price for me. I can't speak for them in 20 years or 30 years or their kids but for me, there's absolutely no price that would blast me out of here. Napa Valley has gone from, I got here 48, 49 years ago last month and it was poor and I've watched the value of land just go crazy. And so a lot of the value in the properties you see changing hand is really just real estate. It's nothing we've done. Yes, after a quarter century, it took a quarter century for this business to be a going concern and yes, it's a going concern but its actual value is mostly because of the real estate and what's happened to land and vineyards. So it's funny money. It doesn't mean anything to me. I got here with $200 in my pocket in 49 years ago and still haven't found the rich aunt. So we're still pulling on our bootstraps as hard as we can. Wine is so much more than a beverage, is so much more than something that washes your food down. It's about culture, it's about continuity place but I think they grew up here. You know, they did their homework on the crush pad because school always started right as harvest started. So I don't feel like there's a lot I need. There's not a lot of advice. My hope is just to have a long enough runway with them to have a smooth transition. I spent a lot of time here. I worked bottling, harvest, all growing up but it wasn't until I came back as an adult and kind of was able to see everything else that goes on and get kind of a better sense of the bigger picture. Cause I also think that, I don't know if it's a generational thing but it is so rare to find somebody who's so passionate about what they do that it is worth absolutely everything. They will put everything they have into something and I don't see that very much. So that's very special and I think that's one of the biggest things that I found so heartwarming when I came back was being able to see that cause I never saw that growing up. I was just mom. Just mom, yeah. Yeah, a cool mom but yeah, I think being able to come back and then have an adult relationship with you is really, really, really special. We're so very lucky. Yeah. Thank you for making me cry. Do you want a little bit more wine in your glass? I've been drinking it. That's not entirely true. I've been spitting it out. Yeah. Okay. Cheers. We're glad you were born. Thank you.