INDUSTRY: American Wine Comes of Age

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Many individuals have been drawn into the fields because they savor living close to the soil while creating a product of pleasure. Jack Davies left his job as vice president of a Los Angeles metals company in 1965 in order to try reviving a then defunct champagne cellar. His Schramsberg champagne is now acknowledged to be the best produced in the nation, and last February President Nixon brought 14 cases to Peking to toast Chou Enlai. Russell Green abandoned his post as president of Signal Oil Co. to take over the Simi winery. Today it is one of the many small wineries that tend to make some of the most interesting of the California premium wines. Donn Chappellet chucked his job as president of a lucrative food-vending firm in Los Angeles in order to work on 320 acres of vineyards. He is producing about 6,000 cases but does not expect to reach the break-even point until he sells at least 10,000 cases. Rod Strong left Broadway, where he was a choreographer, and became the owner of a Windsor vineyard. Last year his Tiburon Vintners grossed $3,500,000. One of Strong's most successful innovations was mail-order marketing of gift wines with personalized labels. Some of the best California wines—Heitz, Ridge, Hanzell, Oakville—are in such short supply that they cannot be bought by out-of-staters unless they place a special order well in advance and take delivery at a local liquor store.

The wine makers lead a hard but hearty life, alternating between fields and office and frequent trips abroad to see what the foreign competition is doing. August Sebastiani's life-style is typical. He has a collection of rare birds, and his house is packed with many fine wines. In the evenings he and his frequent guests dine royally; one recent meal was wild boar served with a 15-year-old California wine. Yet at 5:30 a.m., Sebastiani breakfasts in simple style with workers at a roadside inn, pausing on a drive to the vineyard. "All day long I drive around in a pickup truck and wear overalls, but I've got a reason for living that the guys who try to buy me out just don't understand," he says. "I could make more money elsewhere, but I would always come back to wine."

European Kinship. Yet there is undoubtedly gold in grapes, and not just for the wine manufacturers or retailers. Expecting that wine prices will continue to rise, more and more ordinary consumers are buying and storing wine. A select California Cabernet Sauvignon worth $3.25 in 1966 now commands about $6. Major wine merchants will accept orders for future delivery of just about any premium wine that has a long bottle life. U.S. citizens technically cannot sell their wine hoardings publicly without a retailer's license, but they can sell them privately to friends or back to retailers.