Lail Vineyards J. Daniel Cuvée: 1997-2016
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
For a winery established less than 25 years ago, Lail Vineyards has a remarkably long back story. When Robin Daniel Lail launched Lail Vineyards in 1995, her flagship J. Daniel Cuvée was an homage to her father John Daniel, Jr. a visionary who helped to put Napa Valley on the world wine map. But her family’s Napa Valley roots were planted much longer ago.
Heimark Vineyard, a key component in the J. Daniel Cuvée
A Family Birthright Dating Back to the 19th Century
Robin Daniel Lail’s great-granduncle Gustave Niebaum, a Finnish sea captain who originally visited Alaska in the 1850s at the age of 16 and later became a wealthy fur trader in California, founded Inglenook Vineyards with the purchase of 450 acres of land in 1879. One of Napa Valley’s’ great pioneering wineries, Inglenook was making some of the best wines produced in this country by the early 1890s. Niebaum’s wife Susan (née Shingleberger) essentially raised John Daniel Jr. and his sister at Inglenook following the death of John’s mother Leah (Susan’s niece) in 1914. Gustave Niebaum had died in 1908, after which the winery was closed for three years, then reopened with Robin Daniel Lail’s grandfather John Daniel Sr. nominally in charge until the winery was shut down again during Prohibition.
When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, John Daniel Sr. directed his son—at the age of 26—to return to Inglenook and reopen the winery, which by that point was owned by Susan Niebaum. As a condition for raising his children, Susan had specified that all of her vineyard holdings would be left to John Jr. and his sister Suzanne. So when Susan died in 1936, John Jr. became co-owner with his sister and managing director of Inglenook. John Jr. rapidly became intimately involved in the family business and, with the mentorship of general manager/winemaker Carl Bundschu, and then winemaker George Deuer, Inglenook became one of the top makers of Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa Valley. Its series of “Cask Cabernets” made from the mid-’30s through 1964 is arguably the greatest string of wines ever made in California. These wines remain collectors’ items today.
John Daniel Jr. was one of the true visionaries and innovators of the California wine industry. He was one of the pioneers of varietal labeling (as opposed to generic labels like “Claret” and “Mountain Burgundy”) and Inglenook was the first estate owner to use Napa Valley as an appellation on his labels. He was also a pioneer in vintage-dating bottles. Daniel was one of the founders of the Napa Valley Vintners Association in 1944 and a tireless promoter of Napa Valley’s uniqueness as a wine region. He was a mentor to numerous people who would go on to become important figures in California wine, such as Robert Mondavi after he graduated from Stanford University in 1937 (Daniel was also a Stanford graduate). Not surprisingly, Daniel was among the first inductees into the Vintners Hall of Fame in 2008. He subsequently expanded his land holdings by purchasing the Napanook Vineyard in Yountville in 1943, with the grapes immediately going into his top Inglenook bottlings.
Robin Lail, above her Mole Hill Vineyard
A Childhood in the Vines Followed by Years in the Wilderness
John Lail Jr’s daughter Robin essentially grew up at Inglenook during the late ‘40s and ‘50s, living in the original Victorian mansion on the property and exploring the stone winery and the vast vineyard holdings (at its largest, Inglenook owned nearly 2,000 acres of land). It was during this period that she absorbed her father’s zeal for the land and the winery—and for her family legacy. But as Robin and her sister had been raised by their mother in the Mormon church, they had been discouraged from having anything to do with wine.
