The Rutherford and Oakville AVAs - Early Days 

&nbsp;RICHARD MENDELSON | SEPTEMBER
13, 2016In this excerpt from his book Appellation Napa Valley – Building and Protecting an American Treasure, Richard Mendelson shares his first-hand account of the early days in the creation of the Rutherford and Oakville AVAs and the many untold stories that took place during this important and formative period in Napa Valley’s history. 

I love the wines of Rutherford Bench, from
the heart of the valley, in part because they are among the classics that I
drank with the Schoch family when I first arrived: the Cabernet Sauvignons of
Inglenook, BV, Heitz Martha’s Vineyard, Mondavi’s To Kalon, and Freemark
Abbey’s Bosché. These wines are made from grapes grown on well-drained,
gravelly soils on the gentle, east-facing slopes of the Mayacamas Mountains and
on the alluvial fans emanating from those mountains. They are balanced and
elegant, with excellent weight, a finely chiseled texture, and full flavors.
They also age gracefully.

In the words of longtime New York Times wine
columnist Frank Prial, the Rutherford Bench “boasts one of the more exceptional
concentrations of great wine producers in the world.” In his article entitled Wine; Napa’s Bench Marks, Prial wrote “Pauillac
has Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton-Rothschild, Latour, Pichon Lalande&nbsp;and Lynch-Bages, to name a few; Vosne-Romanée
has Romanée Conti,&nbsp;Romanée-Saint-Vivant, La Tâche and
Richebourg; Châteauneuf du-Pape&nbsp;has Beaucastel, Rayas—but you get the point.
These are towns or communes that produce very few, if any, common wines….

Among the wineries to be found in that rather
small tract of real estate&nbsp;(Rutherford Bench) are Beaulieu, Inglenook,
Niebaum-Coppola, Grgich Hills,&nbsp;Far Niente and Vichon; vineyard properties
include the renowned&nbsp;Martha’s Vineyard and Bella Oaks Vineyard,
whose grapes are used by&nbsp;Heitz Cellars, the Bosche Vineyard, which
supplies Freemark Abbey, and&nbsp;parcels owned by the Robert Mondavi, Pine
Ridge and Joseph Phelps wineries.”

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1473780295624-Vine+illustration.jpg"> 

André Tchelistcheff—or was it Maynard
Amerine, no one knows for sure—coined the phrase “Rutherford dust” to describe
the sensory quality of these Rutherford Bench wines. There are few references
to what André actually meant by that term, but it appears to be those special
qualities of cherries, plums, steeliness, fine-grained tannin, and a strong
spine. Hugh Johnson, world-renowned British wine expert and author, refers to
allspice as a common reference point for Rutherford Bench wines. 

Johnson did more than just describe
Rutherford Bench wines. He also defined the boundaries of the area in his
widely read World Atlas of Wines. Johnson placed Rutherford Bench west of
Highway 29, south of Grgich-Hills, and north of&nbsp;Dwyer Road. By contrast, other journalists
and critics located Rutherford Bench as far south as Yountville and as far
north as St. Helena. One thing was clear: Rutherford Bench was being informally
defined by wine critics without the&nbsp;input of the people who actually live there
or make the wines. Some of the local vintners and growers were bothered by the
press definitions. They either&nbsp;disagreed with one or more of the boundaries,
or they had a problem with the name—or both. Did the Bench extend from the
Mayacamas Mountains to Highway 29, or did it continue to the Napa River? How
could an area called Rutherford Bench be as far north as St. Helena and as far
south as Yountville? Wouldn’t consumers be confused if the Rutherford name were
used to describe parts of other townships?

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1473780332999-RutherfordBench_3_07201989+%281%29+2.jpg"> 

Steve Girard, Augustin Huneeus. Justin Meyer Joe Heitz, Dennis
Groth, Walt Raymond and Chuck Wagner

In 1988, a group of prominent vintners and
growers resolved to decide for themselves where the Rutherford Bench is truly
located and what to call it. They formed an appellation committee and hired me
to craft an AVA petition and guide&nbsp;them through the rulemaking process. The
committee was a star-studded group. It consisted of wineries BV, Far Niente,
Flora Springs, Harlan, Inglenook, Robert Mondavi, and Pine Ridge, and growers
Tom and Martha May, Ren Harris, Robin Lail, Bob and Alex Phillips, Barney and
Belle Rhodes, and Shari and Garen Staglin. They appointed Pat Garvey as their
chairman. Pat had married Julie Komes, whose parents, Jerry and Flora, started
Flora Springs in 1978. Pat, along with his brother, ran the family’s extensive
vineyard holdings— around 650 acres. Pat is a farmer, not a vintner. He is
down-home, friendly, and a hard worker. I don’t think he realized at the outset
what a hornet’s nest the Rutherford Bench definition process would become.

The committee met for several months over
breakfast at the home of Tom and Martha May, surrounded by the vines of the
famous Martha’s Vineyard. I brought in experts on local history, soils,
climate, geology, and geography. We pored over maps of the entire mid-valley
area. We didn’t have a preconceived notion that there would be a single AVA
called Rutherford Bench. Our goal was to devise a coherent and comprehensible
AVA framework that we could explain to the trade, to consumers, and to ATF. We
explored alternative names, alternative boundaries, and even the possibility
that there should be multiple AVAs rather than one.

In the end, the committee decided that a
single Rutherford Bench AVA wouldn’t suffice. The Rutherford name, the members
reasoned, should apply only in and&nbsp;around the township of Rutherford. The
township of Oakville to the immediate south of Rutherford has—and should
preserve—its own identity. We decided to break the press’s Rutherford Bench
into two adjoining Benches—the Rutherford Bench and the Oakville Bench. But we
also went a step farther and proposed something novel in the American
appellation landscape. Each Bench would be a subdivision of a larger community
AVA that stretches across the valley from the toe-slopes of the Mayacamas
Mountains to the toe-slopes of the Vaca Mountains. Rutherford Bench would be
situated inside the larger Rutherford AVA, and Oakville Bench would be inside
the Oakville AVA, each running down to the Napa River. Instead of one
Rutherford Bench, the committee petitioned in March of 1989 to establish four
separate AVAs at the same time: Rutherford Bench, Rutherford, Oakville Bench,
and Oakville. In terms of name recognition, the larger Rutherford and Oakville
AVAs respect their specific community identifications and the long wine
histories of each place. Geographically, they capture the gradual differences
in elevation and temperature as one heads upvalley. The two Bench AVAs have
more geographical specificity, each following the alluvial fans, known as the
Rutherford Fan Complex and the Oakville Rutherford Fan Complex, that flow out
of the Mayacamas Range down to the Napa River. These alluvial fans form deep,
gravelly soils with excellent drainage and an easterly exposure, perfect for
dry farming. I recall Debbie Elliott-Fisk digging soil pits over 18 feet deep
on those alluvial fans, finding grapevine roots driving down deeper still, as
they searched for water and nutrients.

<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1473780789383-21_Rutherford_Oakville_AVAs_Original_6thDraft_a.jpg"> 

The Rutherford, Rutherford
Bench, Oakville and Oakville Bench AVAs as originally proposed in 1989

I perceived two distinct advantages of filing
four AVA petitions, rather than one. First, ATF would not be able to change any
common boundary without carefully considering the impact on the AVAs on both
sides of that boundary. For example, if a landowner opposed the southern boundary
of Rutherford and wanted to move it farther south, ATF would have to consider
the impact on the Oakville AVA at the same time. I thought this would make ATF
officials think twice about changing a boundary willy-nilly at the request of
any landowner. But that was wishful thinking.&nbsp;I also believed that the framework of
community-named AVAs along the valley&nbsp;floor, subdivided where warranted into
smaller, nested AVAs—a proposal that was&nbsp;conceived of by Tim Mondavi of Robert Mondavi
Winery—would be acceptable to&nbsp;vintners and growers valley wide. I was
wrong…

This excerpt is published with permission of
the author. To learn more about how the Rutherford and Oakville AVAs were
ultimately drawn, be sure to read Richard Mendelson’s recently published book Appellation
Napa Valley – Building and Protecting an American Treasure. Credits:Vine illustration: Emily BonnesRutherford Bench producers photo: Robert M. Bruno1989 Rutherford/Oakville Map: Sarah Lewis MacDonald

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