History:
As Dr. Kliewer crouched to inspect the soil on the Smith family parcel, he looked more like a miner than the Dean of Viticulture at UC Davis. He picked up a handful of crushed rock and dry, red-brown dirt. "Hambright," he muttered. Jeff Smith had no clue what Dr. Kliewer meant, but learned later that finding Hambright was like striking a vein of viticultural gold.
Dr. Kliewer explained the intense, fractured bedrock soil would starve plants of nutrients and water, causing them to focus their energies on survival, thus intensifying the grapes. Jeff's thoughts drifted to the year his father, Ned, bought the property in 1976 and tried to plant fruit trees on the hillside. They died shortly thereafter. "These soils aren't good for much, but they are magic for Cabernet. With some luck, this site could become one of the signature Cabernet sites in Napa Valley. Should you plant Cab, here is what I'd do...," and Dr. Kliewer proceeded to map out the strategy for what would indeed become one of Napa Valley's most acclaimed vineyard sites.
When Ned Smith purchased the 6-acre parcel 14 years earlier, his goal quickly shifted from fruit trees to his favorite wine, Zinfandel, with the lofty hope of supplying grapes to local wineries in exchange for finished wine. His plan worked well in the following years until misfortune derailed Ned's plan in the early 1990s. Phylloxera, the hungry root louse that was ravaging Napa Valley, caught up with the Zin vineyard, bringing production to a halt, and in 1990 Jeff's father succumbed to cancer. After losing her husband, Jeff's mother, Marge, had no desire to replant the dying vineyard and was ready to sell.
Jeff grappled with how to proceed. The land had potential, and the challenges would be many: farming for world-class grapes, raising the capital to start a wine brand, learning how to make wine-let alone good wine, or even great wine for that matter. But Jeff knew these difficulties would sort themselves out. His real challenge lay in convincing his mother not to sell and that his plan to replant the vineyard and develop a single-vineyard brand was not completely crazy. Except that it was, and his mother knew it. Jeff needed a stamp of approval to convince her, and it would need to come from someone who actually knew what he was talking about.
