Francis Ford Coppola has worked for years to restore the good name of the Napa Valley’s Inglenook winery. This week he made it literal with the announcement that he had acquired the Inglenook trademark.
The director _ although these days he may be known as much for wine as for movies _ also announced he has hired Philippe Bascaules from France’s famous Chateau Margaux as his new estate manager and winemaker
Inglenook goes back to 1879, when it was founded by Finnish sea captain Gustave Niebaum. Under Niebaum’s successor, John Daniel, the winery drew wide acclaim and the 1941 Inglenook Cabernet is considered one of the greats. But hard times came to the winery and by the 1970s the estate had been broken up and the name sold off.
In 1975, the Coppolas purchased the Rutherford property and began the long, expensive process of putting the estate back together and restoring winemaking operations in the famous chateau.
At first the estate was called Niebaum-Coppola in honor of both families. More recently, Coppola changed the name to Rubicon, which is the name of the estate’s flagship wine. In a cool touch of history, new vintages are released on March 15, the Ides of March, to mark the Julius Caesar tie-in. (In case you don’t have Roman history memorized, Caesar came to power after a civil war he started by crossing the Rubicon, a river outside Rome, with his troops, which was forbidden and considered an act of war, hence the whole “crossing the Rubicon” expression.)
The premium wines will continue to be called Rubicon but the estate will now be known as Inglenook.
In a statement, Coppola said he’s spent the last year assessing the estate’s needs, including recruiting Bascaules, invigorating the vineyards and planning a state-of-the-art winemaking facility, part of his goal of “restoring this property into America’s greatest wine estate.” Coppola also acknowledged the “gracious support” of The Wine Group, which had owned the Inglenook name.
Wine Group CEO David Kent said the company is “pleased to see the revered Inglenook brand reunited with its historic estate under the Coppola family’s stewardship. This is a proud moment for the California wine industry.”
I was lucky enough to taste the 1941 Inglenook at a dinner the Coppolas gave to wine writers and assorted others some years ago. Unfortunately, this was when I was just starting to cover the industry and I think I probably spent more time thinking about what to say when meeting famous people than concentrating on the wine. At the time I was struck most by the light ruby color and I remember thinking that it “tasted like wine.”
Now, I see things differently. There’s no point denying I’m probably always going to be the type of person who prefers her wines young and fruity, but I can appreciate the awesomeness of drinking a wine that had been made 60 or more years ago, listening to the winemaker’s harvest notes written just months before America crossed its own Rubicon into the fury of World War II, and appreciating that in the glass, all those years later, the qualities Daniel sought still breathed.
Cheers.