A war waged in wine: MacDonald
In an idyllic corner of the historic To Kalon vineyard, Alex and Graeme MacDonald are crafting extraordinary wine – but they’re also fighting for American terroir
The MacDonald brothers grew up in Mill Valley, Marin County – across the bridge from San Francisco, not too far from the Pacific coast. At weekends and holidays, they would drive up to their grandparents’ house in Napa to spend lazy days on the family farm – but that “farm” was a slice of prime Oakville vineyard. Little did they know that their childhood playground, and the naming of a creek that runs through it, would put them at the heart of a legal battle with one of the largest wine companies in the world. But as Alex and Graeme will tell you, this isn’t just about them, their vineyard or that creek, this is a battle for wine’s sense of place.
Where it all began
Once you start reading about To Kalon, it’s impossible not to get hooked. This vineyard has a remarkable history – and no one knows its story better than Alex and Graeme MacDonald. Graeme has dedicated his life to researching the site and battling for its recognition.
It’s important to have the background before getting into the MacDonalds’ tale. If you haven’t already, now would be a great time to read this article (and if you do, you can skip the next few paragraphs), but here’s a very top-line overview.
H.W. Crabb planted vines here in the late 18th century, creating one of the most successful and largest wine companies of its time. Phylloxera and Prohibition put an end to his success, and the site was broken up. It’s been sliced and diced numerous ways since then, passing through various owners who have bought and sold additional land along the way, but there are just a few key players today.
Robert Mondavi (who gradually acquired the entire section that had been owned by his family’s winery, Charles Krug) is the main stakeholder (with 328 acres), and is now owned by Constellation. Mondavi trademarked the name “To Kalon” and “To Kalon Vineyard” in the late 1990s.
Grower Andy Beckstoffer owns 89 acres, and – after a legal battle of his own in the early 2000s – producers can use “Beckstoffer To Kalon” on bottlings from the site. The likes of Tor, Schrader, Paul Hobbs, Realm, Morlet and many more use fruit from the plot.
Graeme and Alex MacDonald amongst their family’s precious vines
Then we get to the two that are most relevant to this story – owned by cousins, the Detert and MacDonald (or Horton) blocks. Neither of these producers can use the To Kalon name on their wines, and most of the fruit has historically been sold to Mondavi.
Alex and Graeme’s great-grandparents, Richard and Hedwig Detert, settled in Napa in the 1950s. They bought a house in Oakville, at the foot of the Mayacamas, from Caroline Stelling – widow of Martin Stelling (who had owned most of Crabb’s original site in the 1940s). It’s hard to imagine with Napa’s land prices today, but Stelling had to force them to take 45 acres of land along with the house – then planted to cherries. Taking advice from their neighbour, a young Robert (Bob) Mondavi, they decided to rip out the trees and plant vines in 1954 – a mix of Johannisberg Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.
They sold the grapes to Bob’s family at Charles Krug winery. Richard and Hedwig’s son, Gunther Detert – a lawyer – negotiated a contract with Bob, securing a three-year deal for their fruit at $165/ton, hoping to protect them against market fluctuations. But the deal backfired. There was a grape shortage in the valley, and prices for fruit started rising almost as soon as they had signed on the dotted line. Despite their deal, Bob paid him market value ($200/ton), and then did the same the following year ($250/ton).
Gunther, a six-foot-something sturdy man, strode into Bob Mondavi’s office and ripped up their agreement in front of him. “We don’t need a contract,” he said. They shook hands – and that handshake was all the two families and neighbours needed to do business for 50 years.
But in 2004, the neighbours changed. Constellation had arrived.
The MacDonald block
“We had no idea what we had,” Graeme says, still looking a little wide-eyed with wonder at the land his family happened upon over 60 years ago. Growing up, he and Alex didn’t realise how special their family’s vineyard was.
The 45-acre plot bought by their great-grandparents was divided in two, when their great-uncle wanted to plant Cabernet Franc (now the Detert block), and their grandmother (who married Allen Horton) wanted to plant Cabernet Sauvignon (what was the Horton block, and now the MacDonald block, having been passed down through the generations).
Today the MacDonalds farm the 15 acres that their side of the family held onto. Their plot sits right up against the Mayacamas, in To Kalon’s famous alluvial fan, where the gravel is deepest – representing 80-90% of the soils, and making this free-draining plot perfect for Cabernet Sauvignon.
For years almost all the fruit from the MacDonald site was sold to Mondavi. It was always classified as To Kalon (and the MacDonalds have the weight tags that prove it) – representing most of the blend of Mondavi’s top wine. But, the MacDonald brothers – whose parents hadn’t really been involved in the vineyard – didn’t know any of this at first.
Aged 18, Graeme was trying to figure out what to do with his life. He called up Mondavi and spoke to Geneviève Janssens (then Director of Winemaking at the company). He asked her what his grandfather’s block meant to her. There was a long pause at the other end of the phone as she weighed up her response. Then, in her frank, French way, she said, “Graeme, your family’s vineyard is my favourite of everything we work with.” He didn’t need to hear any more. He applied to UC Davis.
Together, he and Alex hatched a plan to make sure that they had everything they’d need to run a wine business. While they didn’t – yet – know anything about making wine, their grandfather (a man Bob Mondavi described as the best grape-grower he knew) had taught them how to farm. After Graeme set off to study viticulture and oenology, Alex – two years younger – headed to UC Berkeley to get to grips with law and business.
No one in the family had ever made wine, so when Graeme and Alex announced that they wanted to, the entire clan thought they were mad. They had been selling the fruit with little hassle to the Mondavis for half a century, a steady revenue stream that kept them all afloat. It’s easy to understand why the idea of gambling some of that on two 20-somethings made them nervous.
But the brothers were determined. They felt, from the start, like they needed to “put skin in the game”. With Constellation’s arrival, and the paperwork to replace the handshake that had served them so well, Alex and Graeme started their first experiments – and committed to paying the same price as Constellation for any fruit they used.
The 2010 vintage was their first commercial release – a mere 92 cases, with the brothers only in their mid-20s. Although production today is up to around 500 cases (representing a third of the fruit from their vineyard), everything is done by the two of them.
Their farming – for both the fruit used for their own wine, and that which is sold – is nothing short of inspirational. It’s all worked organically, with no round-up used in their lifetime, and a general Fukuoka-inspired approach to do as little as possible. They haven’t had to fertilise in over 20 years, with cover crops thriving when I visit (helped by recent rains). They dry farm as much as they can, but still need to irrigate some plots – although they’re trying to wean the vines off this supply. The 1974 plantings are all California sprawl, with no wires to support them. They’re unfashionably untidy, yet their freeform shades the fruit from Napa’s baking summer sun – and the brothers find that it’s only the young vines grown this way that need irrigation. Yields are tiny – from just one ton an acre on the oldest vines up to a maximum 3.5 on the youngest.
It's hard to capture the sense of life that you feel among these vines, but it’s instant and intoxicating – and it’s something that translates to the wine. The 2019 has a transparency, purity and such extraordinary vibrancy – it’s invigorating.
More than just a name
But, for the MacDonalds, this is about much more than their tiny brand. This is about the concept of terroir in America.
With To Kalon a trademark, the Constellation team is free to use it on any wine – no matter where the fruit comes from, and have spoken about, for example, a To Kalon site in Sonoma. The MacDonalds are convinced that Californian wine culture should be, first and foremost, “grounded in the earth” – as it is elsewhere. And if Constellation gets its way, as Graeme tells me, “Place won’t mean a thing in American wine.”
They are determined that To Kalon be recognised as one of the world’s great vineyards – but to do so needs layers of science, geology and proof in the glass. As part of this quest, Graeme has been applying for the vineyard to be included on the National Register of Historic Places – for which it needs to be proven that it has affected the way people think about food and wine, not just been a successful business or brand. For this, he’s received letters of support from Andy Beckstoffer, Antonio Galloni, William Kelley, James Molesworth, their local Congressman and many more.
Graeme has spent, he estimates, thousands of hours researching the history of the vineyard – and even used to do historical presentations for Mondavi, educating its Sales teams on the site’s remarkable heritage. David Howell – famous geologist and author of The Winemaker’s Dance – was working on a report on the site and wanted a way to reference the creeks that make it so geologically special, creating the alluvial fans. Wanting to name the one that runs through the MacDonald block To Kalon, they needed approval from the trademark-owner – Constellation. They spoke to Mondavi, and got letters of support from the General Manager and Head of Marketing to name To Kalon Creek. In 2017, it was signed off and celebrated by the very tiny number of people that cared. Little did they know what the labelling of a creek would prompt.
Soon after, The Vineyard House – a neighbouring property – took Constellation to court, wanting to use the To Kalon name on their label. (The site had been owned by Crabb, but was never planted in his era, making the claim dubious.) And suddenly the MacDonalds got a letter saying that Constellation was trying to overturn the creek’s name. Initially Constellation’s legal team claimed the letters used were forged, then they said that neither member of their team had the authority to give such approval. The Mondavi GM called up Graeme and Alex, inviting them to come over and iron everything out. The brothers turned up, fresh from the vineyards, dirt under their nails, to find a room full of suits – a legal team that had been flown in from New York. “We thought we were meeting neighbours,” Alex says, shaking his head, still in disbelief at the response.
The legal team seemed to think that the MacDonalds wanted to use To Kalon on their label too (something that they’ve never attempted or asked for – “and never will,” the brothers say firmly), and presented them with an offer. They would lease them the trademark (as they do for Beckstoffer, for example), but they would need to state that To Kalon had no historical value – that the name meant nothing. Silence filled the room.
“Our integrity is not for sale,” Graeme said.
And the war goes on
For 68 years, the MacDonalds sold their fruit to Mondavi – but in 2022 that changed.
Their ties to the Mondavi family run deep, but Constellation’s actions have seen the handshake-deal and historic partnership destroyed. From 2022, the fruit (excluding the third used for the MacDonald label) is being sold to the Duncan family (owners of Ovid and Silver Oak). It will be blended away into their wines – something that pains me, having tasted the site’s potential. But it’s exactly what the MacDonald brothers want: they were keen to continue to sell the fruit to one family, rather than dividing the vineyard up row by row, and to preserve the MacDonald vineyard designation for their own bottlings.
There’s no shortage of praise for what the MacDonalds are doing (indeed, see Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW’s recent write-up, with a much deserved perfect score for the 2019). Production is so tiny, sold almost exclusively via their over-subscribed mailing list, that too few will be fortunate enough to taste their wine.
I’ve already described the sense of life in their vineyard, and what’s so striking is the contrast between the MacDonald block and Modavi’s. In Mondavi’s I Block – home to the site’s oldest vines, a plot of 1940s Sauvignon Blanc that has been preserved – the vines look strangled, sad, somehow grey, with an unhealthy pallor. I’m not a viticulturalist, but it doesn’t take one to appreciate the differences here. It makes you wonder what greatness the rest of the site could achieve if the vines were given the same level of care as under the MacDonalds.
They don’t want or need the To Kalon name to sell their wine, but their ongoing battle to ensure that Crabb’s legacy is preserved, that site means something in Oakville, Napa, California and across the US, is remarkable. “The moment I give in is the beginning of the end,” Graeme says. They aren’t fighting for something new, but fighting against the rewriting of history. It’s undoubtedly going to be a long war – but there’s only one side to be on.
The wine: 2019 MacDonald Cabernet Sauvignon
This is special. The nose is pretty and perfumed, with incense-like aromatics. For the MacDonalds, the youngest vines bring the fruit, with tension and austerity from the middle-aged, while the oldest vines are what give the wine its X factor. The palate if firm and chalky with extraordinary, textured tannins. It’s got pinpoint Cabernet linearity, yet with none of the mid-palate hole, a pure, driving thing – sleek and taut, wild and dark, vibrant and juicy. Medium-bodied yet with a deceptive intensity. Savoury tones complement the fruit, with a moreish, graphite minerality. It’s 14.5% but doesn’t feel it. Only 500 cases produced.
Winemaking: The fruit was harvested in the third week of September at 25-26 Brix, with each plot picked separately; Graeme looks for when the fruit is just about to dimple. The fruit is sorted in the vineyard, then cluster sorted again before it goes through the de-stemmer. The wine spends between 30 and 40 days on skins, but they don’t do any punch-downs or pump-overs, sacrificing the cap totally. The final blend includes no press wine, as they feel it reduces the elegance of the wine – with the duo selling off the medium and heavy press, and bottling the light press as their “party wine”, to share with friends and family. It then spends 18-22 months in 65% new French oak. Although this is a blend of fruit from each age of vine in the site, they have also bottled tiny volumes of wine made exclusively with the oldest vines each vintage, laying it down for their children – with no plans to sell it.
