Andrew Jefford
Airy, it was: a high saddle at the seaward end of the Mayacamas ridge. The newly planted vineyards splayed upwards from the crux of tracks that met there. Smaller ridges, hazy fingers of blue and purple, broke the view down to San Pablo Bay. There was a picnic table close to the edge, with straw underfoot. Afew orange and yellow calendula flowers had been laid carefully in its centre; ladybirds were discreetly mating on the clover. Idyllic? Maybe.
‘I worry about the younger generation,’ Gallica owner and winemaker Rosemary Cakebread said to me a few hours later. ‘It’s difficult for young people here in Napa even to buy a home, let alone a vineyard.
‘If you have any instinct to be a solo proprietor, you’ll need family money or people who believe in you. But without the younger generation we’ll lose farming as it exists here.’ She’s right. When the hedge-fund and tech billionaires buy up the last vineyard, Napa becomes a luxury-goods factory. That’s why those baby vines planted at the end of the ridge matter.
Napa reds are disarmingly beautiful. They take all the scrutiny that you can throw at them; they age winningly; yet – uniquely in the fine-wine pantheon – their appeal is universal, easy of access, unforbidding. Given local wealth (Silicon Valley lies down the road), land values have soared – up to $700,000 per acre for prime planted land in 2023 (equivalent to €1.6 million a hectare: just a little more than Margaux, a little less than St-Julien, according to Vineyards Bordeaux’s August 2023 report).
‘Napa has made some of the greatest wines in the world,’ said Julia van der Vink, the viticulturist who has planted those vines at the end of the ridge with her partner, winemaker Rob Black, ‘but the culture that surrounds those wines is eroding. We came at it with nothing. Everyone told us it was impossible. But if you’re defeatist, then the next generation doesn’t get a shot. It doesn’t make sense to me that the next generation should leave. We wanted to hold down a fort here. My dream is that we’re shoulder-to-shoulder with others in 10 years.’
That sky vineyard is called Aerika. It was created with the help of 18 angel investors, six of whom are UK-based – and all of whom were prepared to support the idea of an owneroperated vineyard (Julia and Rob, under these arrangements, can keep majority ownership). Julia’s brother Nick has a financial background, which has helped with stitching the intricate acquisition together. The land (50 acres or just over 20ha, of which 20 acres/8.1ha will be planted) has pedigree. It was once part of Al Baxter’s Veedercrest Vineyards – and the 1972 Veedercrest Chardonnay was one of t
