Jon-Mark Chappellet

Managing Director, Plant Operations
Chappellet
1581 Pritchard Hill, St. Helena

Interview by Diana H. Stockton

When Jon-Mark Chappellet was nine, he and his four brothers and sisters moved into a big house tucked way up in the hills of St. Helena. It was so pink you could see it from downtown. This Pritchard Hill property was the very first Jon-Mark's father, Donn, had been shown when he decided to move to Napa Valley from Los Angeles. Donn thought he should take time to be sure, but a year later, in 1967, he and is wife were still certain, so he bought a house with 100 acres from Ed Harten. Ed had planted a new vineyard in 1963, although the land had been in vines off and on for eighty years, so the vineyard footprint of what would become Chappellet was already in place, in Riesling and Gamay, as well as Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Today, there is still Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chenin Blanc; Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec have been added, and an Estate Chardonnay is grown in Jamieson Canyon. The Chappellet sibling footprint was also pretty much in place; a last baby came in 1968.

Donn chose Napa Valley to make wine after selling out his interest in a food service company. His initial success had been in marketing fresh coffee via a vending machine with an array of drip pots in continuous production–a totally new concept in Los Angeles that really took off. Factory canteens loved it. From coffee, Donn expanded to a full coffee bar and then a more complete array of products.When the company went public Jon-Mark says his father found sitting on a board of directors was not as exhilarating as running a company. Donn was no stranger to a tractor–he had grown up spending summers on a ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains, so Napa Valley was not the leap one might think. Donn hired Philip Togni as both winemaker and vineyard manager. Philip had trained at the University of Bordeaux. The two began planning a winery and other improvements as the Chappellets settled into life in Napa Valley.

The school bus stopped at the foot of the hill for Jon-Mark and his siblings. Jon-Mark says they were always brought down to the bus, just not always picked up. After his first year of high school Jon-Mark went off to St. Louis, Missouri and then to Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa at the recommendation of Jack Daniels (marketing director of Chappellet before starting Wilson Daniels, Ltd.). Jon- Mark transferred to UC Berkeley, where he majored in conservation and ecological sources and took part in the anti-nuclear movement. He was teaching high school science in 1991 with a brand-new teaching credential when his brother Cyril called: Cyril was selling wine and said he really needed help.

Chappellet's very first vintage, under the guidance of Philip Togni, had been nine barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in 1968, crushed at Robert Mondavi Winery and fermented at Heitz Wine Cellars. Its second vintage was at its newly built winery. Jon-Mark notes this second vintage of 17 barrels is quite historic. It is included among Robert Parker's most favorite Cabernets, ever. Philip made a few more vintages and then left to tend his own vineyard on Spring Mountain. A succession of winemakers then earned their stripes at Chappellet, including Joe Cafaro, Tony Soter (who extols the 1976 Cabernet) and Cathy Corison, assisted by Mia Klein, Helen Turley and Phillip Titus. Phillip went on to work at Stratford but when Cathy left in 1990, Donn rehired Phillip, who has been winemaker for twenty years. New vineyard managers were hired until 1984, when Dave Pirio became vineyard manager. Dave has been with Chappellet for twenty-six years, Jon-Mark for nineteen.

Before Jon-Mark joined the winery, he says there was not a whole team approach to production (nor was there much interplay back then among vineyard manager, winemaker and marketing at any winery in Napa Valley). Chappellet Cabernets had developed quite a reputation for tannins, they were wines that needed to "wait ten years" as Jon-Mark puts it, and Chappellet needed to turn that around. Fortunately, Phillip was sensitive to both making wines and the market place. He appreciated the wines of wine drinking cultures and didn't need to buck any trend. An era of experimentation was ushered in, conversations got going. Vineyard management, winemaking, and sales and marketing met together each month, tasted wines together. Dave says it helps that he manages other vineyards, has his own company, David Pirio Vineyard Management, and that Phillip is part of the family vineyard and wine enterprise, Titus Vineyards. The Chappellet team has been able to see how its grapes develop from the ground up for quite a few cycles. Many revisions can happen in ten years, and if mistakes are not too massive, Jon-Mark dryly observes, time and scale dilute change. Changing a wine, however, takes less time than changing the perception of a brand. Jon-Mark says Donn is more involved now than in 1990's. In the 1960's and 1970's he was on the tractor in the vine rows, or the vineyard roads, a lot of different things. The 1980's were devoted to long-term financial planning. Now the whole Chappellet family, three generations, is directing operations, representing the winery at tastings and other events, and working on the plan for its continued governance.

Jon-Mark says their collective expertise is limited to Chappellet. They practice what works well for them on that particular piece of ground. Vineyard blocks keep getting smaller and more diversified as changes are made to clonal selection, rootstock, row orientation, watering, or the choice of cover crop, each change an integral part of the whole: Cabernet has been planted where Chenin Blanc was, Chenin Blanc has replaced Sangiovese, Petit Verdot has nudged over Cabernet. The current plan now calls for replanting five acres a year.

Replants allow the management of tannins, to work with fermentation, for Jon-Mark says, "There is an abundance of tannins up here." Cultural yeasts give the winemaker a lot of control. There are not a lot of pumpovers; extractions are early. Jon-Mark says they don't need to pull more tannins out of the skins with an extended maceration for most blocks, only with some. Cabernet fruit is picked into half-ton bins, de-stemmed, and then goes into fermentation tanks for 14 days, after which it all goes through a bladder press. As the new wine comes through, press cuts are made and may get blended back. Then the wine is put into barrels of Hungarian, American and French oak to age.

Chappellet makes three different Cabernets, some in new and old oak. The wine is left in barrel as long as possible, at least eighteen months in tiers four high in the winery where floors gleam with a new epoxy coating (thanks to a recent replacement with PVC of all the metal pipes in or below the cement). Once bottled, most of the wine goes out to market. The best-known and largest production wine, anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 cases, is Chappellet Signature Cabernet Sauvignon, made from selected vintages since 1979. In 1997 the first Chappellet Pritchard Hill Cabernet Sauvignon was made. Although there was none in 1998, it has been made every year since. Pritchard Hill gets the very best of the lots, for 1,500 to 2,000 cases. It spends twenty months in barrels of new French oak and eight months in bottle. A third Cabernet, Mountain Cuvée, is ready for drinking and is often the wine on the family table. Chappellet also makes Merlot and a Pritchard Hill Estate Vineyard Cabernet Franc from vines planted in 1989, as well as Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc, but its true focus is Bordeaux varietals. That is its discipline, so, chuckles Jon-Mark, it won't be planting any Tempranillo. An original eight acres of Riesling was planted over to Sangiovese. To improve the Cabernet, all those vines were then budded over to Cabernet and Merlot as well as a little Chenin Blanc. (In retrospect, Jon-Mark thinks they might have just pulled four acres of the Sangiovese.) Of 100 vineyard acres, no more than 70 or 75 are in production. Another 15 remain fallow.

One of the first improvements Chappellet made was to the water system. Now the amount of water delivered to the vineyards is carefully controlled by meters monitoring gallons per week per vine delivered by emitters. It also relies on pressure bombs throughout the vineyard blocks and some use of probes, "to get on the watering," as Jon-Mark puts it, "before vines get too stressed." Frost is not a huge problem, so a few wind machines suffice, although the Cabernet was hit badly in 2008 and the Chenin Blanc is often affected, for its buds break early in the year.

Since 1980 Chappellet has had permanent cover crops on its terraced hillside vineyards. Some piles of huge boulders pulled out of the vineyards have been removed but Jon-Mark's mother, Molly, quite likes these rock islands, so a few remain, oases among the vineyard blocks, testament to the erosion of a 14,000 foot mountain that once stood tall in what became Yountville, and eroded over millions of years, releasing great boulders of volcanic ash. Dave says half the planted acreage is now certified organic, with the remaining half expected to be certified in just a few more years. Jon-Mark says they do a lot of cultivating in the vine rows, mowing, allowing nitrogen- fixing plants to blow off vine vigor as needed, incorporating cover crops into the ground, and adding compost from winery pomace enriched with green waste from Jepson Prairie Organics. Row spacing has changed a great deal. Planting is now much tighter with a doubling, at least, in the number of vines, but with probably the same crop tonnage: two and a half to three tons an acre in a mature vineyard. Chappellet didn't used to thin its crop; now, Jon-Mark says, it drops fruit as many times as it takes. Pre-pruning adds one more pass through the vineyard, in addition to leafing (removing leaves), hedging, and hedging again. In the fine-tuning, it might leaf again, in addition to pulling any lateral shoots. Instituting these many passes didn't all happen at once. The number of "touches," the amount of labor per vine, Jon-Mark says has increased dramatically. First thing at veraison, they're out fine-tuning according to the weather and how the grapes are sizing up. With iffy weather and big years, a reasonable crop load in July can look like way too much fruit in August, and Malbec can crop anywhere from a half to three and a half tons, it is such an uneven producer.

When Jon-Mark came to work at Chappellet he was market and sales-oriented. Now he no longer travels as he did or manages distributors but is production-oriented, interested in style and blending as well as the diverse challenges of maintaining operations. He has become a blending participant, and has enjoyed learning the nuances of sourcing fruit and quality. In 1998, weather conditions inspired Chappellet to make five different Chenin Blancs including Dry, Demi Sec, Old Vine Cuvée, and Moelleux. Jon-Mark loves Loire Valley Chenins, especially those fully botrytised. He thinks they are best that way: "the Moelleux with its residual sugar and the fully botrytised Liquoreux made at 50°Brix with screaming acids that deliver only a hint of sweetness."

Jon Mark usually makes dinner--he says he has always been into cooking. Although the absolute best with Cabernet is a standing rib roast, Jon-Mark certainly can't eat that too often, so he usually has a glass of Cabernet while he's cooking pasta, to keep a hand in. Besides the winery and looking after his family, Jon-Mark makes time for local land use issues. He has been a board member of Napa County Farm Bureau for twelve years, is a past president and currently chairs its Tax, Land Use and Labor Committee. Right now Napa County's Winery Definition Ordinance is of paramount concern. Jon-Mark feels strongly that commercial activity at a winery is bad for agriculture.