Coppola looks to restore Inglenook wine label

This is an interesting article by Andrew S. Ross of San Francisco Chronicle....

What will prove to be Francis Ford Coppola's biggest challenge: making "Apocalypse Now" or remaking Inglenook wines?

The movie director/wine estate owner's latest outsize ambition: Restore a label best known for such quaffables as Sweet Red, Sunset Blush and "our innovative bag-in-the-box Wine Cask" to its original status as one of the finest producers of Cabernet in the world.

Coppola, whose Rubicon Estate in Napa Valley sits on the original, 1879 Inglenook property, this week acquired the Inglenook name from Livermore's The Wine Group, for an undisclosed amount, "to achieve my goal of restoring this property into America's greatest wine estate."

It was that for a while, from the 1930s to the mid-'60s, when Inglenook, according to a 2001 Wine Spectator article, "compiled a collection of Cabernets that stand up favorably to the best red wines on earth."

Ah, but then came what Chronicle wine editor Jon Bonné, in an SFGate blog post, calls "one of the greatest branding takedowns in history," beginning with Inglenook's sale to United Vintners for $1.2-million in 1964.

Inglenook went downhill from there, being sold to one alcohol conglomerate after another, before winding up in the hands of The Wine Group, the world's third-largest wine company, in 2008, for $135 million. By then, Inglenook had already joined the lower reaches of plonk along with the likes of Paul Masson, Almaden and Franzia.

Waiting in the wings was Coppola, who had bought the original Inglenook residence and part of the vineyard in 1975, renaming it Niebaum-Coppola Estate, after Gustave Niebaum, the winery's founder, and acquired the rest of the property in Rutherford in 1995.

"The name might have been trashed and ruined, but people are still paying tens of thousands of dollars for bottles from the previous era. It all needs to be reunited," said Coppola in a statement announcing the deal.

And, who better to help Coppola achieve his ambition than the director of Bordeaux's Château Margaux, Philippe Bascaules, who oversees the production of wines priced up to $2,400 a bottle and more?

"I found the tasting of 1959 Inglenook astonishing with regard to its freshness and complexity, and when I tasted some samples of the 2009 vintage, I recognized the incredible potential of this property," said Bascaules, who takes over as the revived Inglenook's manager and winemaker this summer.

Financial Times wine writer Jancis Robinson, who used to contribute to The Chronicle, said while the Inglenook vineyard has "massive potential," she wondered about the differences confronting Bascaules between Bordeaux and the Napa Valley.

"The weather's going to be so different. The soils will be different. So he will have a very steep learning curve," Robinson said in a radio interview.

Others wondered about the language differences - Bascaules doesn't speak English. To that, Coppola said to reporters, "I admire very much the notion of a person of few words."

Whether ambition, admiration and massive potential will carry the day for Coppola remains to be seen. "Let's hope Mr. Coppola understands that California can never be Bordeaux," sniffed the London Daily Telegraph's wine correspondent.

Restoring Inglenook's glory days "would be a downright cinematic resurrection if it can be done," wrote Bonné.

In the meantime, Coppola's most expensive cabernets ($20-$1,300 a bottle, depending on the vintage) will still be called Rubicon.

Fly in ointment: There is one small other matter that Coppola needs to attend to: He's being sued for unpaid services rendered at his other winery in Sonoma County.

Eleven contractors have filed liens on the property, formerly the home of Souverain Winery, totaling $1.8 million in construction bills pertaining to Coppola's multimillion-dollar face-lift of the property.

The chief complainant is Grassi & Associates, a well-known builder of high-end homes, estates and wineries in the Sonoma Valley, which has filed a $1.3 million suit for a bill due since August.

Coppola's attorney, Jeffrey Lowenthal, of San Francisco's Steyer Lowenthal Boodrookas Alvarez & Smith, was not available for comment Thursday, but he told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat this week, "Francis Ford Coppola Winery has paid Grassi multiple millions of dollars and has a dispute over the last invoices and Grassi's responsibility to complete the project, which we are trying to work out."

"We are hopeful for an early resolution."

Another contractor, Kyle Reicher, a metal fabricator-sculptor who owns Ferrous Studios in Richmond, is also hoping for an early resolution.

"It was an amazing opportunity for artisans, because of Francis' vision," he told the Press Democrat. But "I'm still owed a lot."

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