Cellar Fire Destroyed Wines, Dreams

Winemakers here in the Napa Valley are inured to killer frosts, devastating floods, earthquakes and even periodic plagues of disease-bearing plant lice.

But the destructive fire that raged through the historic Kornell Champagne Cellars outside St. Helena recently shook the tightknit wine community like no other disaster.

The main victims of this vineland calamity were not the big corporate producers--the powerful brands like Beringer and Mondavi that dominate grocery shelves--but makers of two dozen of the smallest “craftsman” wines, bearing names that few but the most knowledgeable oenophiles would recognize.

Several of the wines destroyed in the fire were handmade first vintages from young winemakers hoping to make a mark in the rarefied world of boutique wineries, where bottles sell to private lists and exclusive restaurants for $50 to $100.

Days after the June 15 fire, which continued to smolder long before anyone could get in to assess the destruction, the winemakers were still stunned.

“This is an emotional thing,” said Bob Foley, gazing forlornly at a charred sea of green bottles, cardboard cases and fallen roof beams at the century-old cellars, “It’s violence. It’s chaos. It’s loss.”

Foley, 46, is the winemaker for nearby Pride Mountain Vineyards, a boutique that lost more than 100 cases of 1998 cabernet and merlot. Also consumed by the flames, which investigators believe spread from a faulty water heater, were 350 cases of Foley’s first batch of his own wine, Robert Foley Vineyards claret. He and his wife, Diana, invested more than 10 years creating it.

“These wines were produced from vines that we planted in the early 1990s,” Foley recounted bitterly. “Each bottle was hand-chamoised by my wife, hand-filled with a siphon hose, hand-corked with a single-lever hand corker, hand-capsuled, hand-labeled and hand-stacked in a case . . . all so it could burn here.”

Like the other limited-production winemakers, Foley stored his wine at the Kornell Cellars because there was no room for it on the small estate where he lives and works.

Duane Dappen, 37, stood on a recent afternoon ankle-deep in the scorched remains of what was once his private vintage, bottled under the name D-Cubed. The midday sun glinted off shards of glass and foil wrappers at his feet as he sifted the rubble like a forensic investigator searching for a clue or, in this case, an intact bottle. The tips of the tallest conifers and live oaks from nearby Spring Mountain peered over the edge of the roofless building like spectators at a crime scene.

“Just think of all the wooing women that has been lost here,” Dappen muttered, trying to make light of the devastation.

According to Mark Barclay, battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry Fire Protection/Napa County Fire Department, the fire started in a ground floor room that contained electric equipment and spread upstairs to wooden pallets and cardboard boxes holding the wine.

For two days about 63 firefighters from six local departments struggled to battle the fire, an effort complicated by a record heat wave that hit the valley the day before, bringing temperatures that topped 110 degrees. Another challenge was breaking through the concrete walls and steel roof of the building to get at the fire, a task finally accomplished with cranes.

Witnesses said that when firefighters directed hoses into the second story of the structure, the ground floor filled with wine-red water, colored by the cabernets, pinots and zinfandels stored above.

Other small-scale winemakers, like Ray Coursen, owner of the Elyse Winery in Yountville, lost their precious “library” collection representing each of their annual vintages. A wine library is essential for the rite of “vertical tastings,” which show progress and subtle differences in the product from year to year.

Coursen lost his stock of 1992-98 magnums, the large bottles containing two-fifths of a gallon that are often used in tastings. “It’s hard to put a dollar value on these things,” he said. “There is a lot of sentimental value that can’t be measured.”

Winemaking is a $1.3-billion business in the Napa Valley, accounting for a little less than a fourth of the state’s total winery sales. California leads the nation in wine production and sales.

But Napa is not a place where it is all about the money.

“What makes it a unique industry,” said wine consultant Vic Motto, “is that every wine has its unique personality and cannot be replaced. Each bottle is of a certain place and of a given year, and once that’s gone you can never retrieve it.”

Gregory Graham, 49, learned of the fire when he called his office from San Francisco International Airport after returning from his honeymoon in France. He had 3,000 cases of his own G. Graham Wine, nearly all of his 1998 vintage, stored in the cellars.

On the phone was Joan Rombauer of Rombauer Vineyards in St. Helena, where Graham is winemaker. “I’ve got some very, very bad news for you,” she said.

Graham recalled: “I thought someone had died. Then when she told me what happened, I still felt like someone really had died.

“You have to understand,” he said. “Wine that I put my own name on is part of me. That’s who I am.”

The total loss from the fire, being reviewed by insurance agents, is estimated at $40 million. It is typical of Napa Valley culture that one of the volunteer firemen who helped battle the blaze is also one of the insurance agents at work estimating the damage.

Although the most emotional loss was for the small winemakers, the biggest financial losers in the fire were larger producers Koerner Rombauer and his partner, former Los Angeles film executive Richard Frank. Rombauer and Frank own the cellars and produce wine together under several labels.

Interviewed in his office at the cellars, Rombauer was philosophical. He said his spirits were buoyed when other wineries in the valley called, offering him wine to help replace his lost stock.

“I must’ve had 150 phone calls from all the other wineries, asking if they could help,” said Rombauer, a former pilot whose family produced the famous “Joy of Cooking” cookbook that is a staple in many American kitchens.

As he spoke with a visitor, Rombauer was interrupted by a consoling telephone call from San Francisco restaurateur Pat Kuleto, who lost a batch of his own first vintage Kuleto Ranch wine in the fire.

“Hey, Pat,” Rombauer said. “Yeah, we had us a hell of a barbecue. But at the end of the day the grapes are still growing.”