Clones, Cops, and Cabernet: A True Tale of Napa Chicanery

By Swinchatt Jonathan
August 31, 2009

 

In the mid-1990s, a prominent national American law journal featured on its cover a photograph of a well-known Napa Valley winemaker. He was seated in an elegant chair, a glass of red wine in his hand and a self-satisfied smile on his face. Inside was an interview in which he recounted how he had worked with the French in the mid-1980s to import special wine grape clones with which he established a vineyard upon which his reputation rested. It was quite an enchanting tale, and somewhat true. A bit of fact checking would have revealed, however, that it was not his story and, in addition, that the one he provided was incomplete. The true tale is told below, in all its deceptive detail, publicly for the first time. Some names have been changed to protect privacy; Caldwell is not one of them

 

 

 

Stepping into his mother’s boutique one day in 1968, John Caldwell’s eye was caught by a pair of Danish clogs, then an exotic new style of footwear that instantly tweaked his sense of adventure and activated his entrepreneurial genes. As any loving, and aspiring, son might, he quickly wrested the clog distributorship from his mother and opened a shoe store in the town of Yountville, in the Napa Valley. Over the next few years he would add four more, a retail micro-empire that sold everything from sandals to stilettos in grades that ranged from cheap, stiff Korean to butter-soft Italian. Business grew, the money poured in. Caldwell drove a black Cadillac Seville while wearing tailor-made shirts open to the navel to show off his gold chains. Life was good but as any young, ambitious, flamboyant, and affluent entrepreneur might do, he got restless.

It was by then the late 1970s. The mythical Paris Tasting of 1976 had brought renown to the Napa wine industry, money was beginning to flow in, and land values were escalating. Caldwell’s roving eye lighted on a dairy farm in the hills east of the city of Napa, in the area known as Coombsville. The Swiss-born Kreuzer family had made cheese on the property since the 1880s, but it was now just scrubby rundown pastureland in the hands of the last family survivor. Still, the 54 acres had a view directly up the Napa Valley to Mount St. Helena and a family photo album suggested to Caldwell that a bit of land restoration could transform the property into enviable real estate. He bought the farm, drew up 5 ten-acre lots, and built a road just before the Napa planning commission decided that growth was harmful and decreed a moratorium on development. It appeared that Caldwell was stuck with 54 acres of useless pasture and a fancy road to nowhere. At least, that is, until friends suggested he plant grapes, sell them, and turn the land that had once supported livestock into a cash cow.

At that time, Coombsville was not a popular place for grapes. Thought too cold for Cabernet Sauvignon, a few outfits — Phelps and Newton among them — grew some Chardonnay but mostly the land lay bare of vines. Caldwell had little knowledge of farming or viticulture so he sought the advice of the county agricultural agent who suggested he plant Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. He set out to do so.

In April of 1981, as a pair of Caterpillar tractors began preparing the ground for planting Chardonnay, Caldwell’s vineyard developer took off for Easter in Mexico. Shortly thereafter, Caldwell’s phone rang, the tractor operator on the other end with the news that the ripping tines — thick, 4 foot long, hooked claws of steel designed to break up and loosen the soil— were scrabbling up a lot of rock, what should they do? Not knowing quite how to answer, Caldwell arrived in the vineyard-to-be in his calfskin boots. Hiking himself onto the tractor, he took off across the vineyard. “I saw the black dirt boiling up behind the Cat and got all emotional. I fell in love with the land and never looked back.” Caldwell chucked the calfskin boots and planted the vineyard himself. Along with the Chardonnay, he planted a pair of hydro-thermographs to record variation in moisture and temperature. Instead of the cool Region I he had been led to expect, over the next two years the records revealed a warm Region II, more than adequate for Cabernet Sauvignon, the king of grapes that Caldwell had wanted to plant all along.

Caldwell is short and slim with a bent leg from a bout of childhood polio. He walks with a cane but his demeanor overcomes any thought of disability. His blue eyes flash with energetic intensity, his grin broadcasts love of life, and his enthusiasm involves him totally in whatever scheme he might embrace. So it was with wine. Knowing little about viticulture, he began to gulp information, in the process becoming deeply interested in research being done, particularly in France, on grape clones, the genetic variants of grape varieties that have been developed and propagated to emphasize particular characteristics such as flavor, yield, or aroma. It was an interest that would soon engage the playful rogue that lurks within the Caldwell psyche.

In 1982, intensifying his search for vinous knowledge, Caldwell hired Galo Maclean, a Napa nurseryman, to take him on a tour through French winemaking. McLean had the dubious distinction, at least for the time, of having worked at the largest winery in Ohio, but more to the point also had a degree in enology from the University of Bordeaux. The climax of the trip was a tour of Chateau Haut Brion where Caldwell was introduced to the program of clonal research that had begun in the mid 1970’s. He was impressed — that Haut Brion’s wealthy, and presumably smart, American owners were willing to put good money into the arcane study of clonal variation suggested to Caldwell that perhaps here was a quick way into the cutting edge of viticulture and winemaking. He returned to Napa determined to bet his future on French clones and set out to gather enough material to plant a vineyard.

His first forays were not encouraging. Experts at the University of California at Davis, America’s foremost program in viticulture and enology, told him that, yes, he could import clones from France but the plants would have to go through quarantine and testing to ensure they were not diseased. That would take two years, with no guarantee of how many plants would survive. Potentially, Caldwell might end up with just a few vines that he would then need to plant as source material for buds to graft onto rootstock to produce more buds and so on until he had enough vines for a commercial vineyard. He couldn’t afford to wait the ten years this might take — he had to find a quicker way.

Caldwell had heard the many stories that circulated through the American wine industry of clonal smuggling — people bringing in French vines in suitcases and small planes — but had rejected that alternative as impractical, however attracted to the romance and risk he might have been. But then he heard, from Maclean, of a grower in Canada, Paul Vascos, who imported French clonal material for his vineyard on the Niagara Peninsula near Niagara Falls. In a phone conversation, Caldwell found that Vascos had started a nursery for clone propagation, part of a research project he had undertaken with the University of Toronto. Asked if he had any plants available, Vascos said he had an order already grafted — Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc — for a client who decided not to buy them. He promised to take an inventory and get back to Caldwell, which he did, with the news that 5,000, maybe 6,000 grafted vines were available, and cheap as well, $1.85 Canadian, then $1.35 American. With visions of an instant vineyard, Caldwell said he would take them all.

In the fall of that year, 1983, Caldwell traveled east for the annual New York shoe show. While there, he disappeared for a day, flying to Canada to meet Vascos, see the plants and figure out how to get them back across the border. The plants looked good and they were from a nursery in France that Caldwell had visited, so he told Vascos he would return in the winter when the plants were dormant and find a way to get them into the U.S. With a knowing glance, Vascos suggested that Caldwell call his friend Richard Lyon, a lawyer who had a small vineyard just across the border. “He’s brought in some Riesling clones and some other German white varieties and he’s always been good to people like yourself. Maybe he can be of help.” When they talked, Lyon immediately offered Caldwell a place to stay “while you’re smuggling that stuff over from my friend Paul Vascos.” So Caldwell was set — a contact in Canada, plant material straight from France from a nursery he knew, and a place to stay and repackage the vines for shipping to California. Now all he had to do was get the material across the border.

He knew when he would do it —after the February New York shoe show — but not how. First he suggested to Joy — then his business partner, now his wife — that they rent an RV after the show in New York and visit Niagara Falls. That idea lasted all of three short phrases: Niagara Falls? In the winter? Are you kidding? Forced to consider alternatives, Caldwell focused on a large car with a huge trunk, finding one at a Rent-A-Wreck agency in Buffalo. After the show, he flew there and then drove to Lyon’s place near Niagara Falls.

The Lyons were more than hospitable. Perhaps sensing that Caldwell hadn’t yet developed a talent for the relaxed deceit that lies at the core of the smuggling game (a prescient perception), Kathleen Lyon — 60-ish, a bit frail and, as a local, likely to be above suspicion despite her experience — offered to go over and get the vines. So Caldwell placed his vision of the future in her hands and off she drove, making four trips and bringing across some 4300 grafted vines before she’d had enough, leaving 1500 plants in Canada. Caldwell, of course, wants them all so, on a fateful Sunday morning, he calls Vascos to let him know he’s on his way for the final load, gets in his unheated Rent-A-Wreck, and crosses into Canada.

The pickup goes without a hitch — the trunk handles the full load, Caldwell hands over the final check, gets the receipts, and heads for the border. It is noon and the lines at Customs and Immigration are long but, just after he pulls up, Caldwell sees a booth opening right next to the office. With hardly a thought, and pushed by anxiety, he heads over, first in line.

The officer greets Caldwell with a brisk “Good morning” and then proceeds with all the usual stuff — name, driver’s license, citizenship, all very friendly, until he asks to check the trunk. “You want to check my trunk?” asks Caldwell. “Yeah, that’s kind of what I do, you know” replies the customs officer. So Caldwell lifts the lid and there, reposing quietly in the cavernous space, lie 1500 grapevines. “What are these?” asks the officer. Caldwell hesitates and then replies, with obvious reluctance, “Ah…those are grapevines?” The officer asks where he got them and Caldwell, with all the incisive insight of a true amateur, tells some cockamamie story of buying the vines that morning in New York and crossing the border to see the falls and have breakfast — he’s now on the return journey. “Why don’t you just tell that to my boss,” replies the officer and up they go to the office above.

The boss wants to see the vines. Peering into the trunk, he asks Caldwell where he got them. Caldwell gives him the name of one of the nurseries he knows of on the New York side of the border. “How much did you pay?” And then Caldwell, perhaps wanting to show that he is, indeed, an experienced international traveler, replies without the slightest hesitation “Canadian or American?” Breathless from a fit of laughter, the officer wheezes out “Canadian or American…” and then, still chuckling, orders Caldwell up to his office.

And the grilling begins. “You’re in bad trouble. The Department of Agriculture has told us to crack down. We want the whole story starting with where you got the vines.” Caldwell, holding to some innate personal omerta, won’t tell, which annoys the customs officer who gives an order to check out the car with a dog sniffer. Caldwell prays that the last renter was not a pothead and watches while they bring up all his goods including the brief case that contains the UPS receipts for the 8 or 9 boxes he has already shipped as shoes to the store in Yountville. The questioning continues, Caldwell giving up as little as he can, and then one of the customs people cannily suggests that maybe the receipts are not really for boxes of shoes, maybe Caldwell had moved more than this one load, perhaps they had better check with UPS.

Caldwell is now sweating, realizing that if they intercept the shipments he loses everything — the vines, his money, his vision of an instant vineyard of French clones. Both officers leave the room. Caldwell glances with apprehension at the receipts across the desk and, in a moment of shear desperation, snatches up the pile of yellow paper, frenziedly rips it to shreds, stuffs it in his mouth and begins to chew. Slowly, swallow after noxious swallow, the receipts disappear down his throat. Not quite finished when he hears them returning, Caldwell reaches into his mouth and extracts a small slimy yellow wad and stuffs it in his pants pocket just as the officers open the office door.

“Where are those receipts, they were right here, what the hell did you do with them?” demands the customs officer, now furious. Caldwell — suddenly realizing that this is all a play in which his part requires him, despite his obvious guilt, to look and act bewildered — denies any knowledge of the receipts or their fate. This further infuriates the inspector who has Caldwell strip-searched in the unheated bathroom (winter, remember, about 6 degrees F). They find little but note on the report a small wet wad of yellow substance, perhaps paper. The inspector, in a rage, curses Caldwell out, accusing him of swallowing the receipts, which Caldwell continues to deny.  When he is threatened with jail, Caldwell recognizes that the situation has taken on a tone that is increasingly unfriendly and more serious than he has so far considered. He begins talking, giving them as much as he can without exposing the people who have helped him. And then, finally, perhaps recalling some episode of an otherwise long forgotten cop show on TV, he asks to make a phone call.

Connecting with Rick Lyon, the lawyer tells him to “Sit tight and say nothing more. I know this guy’s boss, the head of the local customs office.” Caldwell clams up and the frustrated officers leave. “I don’t know who you know,” says the customs official when he returns a short time later, “but he must be high up because I’ve been ordered to release you in the custody of Richard Lyon. We’ll keep the vines but you can go.” Ever hopeful, Caldwell asks a bit plaintively, but with admirable bravado, “Do you really need to keep the vines? Couldn’t I take them off your hands?” and gets a harsh and pompous lecture about the law, the potential for vine disease, the need to destroy the vines and how lucky he is. Caldwell leaves, scarcely chastened, and at the first opportunity calls his parents, telling them they must get the UPS boxes out of the shoe store — now— and into a safe place lest they be confiscated by federal officials who almost certainly will be visiting his stores. At dinner that night, over a good bottle of Riesling made from grapes grown on smuggled vines, Rick Lyon tells Caldwell not to worry, he’ll get fined but perhaps it won’t be too much.

Back home in Napa, Caldwell feels relieved, saved from disaster. With 4300 vines now lying quietly in the cheese barn, the coolest place on the ranch, he returns to the last stages of renovation of his Victorian farmhouse. On the slope of a hill, the living room windows look out onto the surrounding land, right down Kreuzer Lane, at that time free of houses. And then, about ten days after his return from New York, just about when he thinks he’s in the clear, an ominous line of cars makes the turn onto Kreuzer Lane, five in all, a mix of police and county vehicles, heading directly for the only habitation around — Caldwell’s house. His gut clenches just as surely as it would have had they been black, unmarked helicopters and he thinks “So here it comes.”

The cars pull into his driveway and park right in front of the house. Caldwell comes out spattered with paint. Nick, who works for the CDFA (California Division of Food and Agriculture) and is a friend, tells Caldwell that the police have a search warrant, they’ve been told Caldwell has been smuggling grapevines from Canada and he must turn them over.

Caldwell, standing near the cheese barn, aware that the raw materials for his dream vineyard lie just a few yards away, reaches deep into an untapped reserve of creative deception, snatches out a story, and delivers it with a confidence and panache the had been missing entirely from his earlier pathetic performance at the border. With words flowing freely as if he had been rehearsing for days, Caldwell tells them okay, they’ve got him, he knows they want the vines, he realizes he needs to give them up, but there are complications they need to consider. He is not in this alone, there are other people involved — a group of growers — and if they get wind of this police operation the vines will quickly disappear. They are in cold storage in Sonoma, Caldwell tells them, but if you give me 24 hours I’ll have them here for you. That’s the only way you’ll get them because otherwise the other guys will snatch them and they will just disappear.

Caldwell sees the cops and county officials eyeing each other, mutely asking if they should buy this shuffle. He is confident that he has done a good job but wonders if he has put it over or if his dream is down the drain. And then they say, perhaps unexpectedly, “O.K., we’ll give you a chance, but no mistake, we’ll be back tomorrow and if the vines aren’t here you’re going down.” Caldwell does his best to quell the rising energy of relief until they drive off, waiting for them to change their minds, turn around, and activate the search warrant. They don’t, so Caldwell gets to work.

First, realizing that they still could return and make the search, he gets the vines out of the cheese barn and, like some 18^th century aspiring buccaneer, buries his treasure beneath an oak tree in what today is the vineyard. The plan that has sprung forth is to duplicate the mix of vines with cuttings from Galo Mclean’s certified California nursery and substitute these for the French material. He’s hoping that if he matches the box weights of the UPS shipments — customs agents have searched each of his shoe stores so he knows they have contacted UPS — and the mix of varieties on the receipts he got from Paul Vascos, any inconsistencies in the replacements will get overlooked. His success now depends on getting the cuttings and being able to put the package together by the next morning, all of which he assumes will happen, seeing no other way out.

His call to Mclean’s nursery yields success — within an hour he has made the trip and loaded his pickup. On the way back, he stops at a hardware store for a scale so he can match the weights on the box labels, thinking how serendipitous it is that he has saved the original packages. Then he begins the final and crucial task of bundling the cuttings, forging new tags, and reproducing, as closely as he can, what now lies under the oak tree in the field out back. Working with feverish care well into the early hours of the morning, he completes the job, satisfied that he has at least done his best.

At ten the next morning, Nick arrives, quite obviously apprehensive that Caldwell will not have the vines and that he, Nick, will have to place his friend under arrest. When Caldwell tells him that the vines are in the garage, Nick’s body sags with relief and his face breaks into a grin of pure joy as he thanks Caldwell effusively as they walk into the barn. Nick takes a cursory glance at the boxes and they load the packages into his pickup. He hands Caldwell a receipt and drives off, blithely unaware that the French wood he wanted and thinks now resides in the bed of his truck has been replaced by fully certified California stock. Caldwell, equally relieved, watches as the car turns the corner onto the main road, making sure that Nick is truly gone. His improvised, amateur con appears to have been accepted without question.

Relief, however, is fleeting, replaced by raging paranoia. Convinced the authorities are watching him, Caldwell sees spies wherever he looks. Every helicopter that passes overhead has its eye on him, every police car he sees is following him, every person on the street seems to be watching him. The postman, the meter reader, the UPS delivery man all seem somehow different, as if they are more interested than usual in what is happening at the farm. His friends tell him not to worry, but his mind is stuck on suspicion and he sees conspiracy everywhere.

Still, March arrives and he realizes that, watched or not, he must make the next move. It is still cold out, the plants are dormant, but when it reaches 50 degrees (F) the buds are going to push and he’s not ready to plant. The soil needs to be prepared — in the meantime the plants must get into cold storage or all his time and effort will be lost in the greenery of premature bud break. When he calls Mclean, the only nurseryman he trusts, Caldwell is told “I’m full up just now but as soon as I get some space you can bring them over.”

Caldwell waits anxiously for the call, envisioning all the while buds beginning to swell on the vines. When the call finally comes, Caldwell borrows his parents old Ford van, a vehicle whose gaping interior will hold all the plants, drives over to the oak tree, digs up the vines and throws them in the back of the van, filling every scrap of space. He heads home, parking in front of the long, low, barn that is divided into several bays. His father joins him, offering to drive the loot to the nursery. And then, as they stand there talking, looking right down Kreuzer Lane, they see a California state car turn onto the lane, heading directly for them. As Caldwell tells it:

“I’ve just gotten the vines out of the dirt to take them to cold storage and this guy drives down Kreuzer Lane. I think, son of a bitch, they were watching, they were watching, they must have been, how could they time it like this. So I jump into the van, pull out and start backing into the barn so you couldn’t see the vines through the glass door. Well, the first garage is not so tall, but the van is high, so I just beer-canned it, the top just crumpled. I’d just jammed it in, couldn’t go forward or backward, it was just stuck. Nick drives up and parks right in front of the van. I’m in the van, stuck, can’t go forward, can’t go backward. I get out of the van and there are the vines, its just full. Nick walks up to me, glancing at the van as he does, and says ‘John, it looks like I have to make your day worse than it already is. I have to give you a ticket. There will be a fine, I don’t know how much it will be, but you’ll get one from customs. I want you to sign here, one from USDA one from the California CDFA, sign here, I’m sorry but it’s what I have to do.’ I say, Okay Nick, that’s all right. Nick says ‘Well, I have to go, good afternoon’ and he gets in his car. And I was shaking, I thought for sure I had at least lost my vines, perhaps I might even be thrown in jail. So he drives down Kreuzer Lane, takes a right, Dad and I are still standing there not saying a word, just sure that now a policeman’s going to come and take the vines. But no one comes and Dad turns to me and says ‘Well, I guess you beat them, I’ll take the vines up to the Nursery.’ He did, we planted the vines in the spring and two years later — the third year for the vines — we made wine that Randy Dunn used as a major component of his 1986 Napa Valley Cabernet. When that got a 90 from Robert Parker we were off and running.

Epilogue

Caldwell prepped the vineyard in the spring of 1984 and planted the vines, losing only about 4 percent. The next year, 1985, some of the vines showed red leaves, a common sign of disease. His nurseryman, Maclean, took a look and told him that Vascos had sold him “a pile of crap” —  diseased vines with leaf roll virus. Angered, the next time he went to New York Caldwell spoke with a lawyer, preparing to sue Vascos. After all, Caldwell had traipsed through an angst-filled hell to plant his French-clone vineyard and if Vascos had given him diseased material, he should share in the suffering. But Vascos was convincing. He told Caldwell, “John, the vines don’t have leaf roll, you know the nursery they came from, you know how careful the French are, give the vines a chance, they are not diseased.” Caldwell fertilized that spring and the vines never turned red again.

Later in 1985, wanting to continue planting with French rootstocks and recognizing that he was not really suited to a life of smuggling and deceit (to say nothing of the flags that would be triggered by his passport at the border) Caldwell began seeking other sources of plant material. Asking the Director of the Foundation for Plant Materials Science at the University of California at Davis how he might import some French rootstocks, she replied “Why, John, we have those rootstocks in our collection.” “Clean?” asks Caldwell. “Oh yes, Austin Goheen cleaned them all up — its just that no one ever uses them. How many do you want?” Caldwell ordered 500 of each, picked them up in 1986, and planted them, the first commercial use of these rootstocks in the United States. Later, Caldwell’s operation became a certified California nursery from which he also sold cuttings from his French-bred but now thoroughly Americanized vines, turning every pruned stick into cold cash. And then, in the mid-1990s, working with Pierre-Marie Guillaume — a French nurseryman from Charcenne, France — this one-time smuggler of French plant material became the first American importer of French clones licensed by ENTAV (Establissement National Technique pour l’Amelioration de la Viticulture), the French regulatory agency.

For Caldwell, however, the denouement had come one day in 1987 during a visit with Austin Goheen. He had called Goheen to ask about Italian rootstocks, material that Caldwell thought might be suited to the kind of dry farming he was doing on the slopes of his hillside vineyard. Goheen said sure, come on down, we have this Italian researcher here who might be able to help. After a good conversation with the Italian, as he was getting ready to leave Caldwell asked Goheen if he remembered the guy back in ’84 who brought the French material in from Canada and got caught. Goheen replies “Oh, yeah, I remember, you know John these guys go to all this trouble to bring stuff in from France and you know most of it is virused.” “Oh, yeah?” says Caldwell. “Yeah, they sent me some samples and let me tell you, the stuff was filthy.” Goheen goes to his desk and thumbs through the data for 1986, the year the results came in, and he says “Here it is, come here and take a look, here’s Cabernet Sauvignon 337, corky bark, Cabernet Sauvignon 337, leaf roll, Merlot 181, stem pitting…the whole lot infected, every one was garbage. Why would they do that?” “Austin,” says Caldwell, “I was that guy.” “You?” says Goheen. “You were the guy that brought all this crap in from France?” “Yeah” replies Caldwell. The portly Goheen practically falls off his chair, laughing so hard he’s bouncing, “Ha, Ha, oh that is good, oh my god John, you see you went to all this trouble and it was all crap.” Caldwell and Goheen went on to become very good friends, but Caldwell never told Goheen that the material he had tested and found diseased had come directly from a California certified nursery. Goheen went to his grave believing that Caldwell had been the unwitting dupe of unscrupulous French nurserymen.

After selling grapes to a variety of prominent wineries for more than a decade, Caldwell began producing his own wine in 1999. In 2004 he sold the nursery business in order to focus his energy on the development of a group of varietal wines including Malbec and Tannat. Retired for decades from smuggling, Caldwell still enjoys being a bit out on the edge.