Old Kraft Vineyard, St. Helena, Napa Valley
by, Carl Such – friend of Bob Biale
The history of Franz Kraft’s vineyard from 1880 to the present day exemplifies Zinfandel’s preservation in Napa Valley. Zinfandel was cultivated widely in California from the 1850’s. Franz Kraft, a German immigrant, settled in St. Helena and bought 23 acres with vines in the shadow of the Mayacamas mountains. He expanded the vineyard and in 1884 added a small winery. His building is still in use at the Spottswoode Winery. By the late 1880’s, Franz’s first vineyard as well as most plantings in California succumbed to phylloxera. Starting over in the 1890’s Franz re-established the vineyard by grafting Zinfandel cuttings to disease resistant St. George rootstock. Those vines, planted one hundred and thirty years ago, continue to flourish, producing fruit for Biale’s single vineyard release, Old Kraft.
In the one hundred years after Franz replanted his vineyard, the property often changed hands being divided into multiple lots. One large lot became the site of the Spottswoode Winery, Bill and Margie Hart bought one in 2001, five acres in the northwest corner of the original Kraft vineyard that remained untouched but untended. What they found on their new property was a patchwork of neglected old vines from the original Kraft vineyard, head-trained vines untended and infested with the so-called Tree of Heaven weed that choked the vines and emitted an odor that could not have come from Heaven. Initially, they assumed it was time to rip and replant, but their friend Margaret Duckhorn, whose family wine company’s vineyard had become a neighbor, offered an intriguing challenge – Why rip out the distressed vineyard and create still another block of Cabernet Sauvignon indistinguishable from the vineyards around it?
Why not take on the challenge of restoring this unique, historic vineyard? Not being ones to shy away from challenges, with more romanticism than understanding, Bill and Margie enrolled in the one-week intensive course in viticulture at UC Davis. Armed with just enough knowledge to be dangerous, they dove head-on into the task of rehabilitating the distressed vineyard. Fortunately, they sought help from an old hand in management of older vineyards, Jess Madrigal, whose foreman Bill Pease quickly warmed up to the project.
The next decade brought the formidable tasks of clearing the vineyard of weeds, funguses, viruses, bad bugs and unproductive vines, training and reshaping the productive ones, and replacing the empty positions with new vines. Steve’s Hardware became curious about the number of shovels Bill was buying. When told of the difficulty of levering the Tree of Heaven’s networks of roots out of the ground, they offered to replace the broken shovels free of charge. Bill soon upgraded to a crowbar and then a mini excavator to pull out the remaining root systems. One of the more important improvements Bill Pease and the Harts decided to make was the installation of a tile drain system to enable much earlier access to the vineyard after the end of Northern California’s rainy season. The other important decision was to preserve prunings from the most productive vines for grafting onto newly planted St. George rootstock, just as Franz Kraft had done a century before. Bill and Margie wanted hands-on involvement in the rehab project, so early on, Jess Madrigal taught them how to prune the old head-trained vines.
Meeting Bob Biale was a pivotal moment in the continued restoration of the vineyard. After meeting the Harts and appraising the developing vineyard, Bob committed to buy their entire harvest for the next several years, a relationship that has stood for 24 years. Bob and Bill saw the future potential for a single vineyard release.
Based on a map of the central portion of St. Helena dated 1871 hanging inside the entrance to St. Helena City Hall, Bill was pretty sure their property had been part of the original Kraft vineyard. Hours spent poring through microfilms of the weekly St. Helena Star, pinpointed the time and place of Kraft’s plantings, and superimposing the Kraft Vineyard on a current day map of the area, showed that the Hart’s property constituted the northernmost corner of the Kraft vineyard. These findings were later verified by the records of the St. Helena Historical Society. Facts in hand, Bill approached Mary Novak, matriarch of Spottswoode, for her agreement that designating the vineyard “Old Kraft” would not be an issue for Spottswoode. Mary agreed and Old Kraft was launched as a Biale vineyard designated release of the 2006 vintage. The Harts and Biales share a commitment to continue a one hundred and seventy year tradition of making Zinfandel wine in Napa Valley. Some things were meant to last.
