Mosel and the Kingdom of Prussia At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the Mosel region was assigned to the Kingdom of Prussia. Following this, the region went through a period of great change. Initially, the elimination of the domestic German customs borders brought high competitive pressure on Mosel from other big wine-growing areas (e.g. Pfalz, Baden, Württemberg) and prices decreased dramatically. In addition to this, bad weather conditions and the outbreak of new pests in the region, saw regular crop failures, leading to economic hardship for many winegrowers in the region.  Despite the initial deterioration of the region, the Prussian government saw Mosel as a wine region worth saving, deciding to invest heavily into the wine industry. During the 1850s the construction of the railway line along the river was completed providing faster and easier access to the German Reich´s main traffic routes and therefore hugely improving the logistics of moving wine around the country and beyond.  Additionally, government domaines were built for research purposes, further developing modern technologies that were being applied in the vineyard and wineries. The focus was set on the wine quality: winemakers should grow the Riesling grape variety, they should harvest late and be highly selective when picking the grapes to produce better quality, and the wines should be "natural“ (without any additives, without being chaptalized, etc.). In the 1880s several vintages were of outstanding quality, and the interest in Mosel Riesling grew around Europe.  By the 1890s Mosel was enjoying a golden era in which its reputation for fine wine production saw a boom in sales throughout the 1890s. Furthermore, the consumer´s understanding of taste changed from heavy red wines to light, refreshing whites, rich in aroma and acidity.  The boom led to tourism, many people from all over Europe came to the valley, including famous artists such as William Turner and poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Mosel Riesling was drunk by nearly all secular and ecclesiastical rulers of Europe – Berlin, St. Petersburg, London, etc. Kaiser Wilhelm II also visited the area several times. The wines were on the lists of all top restaurants around the world. Mosel was the world’s fine wine mecca.  
The wine styles of Mosel’s golden era 
By the beginning of 20th century, nearly all of the wines coming from the Mosel area were dry or maximum off-dry because there was no technical possibility to interrupt fermentation unnaturally. All of the Rieslings were fermented by natural yeasts only. They were kept in large "Fuder“-barrels – kept on their lees (sur lie – the dead yeast cells) for several months, sometimes even for more than a year, adding textural, aromatic and flavour complexity. The style of our dry and off-dry wines could be compared to the wines from 100 years ago. All of our wines ferment naturally, in the spirit of authenticity, vineyard character, complexity and longevity. No fining agents, enzymes or other additives are ever used. Most of the wines remain on their yeasts ("sur lie“) for months, gaining in mellowness and body.   During that time, winemakers did not have the technical possibility to stop fermentation earlier with a higher proportion of residual sugar. The machine needed for this procedure, containing a special filter which stabilises the wines by pulling yeasts and other solids out, only came into commercial use in the 1960s. An invention that would turn the style of the region’s wines on its head and damage its reputation as one of the world's leading fine wine regions.  In 1868 the Prussian tax authorities published the first official wine terroir classification in the world. This classification was used to set tax rates – the higher the quality of the single vineyard was rated, the higher the tax rates for the winegrowers (the darker red coloured the plots on the map – see map).  In addition, this map was an unprecedented tool for promoting wine by the Prussian government and proved a fantastically successful approach in identifying the nuances of each vineyard and was to be imitated by several other wine regions in Germany and beyond.  

Despite being 150 years ago, we think that this classification was very accurate in terms of identifying quality. The completely south-facing steep slopes are still the best to grow vines in our valley. Due to enlargements during 20th century some important vineyard sites are missing, in terms of our winery, it would be Wehlener Klosterberg vineyard which has proven to belong to the red or even dark red coloured surfaces on the map.  Due to climate change, we think that several vineyard sites which are located in side valleys or on a higher altitude have actually improved over the last decades. Nowadays they would also belong to the higher or highest-rated plots. But overall their assessment was petty accurate. The World War years
 The World Wars were obviously going to have a devastating effect on the region situated on the border of France and Luxembourg and this brought an end to the golden era. Whilst Riesling was the most planted and popular variety, Pinot Noir was also grown very successfully in the region until it was banned by the Nazis in 1933. The Nazis forbade the growing of French varieties and asked vignerons to focus on the prestigious "German“ Riesling in the Mosel wine-growing area which used to be the showpiece for them, being famous all over the world. The ban quite shockingly lasted until the end of the 1980s, therefore the tradition of red winemaking was nearly completely lost in the region. I was one of the “pioneers“ in the area to cultivate Pinot Noir again by planting the first vines in 1987 on the south-facing steep slope called Graacher Himmelreich. 
Mosel: the post-war period 
After WW II there was a huge request for fruity and light white wines and with the economic hardship that followed, a refocus towards quantity rather than quality. The Mosel Rieslings were swept up in this, predestined to produce high quantity, light, sweet wines. Winemakers
all along the river enlarged their vineyard surface, not only in the steep slopes but above all in the flat lands on the other side of the river.  Growing there was much easier and less time and work intense, and therefore also a lot cheaper. Mosel wines became famous as “sweet and cheap“ all over the world – markets were flooded. This concept based on quantity led to an enormous enlargement of vineyard area in the Mosel region from 7500 hectares to 12,300 hectares in the early 1990s. The glycol scandal (when antifreeze was discovered in bulk Austrian wine shipped to large German wineries in bulk and bottled under the German winery labels) only further enhanced the bad reputation of wines from our area.  
Mosel today: a 21st-century golden era Whilst nearly everything has changed over the last two decades the whole wine-growing area still suffers from the “Black Towers“ and “Blue Nuns“ sweet and cheap German wines that despite a drop in popularity still are made in vast quantities and exported all over the world. It is our aim to help restore the wines of our valley to their former glory, therefore we focus uncompromisingly on quality in every step of our daily work.  Luckily the understanding has changed – nearly all winemakers especially the young generation rely on the traditional ways of quality winemaking again and combine it with modern technology, new insights of research, as well as their passion for the famous steep slopes of our region. Wine lovers all over the world are recognising these changes as positive and we think we are back on the right track to regain the popularity and reputation garnered to the region during the golden era of the 1880s and 1890s. Explore more Editorial 

Markus Molitor shares the fascinating history of Mosel outlining the reasons behind the region's meteoric rise to glory at the end of the nineteenth century, its demise during the two World Wars and then its economic devastation in the 1980s.

Markus Molitor outlines the history of Mosel wines and winemaking from 1815 to 2020 – and the reasons behind the wine region's meteoric rise to glory

The history of Mosel wines and vineyards

The history of Mosel wines 1815-2020

Calon Ségur was my first ever en primeur purchase. There was such hype around the 2005 vintage and I was desperate to get my hands on something, anything. At the time I was a delivery driver for a small wine merchant and it was a luxury, but I could just afford a 12-bottle case of Calon Ségur. That alone is proof of just how cheap this wine was at the time, and how little in demand. The château always had pedigree, however. It was classified as a Third Growth in 1855 – a ranking that may even have been an underestimation, given its reputation today. Evidence of wine-growing on the estate dates all the way back to the 12th century. Since then, the property has passed through the hands of some of the most important winemaking families in Bordeaux. By 1718, the Marquis de Calon owned not just Calon Ségur but Lafite Rothschild, Latour and Mouton Rothschild. With the exception of Ch. Margaux, all the future Médoc First Growths were under his management, but he famously said, “I make wine at Lafite and Latour, but my heart is at Calon.” The quote inspired the heart that adorns every bottle. More recently, the vintages produced under Georges Gasqueton in the 1920s, ’40s and ’50s remain legendary. So, what went wrong? How could an estate, favoured over Lafite and Latour, fall so far from grace? In modern times, the blame seems to have been lain firmly at the feet of Madame Denise Gasqueton who took over the property after her husband died in 1995 and managed it until her death in 2011. But current Technical Director Vincent Millet says this is an unfair assumption. And he should know. If there has been one constant at Calon Ségur through its complete transformation, it is him – having started working at Calon in 2006. “Gasqueton was very traditional in her approach,” says Millet, “but her methods were not uncommon at the time.” Millet explains how the 1970s, ’80s and even ’90s were a lean era in the Médoc. Prices for the wines hit rock bottom and costs had to be cut to survive. Philippe Gasqueton – her husband – had instigated a mass uprooting of Calon Ségur’s vines, hoping to save on labour costs, which were the estate’s biggest outgoing. Although it’s hard to believe now, they pulled up every other row of vines. While Saint-Estèphe had a great reputation for Cabernet Sauvignon, it was harder to grow than the earlier-ripening Merlot, which typically produced more fruit. As Merlot gained in popularity, plantings in the Calon vineyards grew. By the time Millet joined the estate, Merlot represented 50% of the blend at Calon.  Millet is not critical of Gasqueton’s decisions. “It was necessary to survive,” he says. But he knew Merlot was not the best variety for the Médoc and he was keen to make changes. He’d spent five years working with Ch. Margaux, Mouton, Latour, Pétrus, Haut-Brion and Lafite Rothschild, examining the effects of filtration on wine. He then joined Ch. Margaux, heading up their research development department for eight years. By the time he reached Calon, he knew that changes in the vineyard would rekindle its reputation – a disappointment to Madame Gasqueton who had invested in a new winery just a few years earlier. But Gasqueton was open to Millet’s ideas and he convinced her to build a truly state-of-the-art winery at their other estate, Ch. Capbern. “Capbern became a laboratory,” explains Millet. It was their playground, providing much of the research that would inform the work at Calon. Soon before Millet’s arrival, Gasqueton started restructuring the vineyards to make sure they met the appellation’s minimum vine density. Millet then started dividing up the vineyard and identifying the best plots and replacing the Merlot. Importantly he also insisted that rather than harvesting the Cabernet straight after the Merlot, they would wait for the fruit to be fully ripe – something he remembers having to persuade Gasqueton was necessary. “We have to act when the grapes tell us to, not the other way around,” he explains. By 2008, Cabernet Sauvignon once again represented 80% of the vineyard – the same proportion as in the estate’s legendary period in the early 20th century. By the time Gasqueton passed away in 2011, the roadmap for changing Calon’s fortunes was already in place. The estate was purchased by the insurance company Suravenir in 2012. And the new owners, much to Millet’s delight, were happy to invest in the property. As the financial constraints lessened, Millet was able to implement changes rapidly. Under the new management, Millet found he could be more selective with the fruit. He could easily distinguish the best plots, as they were all now vinified separately. Amazingly, production of the Grand Vin dropped by almost half. Between 2000 and 2005 production sat at around 180,000-200,000 bottles a year. Today they make just 100,000 bottles of the Grand Vin.  The second wine Marquis de Calon became the expression of Merlot at Calon Ségur (almost a copy of Calon’s profile under Madame Gasqueton). But today Calon Ségur is distinctly Cabernet-driven and it is what Millet believes is the best interpretation of Calon Ségur and Saint-Estèphe’s terroir. There’s much more to the wine than Cabernet, however. “Calon Ségur is all about finesse,” he says. “It doesn’t have the terroir to make the powerful wines of Ch. Montrose or Cos d’Estournel. The wine would be too rustic if we tried to make it more powerful.” It’s this elegance that makes it unique in the appellation, defying Saint-Estèphe’s reputation for chunky, slightly awkward tannins. Today, the estate is firing on all cylinders and it has become the darling of Saint-Estèphe.  With its change in fortune, financial security and the capable hands of Vincent Millet, the property has rediscovered its terroir – the one thing that hasn’t changed over the centuries. I still have one bottle left of that first case of 2005 I bought – and it turns out, despite being the only thing I could afford, it was a brilliant buy. Having been able to taste through every vintage since has been fascinating, allowing me to follow the estate’s journey. Maybe with the final bottle, I will toast its 20th birthday. It will neatly mark a fascinating transformation of this once ugly duckling estate – that today has become Saint-Estèphe’s most elegant. Explore all current Calon Ségur listings or read more Editorial

Until relatively recently, Saint-Estèphe estate Calon Ségur rarely lived up to its Third Growth status, but today it is one of the region’s most in-demand names. Gavin Smith speaks to winemaker Vincent Millet about this property’s miraculous transformation 

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To Kalon. For any Californian winemaker, those two words represent the Holy Grail. This vineyard in Oakville, Napa, is undeniably the region’s most famous. Perched at the foot of the Mayacamas, west of Highway 29, this site has been recognised for producing fine wine since the 19th century. Literally translating as the “highest beauty” or “highest good” from Greek, today To Kalon is home to some of Napa’s oldest vines and best Cabernet Sauvignon. “This is a Grand Cru – a premier property,” Paul Hobbs tells me, a winemaker who has a long history with the site. As a grad student at UC Davis, Hobbs would swipe the second crop from a vineyard on Walnut Drive – what happened to be BV4, Beaulieu Vineyard’s original block of To Kalon. At Mondavi – the largest holder of the hallowed site – he got to walk the rows more legitimately, and used those holdings to build Opus One – the company’s joint venture with Ch. Mouton Rothschild (although the association with the site has generally been played down). Under his own label, he’s been making wine from the Beckstoffer section of the vineyard since 1999 – and his wines, along with those from Schrader, were some of the early bottlings that put the vineyard firmly on the fine wine map, earning high scores – and lots of attention. Indeed, it was a Paul Hobbs wine that made Tor Kenward believe the vineyard was truly special. André Tchelistcheff had spoken to Kenward about BV4, but it was one of Hobbs’s bottlings that made him realise its potential. He started working with Beckstoffer plots from 2005. 
“It’s not visually impressive; it doesn’t have that ‘wow factor’,” Kenward tells me. But start digging below the surface, and you realise that you’re in the “tenderloin of Napa”, with old creek beds that run through the site. It’s an alluvial fan that runs down from the Mayacamas, sitting almost on a bench – with very little elevation. But the soils here are varied, with deep, well-drained gravels that make it perfect for Cabernet Sauvignon.  Andy Erickson – a winemaker whose resume includes Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Dalla Valle, Mayacamas and many more – first worked with the site in 2012, on a single-barrel charity lot for an auction at his children’s school. When Constellation (owners of Mondavi and co-owners of Opus One) called him to give him the chance to work with it again in 2016, he didn’t hesitate. That year, he made the first wine for the To Kalon Vineyard Company – a project that is a revival of the brand created by H.W. Crabb (known variously as Henry Walker, Hiram Walker or Hamilton Walker Crabb) in 1886, the vineyard’s godfather. “Most people know the recent history of the vineyard, and the acclaim of the wines from the past 15-20 years. But the vineyard was known for producing remarkable wines all the way back in the late 19th century. Clearly there is something there,” Erickson says.  But this vineyard is weighed down with controversy – its borders endlessly debated, with producers vying for use of the To Kalon name.  The history of the To Kalon Vineyard It’s impossible to look at To Kalon today without tracing its origins. H.W. Crabb came west from Ohio during the Gold Rush, spending six months digging in the Sierras before settling in Oakville in 1868, buying 240 acres of land at the corner of Highway 29 and Walnut Drive. He planted a wide range of crops, first making wine in 1872 under the name Hermosa Vineyards (“hermosa” meaning “beautiful” in Spanish). In 1881, he acquired another 119 acres from Eliza Yount (whose name lives on in Yountville). On land to the west of his plots, owned by John Davis, he planted additional vines – buying the fruit off Davis to feed his increasing production. In 1886, he gave his company a new name: “To Kalon Vineyard Company” – and the legend was born. Crabb reportedly said, “The name To-Kalon… means the highest beauty, or the highest good, but I try to make it mean the boss vineyard.”
 To Kalon Vineyard Company rapidly became one of the region’s largest – and most well-respected – wine producers. His wines started winning awards at competitions around the world, and he was the first to start selling wine along the East Coast. He had planted a huge range of grapes – around 400 different varieties, including Malvasia, Riesling, Chasselas, Muscat, Refosco and Cabernet Sauvignon, with the latter in particular thriving. In 1889, he bought 168 acres on the hillside to the south, close to where Harlan is now based, although it was never planted with vines during Crabb’s lifetime. In 1891, Crabb bought Davis’s 135 acres (from which he’d already been buying the fruit). In total, Crabb had more than 359 acres.  But his success wasn’t to last – phylloxera arrived in the late 19th century, and recession along with it. In 1898, Crabb sold the 135 acres he’d bought just eight years earlier – and died one year later in 1899. The vines were ripped out, replaced by cherry trees under David Perry Doak in 1911, who in turn purchased another 500 acres of vines from John Benson, south of the border of the original To Kalon (across Oakville Grade Road), which is now all owned by Constellation (used for Mondavi or Opus One). After Crabb’s death, what remained of the To Kalon Vineyard Company was sold to ES Churchill at auction, taken over by his widow Mary Churchill when he died in 1903. Wines continued to be sold under the label until the arrival of Prohibition in 1920. The winery reopened briefly to sell wine in bulk in the 1930s, but the winery building burnt down in 1939. Four years later, Martin Stelling bought most of the property – 337 acres – and replanted. He sold 90 acres to Beaulieu Vineyard (the block that became known as BV4 – and was the plot used by André Tschelistcheff made Georges de Latour Reserve). In 1944, Stelling bought an additional 1,700 acres – the McGill Ranch, which included the parcels owned by Doak (both Crabb’s 1891 parcel and the 500 acres area south of Oakville Grade Road). He named the entire property Tokalon Vineyards, and in 1945 planted Sauvignon Blanc in I Block – the legendary parcel that is today used for Mondavi’s prized, old-vine To Kalon Fumé Blanc.  Tragedy struck again, however, with Stelling killed in a car crash in 1950. The property was once more divided, sold off in pieces by his widow.   
Rosa Mondavi, along with her sons Robert and Peter, purchased 132 hectares in 1962 for the family winery, Charles Krug. After Robert struck out on his own, he bought 12 acres for himself in 1966 (that remained in the Stelling family) – in the northeast corner of the 1968 Crabb parcel, where the Mondavi winery and visitor centre remains today. He bought a further 230 acres in 1968, and then took the Charles Krug section from the rest of his family in 1978. The first time the To Kalon name appeared on a Mondavi label – and the first time since the demise of the To Kalon Vineyard Company – was on the 1986 Fumé Blanc Reserve. The I Block – the Sauvignon Blanc vines planted by Stelling in 1945 – were singled out for the first time in 1995, for the vines’ 50th anniversary. The first red – Mondavi’s To Kalon Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon – appeared with the 1997 vintage. The To Kalon Vineyard’s terroir As already mentioned, To Kalon is largely an alluvial fan that stretches down from the Mayacamas to Highway 29. It is, however, a large piece of land (the exact area depending on where you draw its borders – see below for more on the controversy around this) – and as such the terroir varies considerably. The soils are richer downslope, closer to the Highway; poorer and better-drained higher up (where many – including Hobbs and Kenward – prefer to be). The gravel composition varies with the subtle slope differences and underground water.  “It’s like any cut of meat – there are better parts than others,” Hobbs says. With over 300 original acres (at least), this is a substantial vineyard (for comparison, Clos Vougeot is 125 acres). “It’s great if you have the name To Kalon, but could be pretty average stuff.” The Beckstoffer section is numbered and lettered: A to F, from road to mountain, with A1 south of A2. For Hobbs, he likes the blocks closer to the mountains, and those that aren’t shaded by the huge walnut trees that line Walnut Drive (to the south). Hobbs noted how much warmer Oakville is than Yountville – something he used to notice when driving in the evening home from Oakville to Yountville. The mountains block the sea breezes, meaning that the cooling effect happens, but more slowly. This is partly what makes it such a special place. Tor Kenward similarly prefers some of the middle blocks in B and C, where there are some of the vineyard’s oldest vines, but with lower vigour, as well as the leaner soils closest to the mountains. As for the MacDonald or Horton block: “You could argue it’s every bit as good as Andy’s piece,” Kenward says. It, along with the Detert block, was planted in the 1940s – and in fact those two blocks are now home to some of the valley’s oldest vines. Even closer to the mountains, the gravel content is even higher, and the fruit is picked up to a month earlier than elsewhere in To Kalon. Although until now most of that fruit has been sold to Constellation, there will be opportunity for others to work with it as that contract comes to an end.   
The Beckstoffer plots of To Kalon Andy Beckstoffer bought Beaulieu Vineyard’s block, BV4, in 1993. He’d just lost a prized site – Liparita, on Howell Mountain – when the 89 acres of BV4 came up. He’d worked the site for years and leapt at the opportunity to buy it. “It’s a mystery to me why they sold it,” Paul Hobbs told me, although word on the grapevine was that they needed to liquidate funds – indeed, it was around the same time that Mondavi went public for similar reasons. Phylloxera was once more raging through the region thanks to the widely used, non-resistant AXR rootstock.  The BV4 block was in bad shape when Beckstoffer took it over and he had to replant the entire site. Paul Hobbs was one of the first to use fruit from Beckstoffer’s plots, starting to work with him from 1995/96. “Andy didn’t really realise he had a Grand Cru property,” Hobbs says. Hobbs was given free rein to pick his plots, opting for four or five plots on the western side, furthest from Highway 29. The vineyard produced its first fruit in 1997; 1998 was a difficult year; but in 1999 Hobbs was able to produce his first To Kalon bottling (although it couldn’t say so on the label). “I was loathe to tell people how young it was – but the quality was so good,” Hobbs says, still starry eyed thinking about it. “It was only four years old, but producing stunning wines.” Most fruit is sold on its weight, by the ton, but Andy Beckstoffer created a different model – one that is intricately tied to the vineyard’s name and reputation – and arguably has increased its reputation. Producers who use his fruit pay him 175 times the bottle price per ton, with a ceiling at $50,000/ton; tying the value of the fruit to the value of the final wine. “For producers like me in those days, when I didn’t have the land or ability to buy land, Andy was a saviour of sorts,” Hobbs tells me. “Because I had access to one of the top vineyards in all of Napa. I had to pay – but at least I had access.”
  The To Kalon controversy: how big is it? And is it a brand or a place? Mondavi trademarked the name “To Kalon” in 1988, and “To Kalon Vineyard” in 1994. This gave them the right to use the name on any wine from anywhere – even beyond California – and meant that no one else could use the name, even if they had plots in what was considered the original To Kalon vineyard. The first Beckstoffer bottlings only mentioned the name on the back label; but in 2000, Schrader decided to put it on the front label. The now famous lawsuit commenced. “They shouldn’t have been able to trademark it,” Hobbs tells me. “Anyone from the original To Kalon estate should have the right to the trademark as well.” In 2002, Mondavi sued Schrader for using the name on their Beckstoffer bottling. Countersuing ensued, from both Schrader and Beckstoffer (the latter arguing that Mondavi was misleading clients by using the name for wines made with fruit from beyond the vineyard’s original borders). A settlement – the details of which remain a mystery – was made in 2003, but wines made from the Beckstoffer section can now bear the name “Beckstoffer To Kalon”.  Constellation bought Mondavi in 2004, and then Schrader in 2017. Reportedly attempts were made to trademark “To Kalon Wine Company”, “To Kalon Vineyard Company” and “Rooted in To Kalon” – something, unsurprisingly, that Beckstoffer objected to. The legal battle continues today, with a fight over the naming of To Kalon Creek, and The Vineyard House – owned by Jeremy Nickel, which sits on the 1889 hillside section – arguing for the use of the name as well.  The borders of the vineyard are a constant source of debate – and given the history above, you can see why.  Andy Beckstoffer considers the original To Kalon to be only the parcels bought by Crabb in 1868 and 1881. The 1889 parcel was never planted by Crabb, so most aren’t inclined to include it as “original To Kalon”. The Detert and MacDonald plots, however, aren’t acknowledged by Beckstoffer, but were planted – and, albeit more briefly than other plots, owned by Crabb. Then there’s the “Stelling extension”, the southern section added after Crabb’s death under Martin Stelling, that Mondavi considers part of the original vineyard, but some others do not. Given the sums fruit – and wine – bearing the To Kalon name command, it’s unsurprising that its usage is so disputed.  
To Kalon: what does the wine taste like?  So what makes the wine so special? Why do winemakers fight for the fruit, and consumers for the bottles they produce? Despite the sheer variety of the site, Tor Kenward is adamant that there’s a continuity, with a profile that that site gives Cabernet. He describes it as “wall-to-wall carpeting”, a plushness to the mid-palate, a softness, that means the Cabernet isn’t hard-edged. “There’s something about the ground there,” Andy Erickson agrees. For him, To Kalon has a distinct tannin texture – not as rugged as hillside sites, but richer, with a generosity in the wines. “They are dark, aromatic, but very broad and polished,” he says. “I think the vineyard brings forward many of the complexities of Cabernet Sauvignon, but delivers it in a very approachable and elegant package.” “It’s very identifiable,” Paul Hobbs says. “It’s a structural and textural thing mostly. It’s a freshness to this sort of tannin. It has grip, but it has this uplifting character.” He explains it like a skipping stone – you think you’ve got it, then another wave comes, the wine shifting on the palate. For him, one of the most distinctive things is that Cabernet sings alone here – much better than blended with other varietals. “It didn’t need the help of its brothers,” he says. “It’s a wine that’s at peace with itself… It doesn’t shock you, except in its beauty.”
 Who owns what today in To Kalon? Robert Mondavi: From the original 12 acres, Mondavi now owns 328 acres of To Kalon, including the Stelling extension. Has the rights to use the To Kalon name.  Opus One: The 35-acre Q Block was sold to the joint venture by Mondavi in 1981, with K block acquired in 2008. Although under Constellation’s ownership they could likely use the To Kalon name, Opus One doesn’t trade on this. (To Kalon Vineyard Company uses fruit from Constellation’s holdings, both Opus One and Mondavi plots.) UC Davis: a research block that was key in developing phylloxera-resistant rootstock
Beckstoffer: 89 acres, with fruit sold to a range of producers (currently 23), including Paul Hobbs, Tor Kenward and Schrader. Producers can use the name “Beckstoffer To Kalon” on their labels. MacDonald (sometimes referenced as Horton): Graeme and Alex MacDonald are the current generation, owning 21 acres of the 1891 parcel. When their great-grandparents bought the site in 1954 (along with the Detert plot – see below – from Caroline Stelling, Martin Stelling’s widow) it was planted with cherry trees. Advised by Robert Mondavi, the MacDonalds planted vines. From 1966, they sold grapes to Mondavi – holding some back for personal use from 2004, with the first MacDonald commercial release in 2010 (just 92 cases). Although historically 75% of production here has been sold to Mondavi, I’m led to believe that the contract is coming to a close and won’t be renewed. The MacDonalds can’t use the To Kalon name on their wines currently. Detert: Today owned by Tom Garrett, a cousin of the MacDonalds. This 25-acre plot was bought in 1954, along with the MacDonald parcel – divided between the buyers’ children giving the two plots today. There’s more Cabernet Franc in this section. Most of the fruit is sold to Mondavi (with the contract, as for MacDonald, coming to an end soon), and Detert can’t use the To Kalon name on their wines. The Vineyard House: Many dispute whether or not this is original To Kalon; it’s on the hillside area purchased (but not planted) by Crabb in 1891. This plot is owned by Jeremy Justin Nickel, who is the son of the late Far Niente proprietor Gil Nickel. It’s thought to have first been planted with vines in 1980. They can’t use the To Kalon name on their wines, but have taken court action over the issue.  Wineries with To Kalon bottlings  NB Not all of these will bear the To Kalon name on the label Mondavi Winery, Opus One, To Kalon Vineyard Company, MacDonald, Detert, Alpha Omega, Amici, Alejandro Bulgheroni Estate, AXR, Bacio Divino, B Cellars, Boich Family, Bounty Hunter, Cain Concept, Carter cellars, Ch Boswell, Jacquelynn, Kitchak, Cliff Lede, Morlet, Realm Cellars, Tor Kenward, Paul Hobbs, Schrader Cellars Read more Editorial 

The Napa Valley has many incredible vineyards, but To Kalon undoubtedly sits at the top of the tree. As the To Kalon Vineyard Company releases their latest vintage, Sophie Thorpe delves into the story of this iconic site – from its 19th century origins to the fight to use its hallowed name

Explore the history of To Kalon vineyard – and what makes it such an iconic site today. We spoke to Andy Erickson, Paul Hobbs and Tor Kenward to find out more

The tale of Napa’s iconic To Kalon vineyard

The tale of To Kalon

I am too disorganised to call myself a collector, but I often find myself thinking about the multiple meanings of collecting. I have a room full of books left unread from one year to the next, whose mute reproach I feel every time I am in their presence. I have half a dozen radios, from Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper’s folding Brionvega TS502 to a Danish-made Beolit 707 from Bang & Olufsen, with its slide rule tuning device. I have a manual typewriter.  Most of us accumulate such random clutter. These were never possessions that were primarily about being useful – the Brionvega and the Beolit have long since been supplanted by a bluetooth speaker and a smartphone. They represent my membership of the design tribe.  The books carry other layers of meaning. My five years at university are on one shelf. The traces of the eight years I have spent writing a just-completed biography of Boris Iofan – Josef Stalin’s preferred architect – are spelled out in the titles of the books on another shelf. The typewriter was inherited from my father and it serves to remind me of childhood. The closest that I come to having a collection that a serious collector might acknowledge is in my chairs: a Rover chair that Ron Arad salvaged from a car, a Gio Ponti Superlegera, an Eames Lounger, a Harry Bertoia, George Sowden’s Palace chair from the 1983 Memphis collection and a deconstructed armchair designed by Rei Kawakubo. On a larger or smaller scale, humans develop complex relationships with their possessions that can go from the professionalism of full-blown collecting, to the casual significance of a row of junk shop finds on a mantlepiece. They can tell us a lot about ourselves. Marina Warner’s guide to the house in Hampstead, now run as a museum, in which Sigmund Freud spent the last year of his life, offers an arresting insight into the significance that collecting had for him. She describes the ranks of ancient bronze, ceramic and marble figures parading across the desk that Freud brought with him to London from Vienna where he no longer felt safe due to Nazi occupation in 1938. Certainly, they are beautiful, and mostly they are precious. Thanks to their association with Freud, even the few that have been established as 20th-century forgeries will have become valuable. Some are almost 4,000 years old and reflect the religious and political practices of the distant past. Others, such as Freud’s art deco cigar case, come less freighted with history. But as Warner says, “they were also tools of thought, the kitchen utensils of his imagination”.   The batterie de cuisine of psychoanalysis included Egyptian coffin masks from the Roman period, Chinese jade and gold brooches, Roman glass, a 2,500-year-old sphinx, sarcophagus lids, Babylonian cylinder seals and Egyptian heart scarabs, as well as a 19th-century neck rest from New Guinea, modern metal porcupines, and Balinese figures. The pieces in pride of place on his desk, placed in apparently random order, were his special favourites, a tiny fraction of his collection that had become permanent fixtures. From time to time, Freud made space for a few new acquisitions to get a look in. “A collection to which there are no new additions is really dead,” he told his biographer Ernest Jones. After a short interval, most of the new things would be moved into the glass-fronted cabinets positioned around his study, where they were placed in more organised groups than those standing on his desk. Greek sculptures went on a shelf together. A cluster of representations of the Egyptian god Horus were grouped on another.  In Freud’s lifetime, the collection was continually changing. Before his move to London, he toured Vienna’s antiquities dealers almost every week on the look-out for new finds. He was ready to exchange pieces for items he could not afford to buy, and was generous in gifting pieces to friends and pupils he thought would appreciate them. Freud also had no qualms about buying items that came on the market in questionable circumstances, in particular, from the unofficial excavations (sometime after 1906) at a Roman fort in Hungary.   Despite the important part it played in his life, Freud wrote very little about collecting. The nearest that he came to spelling out what drove his interest in fragments of ancient sculpture, was when he compared his own exploration of the unconscious minds of his patients to an archaeological excavation of an ancient city. “The psychoanalyst, like the archaeologist, must uncover layer after layer of the patient’s psyche before coming to the deepest, most valuable treasures.”  Freud was known to share his dining table with choice specimens to act as companions during a meal. “I must always have an object to love”, he confessed to his colleague and rival Carl Jung. When he was writing his book The Interpretation of Dreams in 1895, Freud spent the summer at Schloss Bellevue outside Vienna. He took a selection of what he called “my old grubby gods who take part in the works as paperweights for the manuscripts” with him.  Before Freud left Austria for England in 1938, his desk, his consulting room, and his study at Berggasse 19 were photographed by Edmund Engelman. Engelman’s 150 images helped Freud’s architect son Ernst to transpose the desk and its contents from a dark back room in a Viennese apartment to a sunlit Hampstead villa.  Like most collectors, Freud could never limit himself to a single field. Ronald Lauder the former MoMA chairman, for example, is known for the collection of Viennese modernism that forms the basis for his own museum, the Neue Galerie in New York. He also collects (in depth) in 15 other fields with little apparent connection between them. Lauder is fascinated by the work of the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata. He has a collection of arms and armour going back to The Crusades, and another of World War Two memorabilia. He owns some of Egon Schiele’s finest works, as well as various 18th-century French artworks. Fellow collector Rolf Fehlbaum (head of Vitra) has one of the largest collections of modern chairs in the world, and gave Frank Gehry his first European commission to design a gallery for it, but he is equally fascinated by toy robots manufactured in Japan since 1937. He calls them tiny kinetic sculptures. Where possible, he acquires their original packaging too. Perhaps the best way to understand the psychology of collecting is to see it as a spectrum. At one end, it is about order and control. In a messy and uncontrollable universe, a collection offers at least a semblance of certainty. A collection of this kind is based on provenance, completeness and authenticity. An over-restored vintage Bugatti is less desirable to a collector than one in original condition.  Every previous owner, every detail of its making forms part of its record. A red Olivetti typewriter designed by Ettore Sottsass that once belonged to David Bowie was sold at Sotheby’s for US$65,000. You can buy one (that hasn’t been owned by Bowie) for US$750, which is still a lot of money for a piece of obsolete technology. Some collectors attempt to make patterns from the things that they acquire or, like jigsaw puzzlers, set out to complete a picture by locating every piece of a set. Some try to document the evolution of a species whether the subject of their interest is biscuit tins or the eggs of a particular type of bird. Some forms of collecting require the active engagement of the collector. Wildflowers need to be picked and dried quickly before they are pressed into a book. Butterfly collectors used macabre methods such as poison jars, or squeezing the thorax, to dispatch their prey without causing so much distress that they risk damaging delicate wings. At the other end of the spectrum, the accumulation of stuff by people who die alone in homes overwhelmed by stacks of ancient newspapers and tins of cat food, is a kind of sickness. It’s a condition that can overwhelm even the most celebrated of artists. In the last 17 years of his life, Andy Warhol filled a succession of cardboard boxes with a seemingly random accumulation of objects: taxi receipts, a vinyl Ramones single signed by Joey Ramone, a piece of an ancient, mummified foot, pastel-coloured corsets and a selection of metal dentures. Every time he had a full box, it was sealed and shipped off to storage in a warehouse in New Jersey. A typical box has 400 objects in it, some have as many as 1,200. Items in them include a piece of Caroline Kennedy’s wedding cake – Warhol seems to have been a regular guest at Kennedy weddings. He showed up 20 minutes after the wedding ceremony for Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger had started, in the company of Grace Jones. He was in black leather, and wearing two wigs; she had on a huge green fur hat.   Warhol’s boxes are a collection of the uncollectable and the uncontrollable, which, thanks to the resources of the Andy Warhol Foundation, has been tamed after six years of work by a dedicated group of archivists and cataloguers. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has aestheticised the cardboard boxes. They sit on back-lit shelves in the museum to suggest that this is not a random collection of trash that Warhol never looked at, but, in the view of the museum, is in fact a time-based art piece, comprising at least 500,000 objects that took 30 years to complete. It presents a considerably less impressive sight than British Regency period architect Sir John Soane’s museum. The architect of the Bank of England put as much effort into adapting his Lincoln’s Inn Fields house (and subsequently the two adjoining houses) to display his Hogarth paintings, a sarcophagus and his architectural models, as he did to accumulating the collection itself. The Nobel prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s novel, The Museum of Innocence is an eloquent exploration of the hoarding end of the collecting spectrum. What initially appears to be an account of a doomed love affair, quickly reveals itself as an exploration of the meaning of collecting. The story’s main protagonist Kemal starts acquiring things when his relationship with his lover Füsun is going well. When she drops an earring, he finds it and puts it to one side. As Füsun falls out of love with him, Kemal begins an increasingly desperate accumulation of objects that record their relationship. He picks up each of the cigarettes that she smokes. When she has stopped seeing him altogether, Kemal starts hanging around at her parents’ house and stealing pieces of cutlery that she might have used.  What makes Pamuk’s book particularly remarkable is that he acquired a house in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district that had belonged to a Greek merchant in the Ottoman era, and transformed it into a physical Museum of Innocence. It is, of course, very far from innocent; everything inside it is a lovingly created fiction. The first thing that you see once you get inside, is a wall covered with 4,213 cigarette ends, each of them carefully annotated in Pamuk’s neat handwriting, with imaginary details of the time and place they were smoked. The rest of the house is full of equally carefully fabricated objects from cosmetics to movie posters that reflect Pamuk’s vision of the modernising Turkey of the 1970s. “I think getting attached to objects happens in traumatic times and love is a trauma,” Pamuk once said. “Perhaps when they are in trouble, people hoard things.”  When Pamuk gave me a tour of his museum, he told me about meeting Warhol’s archivist, and expressed his reservations about the significance of the boxes in Pittsburgh. “Hoarding objects reaches the level of collecting only when there is a story that unites them,” he said. But that is a novelist criticising another, less narrative art form. While Freud’s desk in Hampstead was always useable, if overcrowded, the desk in fashion designer Paul Smith’s office in Covent Garden is completely overwhelmed with a snowdrift of collected objects that sweeps over an office chair, down onto the floor, and back up to the shelves that line every wall. There are stacks of books and magazines, cameras and mountains of vintage cycling jerseys. There is an i-Mac computer, a gift from Jony Ive that Smith has never used. Computers aren’t Smith’s thing. In any case, it’s too late now, short of purging half the contents of the room: there is no way to get near it. There are toy tin cars, collections of bottles from Moroccan markets, a pink bicycle and a lot of rabbits. “I once said in an interview that seeing a rabbit brings me luck, and they haven’t stopped pouring in ever since,” explains Smith. Collecting began, as did so many things in Smith’s career, with his early enthusiasm for cycling. Growing up in Nottingham in the 1950s, there was a newsagent which occasionally had a copy of L’Equipe, which would portray the heroes of the Tour de France in their yellow jerseys in colour on the cover, but in sepia inside. He bought the magazine, fascinated by the images, even if he couldn’t read it. “I can remember once saying, ‘I really like Jacques Anquetil’ to my father, which baffled him, since none of our family had ever been abroad. I saved my pocket money so that I could upgrade the gears on my bike from Simplex to Campagnolo. The box it came in was as important to me as the gear itself.”  What attracted Smith to the Campagnolo box, along with stamps and matchboxes which he has in large numbers – not just in his office but at his Nottingham HQ where he has an archivist trying to make sense of it all – is the way that designers can say so much in such a tiny space. He showed me a Japanese book of matches produced for a Tokyo nightclub in the 1970s. “It so clearly says it’s ‘contemporary’. You can hear the jazz already.”  Despite the huge assortment of assembled objects, Smith is reluctant to describe himself as a collector. “I just have a large quantity of the same things,” he says, matter of factly. “In my head, a collector is someone who selects an item or a subject. They collect them because they know a lot about them. Maybe I have a little knowledge about cycling jerseys.  In the early 1980s, on my first trips to Japan and India, I just got a bit carried away. I bought lots of Japanese furniture. In India, for some reason, I bought 15 wardrobes, and a piece of furniture that doubled as a staircase with drawers.” Smith had them all sent home on the Trans-Siberian Express.  He suggests that his is a collection that has found him. “Things collect me,” he says. “For some reason I started to be sent things, and they still keep coming.” There is an individual who regularly sends Smith artefacts that come unwrapped but covered in postage stamps. Others send him letters, toys, books and even ancient packets of razor blades. One visitor took careful photographs of his office, and later sent him a precisely detailed model of his office, complete with its chaotic contents. Smith’s London home, where he lives with his wife Pauline, is much calmer. “The house is hers. I do have one room for my stuff, but it’s mostly at the office that I get to look at things.” In 1996, patron of the arts and barrister Jill Ritblat gave the V&A Museum the largest single donation of clothes in its history, more than 1,000 items. There are ski outfits in postmodern pastel shades from the 1980s, and challenging Japanese experiments from Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake, as well as couture from Dior and Saint Laurent. There is work by Alexander McQueen, Biba, Mary Quant, and Christian Lacroix, Emanuel Ungaro and Victor Edelstein, and an evening outfit produced by a dressmaker based on an idea of Ritblat’s own design.  The early days of British fashion from the 1960s are represented by Foale and Tuffin, and Zandra Rhodes, and from the 1980s by Margaret Howell and Katharine Hamnett. There is tailoring from Tommy Nutter and work by Giorgio Armani. It is by no means a complete account of contemporary fashion, but it is certainly extensive, and like the personal wardrobe that it is, combines some very special pieces made for family occasions, with more everyday wear. The connecting thread of Ritblat’s collection is Ritblat herself. These were all pieces that she had bought to wear. They were not chosen like stamps, or old masters, or celadon vases to make a self-conscious collection, but were the result of a continuing sequence of choices over time. Taken together they are a reflection of her life as an English woman of a certain background, at a particular time in the country’s history. “I never saw it as a collection, it was more like my diary, though I have never had time to write a diary. Each piece brings back memories of when I wore it,” says Ritblat. She made her first donation to the V&A at the end of 1996, but kept back the things that she wanted to be able to go on using, and they formed the core of a donation to the Design Museum of another 400 items in 2013. Ritblat is ambivalent about fashion. As a child she was somewhat self-conscious about being dressed by her mother, who had studied fashion herself. She was relieved to be able to assume the camouflage of the complex uniform rituals of an English public school for girls in the 1950s. “I loved my school uniform at Roedean; we were expected to change our clothes four times a day, as chic as anything. Scratchy afternoon dresses, regulation school loafers, very nice blazers and pleated skirts.” As a student barrister, she found herself adopting the formal uniform of the legal profession, but then as a married woman began to build a wardrobe that reflected the life that she was leading. Later, when she was making her own choices, she was early to discover Miuccia Prada. “What you pick out is based on whether it suits you and on the zeitgeist,” she explains. Smith, Heseltine and Ritblat represent three very different approaches to collecting. For Smith, the unruly mountain of things in his office, is, like the collection on Sigmund Freud’s desk, part of the tools of his imagination, a source of imagery and ideas for his work as a designer. It’s also a means of establishing his personality. Heseltine’s garden is an investment of time, resources and creativity in the remaking of a place that speaks to the future using living organisms that will outlive us all. Ritblat’s clothes are a record of the full life of an individual. All of these collections provide insights into unique people, their lives and times. In their different ways all three reflect on the nature of collecting, and its ability to be a creative activity in itself. In a world in which technology threatens to abolish the material world altogether, objects have not lost their allure. Their physical condition marks the passing of time in ways that pixels and code cannot do. Collecting is the means all of us have to create histories of our times, and even more, of ourselves. This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue Two. 

In order to explore the mindset of the collector, Deyan Sudjic shines a light on the collected objects of Sigmund Freud and Andy Warhol, and speaks to three British collectors to better understand what it is that makes collecting such a vital part of the human experience.

Exploring the mindset of the collector and why the act is a vital part of the human experience, with a focus on Sigmund Freud and Andy Warhol

FONDATA: Exploring the art of collecting 

 I Collect, Therefore I Am

Devise d'Ardilley

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