| Tiburcio
Parrot Biography Draper Interview Part 2 INTERVIEW OF JEROME C. DRAPER, SR. Q. We would like to hear your comments as to the history of the Lemme vineyards and La Perla Winery, which are known as Draper Vineyards. A. This is how we heard about this place Herman Hummel owned for so many years. We were neighbors in Hillsborough of Fred McCrea who owned Stoney Hill Winery. Fred and his wife, Eleanor, had been looking for some property in Napa Valley for some little time and some way or other found out that Herman might consider selling his Lower ranch. He decided, however, that it was a little more than he wished to take on as he was fairly tied up with his advertising business in San Francisco, being an account executive with McCann-Erickson. He kindly told us about it, and I’ll never forget the first day we saw this property. Mrs. Draper and I had been spending the weekend with martin and Caroline Stelling, who had extensive holdings on the floor of the valley. On a Saturday morning, we decided to drive up and take a look at the Hummel Ranch. I remember Carrie came along with us; Martin was busy doing something else. The road up the mountain was unbelievable. It was unpaved and full of chuck holes, and sharp rocks. It was about a mile and three-quarters from the Spring Mountain Road to the headquarters of the Lower Ranch, and half-way along was a hunting cabin owned by the Beringers. Otto Beringer’s father, Dod Beringer, spent a good deal of time at the cabin, and it just happens that that day that he was meandering around the cabin. We had heard a lot about rattlesnakes on Spring Mountain, and we were a little bit concerned – so we asked Mr. Beringer if that was true. He said, “Is it ever! I just killed one about five feet long up at the bend in the road that had fourteen rattles.” Well, we continued rather gingerly. When we arrived at the headquarters, Herman and his cousin, and I believe Steve Biancalana (who was sort of a foreman for the Lower Ranch), were sulphuring below the road. In those days sulphuring was all done by hand machines which were strapped to your back, and not only did they sulphur, the grapes but usually the operators were pretty well covered with sulphur. Well, Herman Hummel came over to see what we wanted, and I tell you, he was a sight. All green-yellow sulphur . . . and he had some kind of a mask, etc. But anyway, he turned out to be a delightful person, and he stopped his work and took us all over the ranch. Believe me, were a little careful when we walked through the long grass and weeds, after our experience with Otto Beringer. Well, my wife, Virginia, thought it was one of the most beautiful places she had ever seen, but she said, “I wouldn’t be caught dead living up here. If you want to buy this on speculation, it’s all right, but don’t ever ask me to come up here.” We did buy it shortly after that. I remember we talked to Paul Alexander (banker in St. Helena) about it, and he thought it was a good property. We took possession in July, and before we knew it, we were involved in harvest. As I recall, there were about 80 acres bearing vineyard at that time, and I believe our first crop was something under 200 tons. It was during the war, and very difficult to operate a vineyard. There was virtually no equipment on the ranch. We had a fine team of horses – a fine team of mules, I should say, and a single black horse. The only mechanical equipment was a 3/4-ton express truck – Ford express truck, 1926. We had to sled the grapes out with the mules, take them to a fairly level place where we could load them on the Ford express truck, a flatbed, ad then we’d haul them up to the garage where we had a platform – and we’d load the boxes on the platform and wait for the truck. I think the following historical information is fairly accurate because two or three years ago I had a long conversation with a granddaughter of Lemme – the original owner of what we call Lower ranch. Incidentally, I want to mention that this Lower Ranch isn’t down in the mud flats; it’s actually an elevation of 1,500 feet. In any event, I have checked the records and find that the original deed came directly from the State of California to Lemme in 1875. Lemme was a wholesale jeweler in San Francisco which probably accounts for the rather odd name he gave the winery, namely, La Perla. According to Lemme’s granddaughter, who died two or three years ago and was in her 80s at the time I talked to her, Lemme’s daughter married a man named A. Schilling. He was a young man who at that time had a coffee, tea and spice rout in the Napa Valley. As a young man, he married the Lemme daughter, and subsequently inherited, along with hi wife, the vineyard. Around 1875 – no, I’ll take that back – around 1885, he hired as a foreman a man named Antone Sardonelli, who remained as foreman and chief winemaker until around 1930. His son, Elmo, who was born on the vineyard, still lives in St. Helena and works at Keller’s Meat market. A. Schilling’s first love was the coffee and spice business, and he turned over the operation of La Perla to his brother, Claus Schilling, commonly known as C. Schilling, and he devoted his time to originating and building the famous import-export company of A. Schilling, which some time ago was sold to McCormick’s and is still quite a factor in importing-exporting business in San Francisco. Schilling and A. Schilling died in the early 20s, about the same time, and the vineyard was left to C. Schilling’s daughter who married a man name Leichter. I remember selling a home in Hillsborough to the Leichter. I remember selling a home in Hillsborough to the Leichters in the late 30s, and when they moved in I noted that they had many of their things stored in boxes which had Colonial Grape Produce Company on the boxes. I had never seen a grape box before, and I was sort of intrigued. Mr. Leichter explained that he owned this vineyard in St. Helena, and he had a deal on it, and hoped to dispose of it in the near future. In the meantime, the winery had been abandoned so he was using the boxes for this purpose. When the Leichters inherited the so-called Lower Ranch, or La Perla, he became associated with two other gentlemen, Horace Lanza and a man named Federspiel. These three gentlemen, this was, of course, during Prohibition, acquired the Upper ranch known as McPike Ranch which is discussed hereinabove, and subsequently Leichter sold his interest to Lanza and Federspiel, and some time after that Lanza, I understand, purchased Federspiel’s interest. Olanza eventually sold to Herman Hummel, and we acquired the vineyard from Herman in 1943. I’ll never forget the first harvest. We were delivering our grapes to Mr. Mangel’s winery in Cordelia, and we engaged a truck driver, or rather a truck owner named Lawson, who was a Greyhound agent, to transport the grapes in his tank truck. We finally loaded the tank truck which held about 5 tons of grapes and noted immediately that there were four or five leaks in the tank. We gathered some pails together and put them under the leaks, and as fast as the pails would fill we’d dump the juice back into the tank. It was very important in those days that we save every grape we could and every drop of juice. In any event, we started off in mid afternoon for Cordelia with our first load. I followed in my car with the pails, and down Zinfandel Lane in front of the old Wheeler home, the truck blew two tires. This was about 4:00 in the afternoon, and Mr. Lawson left me to try to find new tires. In the meantime, I distributed pails around the truck and stood dumping the juice out. He finally returned to say that it would be morning before he could have the tires repaired, so I stayed there all night long, dumping the juice back into the truck as fast as it came out. Well, finally we arrived at the winery. I was quite exhausted, and Mr. Mangels – he was a fine old German – took pity on me. He had a brand new truck and a brand new tank, and seeing my plight, he said, “You know, young man, I think I can help you out. My grapes are a little later than your, so I’ll let my driver and my new truck and tank haul your grapes for you – for a while. And he continued to let me use the truck during the whole season – so that was the end of our trucking problem. The name of the winery was the Solano Winery, and they had some kind of a contract with an eastern buyer, and I believe we received $65 a ton. The grapes we had at that time were not very distinctive varieties; we had quite a few Golden Chasselas, probably 40% of our crop and most of the rest were Green Hungarian with a considerable planting of Alicante. These Alicante grapes were very poor for wine, but they were planted in 1921, I understand from Herman Hummel, because they were they a good grape to ship east for home winemaking. Along with the Grand Noir grape, they were about the only grape that had a red pulp, so they gave great color to the wine, and that was desirable. As I mentioned before, all of the work that was done in the vineyard was with mules and horses, and I understand from the foreman whom we inherited with the vineyard, Steve Biancalana, that in the old days all of the wine which was shipped to San Francisco where it was finished was hauled down the treacherous road in puncheons and shipped by rail to the Schilling cellars in the city. We still have all the wagons in the upper part of the winery which were used in those days for hauling these puncheons. Inspection of this road would really shock you to think that a load of puncheons could ever be hauled down, and that horses could ever get these big heavy wagons back up the hill – but they did it some way or other. And Herman tells me they used to use four horses for this purpose. Steve Biancalana is interesting in his own right. Steve came here in 1895 from the Northern part of Italy along the Swiss border. This was the only job that he had until he retired. He was, I believe, 21 when he first came here, and in charge of the cookhouse at first, but later became a vineyard man and when we bought the property in1943 he was 69 years old and was then the foreman. It is interesting to note that his hourly wage then was 35 cents an hour. And Steve continued as a foreman for us for many years. He finally lost his eyesight and died, I believe, at the age of 85. La Perla Winery, when we bought it, still had all the old fermenting tanks, and in the upper part of then winery, there were dozens of them. They ranged in size from 750 up to 1,000 gallons. They were open redwood fermenters. We sold them. At that time, there was a big demand for things like that because people couldn’t buys tanks during the Second world war – and they wanted water tanks – so we accommodated people. We sold them for 10$ a piece. The other day I tried to find a tank of about that size to use, and the cheapest one I could find was $240. Where we had our little patio next to the winery there was a boiler installation. They operated all the flywheels, etc., for the winery with the steam boiler pressure, and the energy came from wood, which they cut on the premises. It was pretty primitive, but it apparently did the job. Herman’s Upper ranch was about two miles from the Lower ranch. It was a very scenic road connecting the two properties, but it was quite precipitous and very narrow, and in some kinds of weather it was not a pleasant road to travel on. I asked Herman one time why in the world he would sell this beautiful property, and he said, well, he just got sick of delivering milk to the Lower ranch every day. He had a cookhouse which was operated by Mrs. Pollander and her husband, and one of the deals with them was he would deliver several quarts of milk a day. Herman was then milking a cow every day. That was really the straw that broke his back, so we were the fortunate recipients of Herman’s problem. The buildings were not in very good repair; in fact, they were in pretty awful repair. We had to rebuild the main house where the present foreman, Joe Torres, resides. Incidentally, Joe has been a wonderful, wonderful help to us. He’s been here over 25 years, and a great deal of the credit for the transformation of this vineyard goes to Joe. We also had to rebuild the barn and rebuild and reroof and do a lot of work in the main winery building. The rood was practically all gone, We took one of the sections of the winery, a room that is around 35’ x 75’ and converted that into living quarters which we used for 30 years on weekends and during the harvest. It was very comfortable room, and we enjoyed it immensely. Gradually, over a period of time, we replanted the older vineyards. We first had to fence the whole place to prevent deer damage, and believe we were the first ones to discover that a certain type of fencing would do the trick. That took a period of around 3 years. We engaged a man name John Beck, who lived at the foot of our hill. John was in charge of rehabilitating the buildings, repairing the buildings. He also built the fence, which took him off-and-on about 3 years to build. In 1966, we purchased the property, which lies between our so-called Lower Ranch and the bottom of the hill which belonged to the Beringer Winery. There were only 150 acres involved, but it was very desirable property for us to have. It originally belonged to this ranch. The Lower Ranch, which we purchased fro Herman Hummel, consisted of 285 acres, so that now gives us 435 acres. We replanted everything excepting a few acres of Green Hungarian which Herman Hummel planted, I believe, in about 1935. All together, we have a net planting of about 100 acres, and our principal varieties are Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chenin Blanc, Sulvaney, Pinot Noir, and Johannesburg Riesling. The Johannesburg Riesling does extremely well up here. Incidentally, the year we came up here in 1943, was the year that the McCreas came. They, after they decided that our property was more than they wanted to undertake – Fred and Eleanor – bought a place north of St. Helena right near bale Mill, Also up in the hills, belonging to a family Edwards. And Fred was smart enough to plant fine grapes, mostly Chardonnay, but some Pinot Blanc and some Johannesburg Riesling. He made his first wine, his first Stony Hill wine, in about 1950. And what a job he’s done! Also, the same year a man named Lee Stewart, who was neighbor of ours in Hillsborough, came up here and bought the Peter Stark property across the valley and started the Souverain Winery. And we sold Lee grapes for 20 or 25 years until he sold out to the present owners. In 1971, we decided to build up on top of the hill, and we have our permanent home there – we’ve retired and moved up here. Herman Hummel reminded me of the first year that we harvest. He really kidded me. I was just a poor old city slicker and not in very good condition — and Herman told me that I would have to load all these grapes. The lug boxes filled with grapes weighed about 60 pounds, so I took a box home and filled it rocks until it weighed 60 pounds, and every morning and evening I’d practice on that box. My back has never been the same since. But in any event, labor was pretty short in those days; it was hard to find pickers. The war was still on, and it was very hard to get anybody. Someone told me, I think it was Herman, that there was a man named John Repetto in Niles who had picked grapes up here for many, many years – he was a Puerto Rican, and he had some Puerto Ricans down there who might be available. And incidentally, this is interesting too. Paul Alexander tried to discourage me from buying the ranch because he said it was so alive with rattlesnakes that he wouldn’t like it. He said, “You know, Jerry when they harvest up there they have to have beaters going ahead of the pickers to knock the rattlesnakes out of the vines.” Now, believe me, I don’t know whether he was kidding or not, but I completely swallowed it – but I still loved the vineyard so much I decided to go ahead anyways. And then, I finally found John Repetto in Niles I gingerly asked him about this rattlesnake situation. He said, “What do you mean? I’ve never seen snake up there.” I said, “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve picked these grapes for twelve years and you’ve never seen a snake. You don’t have people going in and beating the bushes or vines?” “No, I’ve never seen a rattlesnake – no one ever saw a snaked up there.” So, I was quite relieved, believe me. He turned the job over to a fellow countryman named Pete Okendo. For several years, Pete and his crew picked our grapes. It was something. They were a wild bunch. They’d get drunk and have knife fights. Oh, they’d quit and then they’d come back again. I remember we couldn’t get sugar. We couldn’t get flour. We couldn’t get tires for out truck. It was one heck of an ordeal. And the first year of our harvest I lost some 15 pounds. I was skins and bones when I returned to San Mateo. I remember, too, that one day toward the end of the harvest Steve Biancalana said, “Well, Jerry, tomorrow we pick in the hole.” I said, “My God, do we own that?” I would have given it away if I’d had a chance, but anyway, we had to pick it, and I thought afterwards that I hoped to goodness there was some way I would never have to go through another harvest of “the hole”; I just couldn’t face it. But as it turned out, each harvest successively became easier and, although we had some rough times with early rains — in these hills when the rains come it’s quite a problem. In any event, we’re now very happy; we have our new home up there. We’ve lived here now for three years and hope we’ll see a few years more. We keep planting new vineyards, and, of course, things like the road — it’s all been paved, and we have electricity. We cooked on a wood stove. We had no hot water excepting that that came from the water-coils in the stove. We had oil lamps. Things were very primitive indeed. But now we have two tractors, and we have roads and electricity, and we have all kinds of equipment. We even have air conditioning so it’s a real breeze. |
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