Report from - The Trefethen Dinner ... January 18, 2009
I find myself at the Niagara Street Cafe in downtown Toronto where Loren Trefethen (no title, but obviously part of the family) is hosting, along with Nick Hirons of Merchant Vintners, a dinner to introduce many of us to the line of Trefethen wines: a winery that celebrated 40 years of a uninterrupted winemaking in 2008; and a winery whose history is as interesting as their wines.
Loren, who my father would term a "long hair" told those in attendance a brief history of the Napa Valley starting from the first grape plantings in 1850 by Krug, and the first planting on the now Trefethen property in 1856. He took us through the first Napa-boom in 1910, when 104 wineries were located in the valley; the bust period, when a combination of phyloxera, world war, prohibition and depression plunged the once burgeoning and robust Napa landscape into a series of “ghost wineries” - abandoned because there was no money and no market for wine. 1968, when the next great boom in Napa began, when the likes of his grandfather, Eugene (Gene for short), bought land and planted (or re-planted, as the case may be) grapes, starting with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, then moving into Riesling and Cabernet. In 1968, the Trefethen’s had 600-acres under vine, today they have a combination of 437 on the estate and 25 in the hills - the region's largest continuous grape acreage. You may have noticed, if you do the math, a loss of acreage here - that was due to a combination of factors ... (Read more)
