The Good Life in Napa Valley

An interview with Tulocay owner Bill Cadman

by Anna Maria Knapp
CelebrationsWineClub.com

Tulocay Winery

When Bill Cadman tells the story of his life in the Napa wine business, the serious and the comic blend seamlessly into a chronicle of more than three decades in the Valley during a time of enormous change. In 1971 without prior experience, he wandered around the Napa Valley, found employment initially with Charles Krug, then Heitz, Clos du Val, and Mondavi. He bought a home with additional buildings on the property, and sitting around with friends one weekend, he decided to start a winery in his ample backyard. The rest of the story he tells in his own inimitable words, with minor editing for added clarity.

Tulocay is an unusual name. Is it an Indian word?

Yes it is. The winery is on the Tulocay land grant. Back in the old days, the Indians owned “Alta California,” not “northern California.” Then the Mexicans stole the land from the Indians. Then the Spaniards, the Conquistadors, stole it from the Mexicans. Three hundred years later after the revolution, the Mexicans took it back. And then after the Gold Rush, European settlers stole the land from the Mexicans. Land was virtually worth nothing at the time. Before the Gold Rush, you could go to the Mexican governor, who was in Sonoma, and petition for a land grant to develop a rancho. A local guy named Don Gitano Juarez (I always liked that name, especially the “Don.”) did that and later gave part of his land to the City of Napa to build the cemetery on Coombsville Road, where the winery is. It was called the Tulocay land grant, and I always thought that Tulocay and Winery went well together, a rather mellifluous sound, Tulocay Winery. But when you use a name like that, you have to do some research and find out what it really means. You want to make sure that it doesn't mean “man who has sex with a sheep” or something like that. You might be getting a thousand labels printed, and then someone points out the real meaning. You’d have to stop the presses. So I went to the local library and looked up the word. Tulocay is an old Indian word and means “fine wines at reasonable prices,” so I decided to use it.

What were the next steps after you found a name?

I went down to the county courthouse to get permits, which was a lot easier back then because not everybody was trying to start a winery. It was a different world. It was 40 pounds ago. So anyway, you can imagine the taxes, and forms, and permits that you need if you want to make an alcoholic beverage. The federal forms were still post-Prohibition with questions like “Have you ever stood on the running board of a 1929 Packard with a violin case in your hand, driving at high speed, trying to cross the Oklahoma boarder?” I was like, “No.” OK, good. That’s the right answer to that question. “You know anyone named Frank Nitti?” I said, “No, I don’t.” It was pretty much a shoe in at the time. You just filled out the permits and wrote checks for very little money. When you start a winery, three big questions are pricing the wine, the labels, and the name. If you price it too high or too low, it won’t sell, and that’s serious. If you price it too low, people think, “Oh, this wine is not very good. We’re not going to buy that.” You always wonder if it’s too expensive. $30’s too much; $20’s not enough. And getting a label design that someone beside the label designer’s mother likes is a tough one too. It’s a 4-inch square piece of paper, and you think anybody could do it. How difficult can it be? But some labels are great and some aren't. And then naming the winery is tough too. So many wineries have very comparable names, like Stony Hill, Rocky Hill, Stony Road Ridge. So many names meld together, and you forget them. I should have called it the Bill Cadman Winery. Honestly, people identify with a product named after the person who is behind it. It’s like finding out that there’s a real Betty Crocker.

What was your vision for the winery when you started?

I think that what I wanted to do when I started the winery was (1) have fun, and (2) I liked the idea of doing almost everything myself. My business card says , and it’s not a joke. I enjoy having a small operation and pursuing all sides of the wine business. I wanted to make wines with good varietal character. These days, you find a lot of Pinot Noir that is inky black and tastes like it’s mostly Syrah. I wanted a Pinot Noir with flavor that you instantly identify as Pinot Noir. At the beginning, I liked the idea of making wines that were unfined and unfiltered. One important event in my winemaking life was visiting Joe Swan. In the early 1970s, a lot of young kids were getting into the business. Bruce Ny ers, Mike Richmond come to mind. But at the time, Joe Swan was what would now be called a cult winemaker. I remember going over to see him with my wife and my infant daughter at the time. Joe Swan was making wine under his white Victorian house in Forestville over in Sonoma. He had white overalls on, because he was a Western Airlines pilot, but everybody thought of him as being only a winemaker. It was like going to Mecca to see Joe Swan. He was making wines that were a leap ahead of anything else that people were making. He was a real milestone in my winemaking life because he was what I wanted to be, a guy who’s making ten to 12 barrels of great wines under his house. At the time, wineries were still making big volumes of wine, but he was hands-on. He was very enthusiastic about French Burgundy and handcrafted wines, but back then, winemaking was still being done, in Sonoma especially, in the big volume Sebastiani style. You put Zinfandel in a 3,000-gallon redwood tank. You let it sit for ten years until no fruit was left, and the wine was really brown, and then you bottled it and called it “Reserve.”

What details have you discovered over time that have had an important impact on your winemaking? Can you think of an example when a light came on?

At my age more lights have gone off than have gone on. The lights are dimming all over Cadman. She’s nodding her head. You’re talking epiphanies, lights going on. Instead, there was a slow realization that it’s a simple process. If you grow the right grapes in the right place, and the weather cooperates, and you harvest at the perfect time, the rest is simple although not easy. The two most important decisions in a winemaker’s life are when to pick a specific vineyard, the timing of picking the grapes, and who to choose for a divorce lawyer. Those are the two number one things that you have to worry about. Everything else just falls into place. I think that winemaking is about detail, and I have an eye for detail just by nature. When I first got into the industry, there were a lot of romantic attitudes about winemaking, which I tend to pooh pooh. At the time, I though winemaking was about simply crushing gapes and making wine. My conclusion though, at this time, is that there really is a certain magic in the process if you think about the idea that grapes are a god-given present. People didn't create wine grapes. We selected the best quality fruit years ago, and took the grapes that made the best wine, and cultivated them, and duplicated them, and that’s the magical thing. I think if you get good quality fruit, and you pay attention to detail, and keep the equipment clean, you can make good wine. Paying attention to detail is important. “William Cadman CFO,” which I quickly point out to people stands for Chief Forklift Operator.  

Do you have your own vineyards?

I buy all the grapes that I use. I always joke with people that I moved to Napa, bought the property in 1972, and I could see back then that vineyard land prices were way too high, so I'm actually still waiting for prices to go down and get reasonable. As I look at my watch, it’s been a long wait. I've been lucky over the years to find good grape growers, who really enjoy growing grapes and put their hearts and souls into doing it. Ron Cliff, for example, I've been buying his Cabernet Sauvignon since the 1980s. His family has been in Napa for five generations, and his vineyard is up above Silverado Country Club on Old Soda Springs Road. He’s a retired dentist. His vineyard is literally ten feet outside of his house. He takes a lot of pride in his Cabernet Sauvignon. Frank Casanova’s vineyard is one acre. It’s in the Oakville District. His Mom and Dad were born in Italy, and he loves his vineyard. He’s an endodontist??. The Wild Horse Valley Chardonnay is beyond my place, and the grower is Brian Silvert?. He is a lawyer in Napa. And the Amador county Zinfandel is on Shenandoah Valley Road in Amador County way up in the hills. The vineyard owner over there is KEN PEMBERTON, a lawyer, who has a practice in Alpine County right next to Nevada. My feeling about buying grapes from growers is that I deal only with people that I enjoy having dinner with. That’s a good way to phrase it. I have always told my grape growers that if prices go up, I will meet whatever prices are. And when prices go down, they have to go with me on that one and lower the prices. So I have no problems with any of my growers.

Would you be better off if you owned your own vineyard?

Whatever winemakers do, they say they do it because that makes the best quality wine. Why do they use French oak, or stainless, or why do they not use oak? Or why do they use Montrachet yeast instead of another kind? Well, it makes the best wine. If I grew every single grape that I crushed, I would be sitting here telling you that it’s the best way to make wine because I control the vineyards. If I buy all the grapes I use as I do, I can sit here and say that’s the way to make the best wine. If I contract with a grower, and I don’t like that fruit, I can cut him adrift and say, “Goodbye, I don’t want those grapes. Think about Opus One. Before Opus One was developed, no one had grown grapes on that land. It was a blank piece of property. When Opus One moved in, the idea that because they were going to grow grapes on this piece of property on Hwy 29 at Oakville Crossroad, it was therefore going to produce the best Cabernet in the whole Napa Valley. That’s just effrontery to assume that because I own the land, it’s going to produce the best grapes. How do you know where the best grapes come from? The day escrow closes, the day you bought the vineyard, that’s the best vineyard in the whole world. Because you now own it. You can’t just say, “Well it’s mediocre fruit, but what the hell. I have to do something with it.” Like I said, I've been lucky to find great fruit.

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Anna Maria Knapp, Owner
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