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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING May 2015 WINES&VINES 37 Napa quake. It would have been how this his- toric winery collapsed, because there's no doubt these walls would have fallen in." What prevented those walls from falling in was a steel skeleton that had been almost surgi- cally installed inside the stone walls, which are more than 150 years old and have suffered through several decades of neglect as well as a few other earthquakes. It was, in fact, the 1989 earthquake that had left the building shuttered and empty until the Boisset family purchased it in 2011. The acquisition by the family that owns one of the largest wine com- panies in France is now described as the con- clusion of Buena Vista's "corporate period," in which it changed hands five times between 2000 and 2011. A cradle of California winemaking For most of its modern history, the two iconic stone buildings known as the Champagne Cellars and Press House had served as the hospitality center for the high-volume and mediocre-quality Buena Vista brand. Visitors to the historic property tasted wines produced at a large facility located on the Sonoma County side of the Carneros AVA. The entire story of Buena Vista, however, stretches back to the 1850s and the very begin- nings of viticulture and winemaking in Cali- fornia. The winery's original founder was Hungarian immigrant "Count" Agoston Harasz- thy, who in 1857 established the estate vine- yards and built the winery. Haraszthy, who brought hundreds of vinifera cuttings to Cali- fornia, is credited as a founding father of the state's wine industry. To keep Buena Vista operating, however, Haraszthy had to assume a host of investors through the Buena Vista Vinicultural Society, and they forced him out of the business in the 1870s. The society couldn't overcome the chal- lenges of Phylloxera and a weak demand for American wines; it went bust in 1878 and sold the estate at auction. The property came under the ownership of a wealthy and reclusive cou- ple who passed it to the Catholic Church, and the estate ultimately came under the power of the state of California. Following Prohibition, the property became an estate winery once again in the 1940s, under the ownership of the Bartholomew family, who bought it sight un- seen through an auction. The Bartholomews worked with André Tchelistcheff to release their first vintage in 1949 and produced wine from the estate until 1968, when they sold it to the founders of the distributor Young's Mar- ket. The German wine and spirits company A. Racke acquired the estate in 1979 and would eventually sell it to Allied-Domecq in 2000. Jean-Charles Boisset—the charismatic American face of Boisset Family Estates—kept track of the small estate in Sonoma as it was bought and sold. "My eyes honestly were al- ways riveted on this one," he said. "I missed it three times. I tried to buy it in the '90s, tried to buy it in the early 2000s and missed it in the mid-2000s." Why Boisset was so captivated by Buena Vista is a story that's becoming as well con- nected to the winery as the tale of its founding by Haraszthy. Boisset traveled through Califor- nia in 1981 with his grandparents, who were schoolteachers. The visit to Buena Vista was one of the last on the trip, and the 11-year-old Boisset (who didn't speak English) was en- chanted by the property through the words of a Swiss tour guide. "I saw this winery and said to myself, 'Wow, I could never have fathomed history of that magnitude in the state of Cali- fornia,'" he said. "It became kind of an obses- sion for me, always to want to have something in the United States." Boisset would later attend Lycee Rocham- beau near Washington, D.C., and then helped expand the family's business in the United States, including acquiring DeLoach Vineyards, Lyeth Estate, Lockwood Vineyard, Amberhill, Ray- mond Vineyards and, ultimately, Buena Vista. He said the timing was just right in 2011 for his family's company to buy the Sonoma prop- erty when it did, because he doesn't think they would have had the means to afford a renova- tion that honors the property's heritage before then. Boisset acquired the historic winery in Sonoma, while Jackson Family Wines purchased the Carneros winery, which now supports its multi-faceted Pinot Noir program. Although the company won't reveal how much it spent on the renovation, Boisset does say they were well aware it was going to be expensive, but they felt they couldn't do any- thing less than the very best. He said not doing so would be like repairing a column of the White House with cheap stucco, or treating Versailles with similar disrespect. "I'd rather you drive over me, or you put me in this fire- place and you get rid of me, if we were to do a half-ass job. If you count 100 years from now what's big? It's not anything about finance here. It's about the soul, it's about the essence, it's about the roots, it's about the magnetic vibration about what the California wine in- dustry is all about," Boisset says. "It's not about us—it's not even about Buena Vista alone—it's about the beginning, the birthplace, and when you think about the birthplace you've got to be respectful of it, and you've got to be doing everything possible to bring again those memo- ries of the past and to tempt our minds and our imaginations to go beyond." Strengthening from the inside Blackwood first started working with the Buena Vista brand in 2004 as part of Allied Domecq and stayed with the winery through its various owners until Boisset purchased the property in 2011. "Jean Charles and I met right out here in the courtyard, and we immediately KEY POINTS California's oldest premium winery has been completely renovated by its new owner, Jean-Charles Boisset, who incorpo- rated his own style into the winery's hospitality area. The estate features new winemaking equipment that includes custom-built French oak fermentation vats with removable lids. The restoration included a unique process called "center-core drilling" to strengthen stone walls that are more than 150 years old. For most of its modern history, the winery building at Buena Vista was covered in ivy. The restoration included removing all of the ivy to make the building appear more as it would in the 19th century.