Through his many years as a winegrower and later winemaker, George kept his 'day job' inventing, designing and building cyclotrons used in hospitals around the world, including Japan. Talking with George was a great opportunity to chart the rise of Napa Valley, the transition from shipper grapes to premium wines, and his scientific and rational approach as he worked to survive, then thrive. A gentleman to the core, warm, direct and enlightening, George continues to take a pragmatic yet caring approach to winemaking, which shows in the quality of his wines and the insights in his stories.◆ Hendry Ranch beginnings in NapaGeorge Hendry -- "My mother and father actually brought the property here in 1939, dad was a professor down in Berkley and he was smart enough to keep his day job. Mother had been a schoolteacher and she became the farmer here. We had a little Zinfandel vineyard here even back then - in fact there have been grapes growing on this property since 1860. When mum and dad came there were only 6 acres of vines, we had mostly dairy cattle and plum trees. The 1960s is when things really started to change. People were drinking more and more dry table wine, wine you can drink with food.We saw the demand for wine grapes going up, while dairy cattle and plum trees were pretty much headed in the other direction. It became pretty clear you had to be growing grapes here or you weren't going to make it. That is a really tough transition for a family farm, because it takes about 7 years to get these vines planted, get them mature and your first reliable pay check, even when you're selling grapes. Many of those little farms didn't make it.And that turned into my problem actually, as it was now my turn to be the farmer here. Like my dad I kept my day job. That kept the dairy cattle and the plum trees here for a few more years. But you know we got into the 1970s and you pretty much had to get out of denial on the issue, you grow grapes or you don't make it here in Napa. I managed to pull it off, and my day job helped bridge the 7 years of negative cash flow. The family signed up for eating a lot of beans, but we got through it. From the 6 acres mum and dad had, today we have 114 acres planted. They had 3 different grapes growing - we now have 11. I'm 2nd generation, we've got the 3rd generation, and we've actually got a little 4th generation. So that pretty much is the quick family story."George Hendry (left)George Hendry (center) with his brother and father in 1939◆ Changing grape varietals- from Carignan to Cabernet "Originally we had Zinfandel, Carignan and Petite Sirah. We still have Zinfandel - but not the same vines - it works well in particular growing situations. The Carignan and Petite Sirah were shipper grapes, that came here during prohibition when you only could stay in wine growing byshipping grapes to people who would make wine back east, home winemakers. They had thick skins and you could put them on rail cars and get them east, without them completely spoiling. The Petite Sirah and Carignan are gone now, they don't make money here in Napa.It was only after the late 60s that grapes became predominant in the Napa, and those grapes were mainly red and largely Zinfandel. During the 80s we saw more and more people drinking white wine, Napa was rapidly becoming planted with vines, and a lot of those were Chardonnay. It was heavily white until we got to around 2000.I planted largely Zinfandel in 1972. But then the Zinfandel market started to go bad about 1980. It had been committing a lot of sins actually, there was a lot of bad, high alcohol, residual sugar, so essentially the public threw it out. So I then converted part of the vineyard to Chardonnay and part to Cabernet, and kept some Zinfandel. But really our big production was Chardonnay up until 1990. I sort of could see the changes coming, and we started developing more Cabernet at the time. Since about 2003 Napa has been producing much more Cabernet than Chardonnay. We've still got Chardonnay and Zin still, but more than half our vineyard is Cabernet. Cabernet does well here. Napa is not a uniform growing region. The south part down in Carneros, just north of San Francisco Bay, is quite cool and Cabernet really won't ripen. We're a little further north on some benchlands and we get up to about 30°C, a temperature that we can get our Cabernet ripe. Up in Oakville, where it gets up to 35°C, they grow a lot of Cabernet, but they really can't grow Chardonnay or Pinot, it is too hot. So we are fortunate. We happen to be in an intermediate area in Napa where we can grow everything. We have 11 different grapes in the vineyard, and that's good for business.At first we were growing a lot of grapes and were selling them into other wineries - Robert Mondavi was a big customer, William Hill, Rosenblum Cellars, Opus. Then in the 1990s, land was getting very, very expensive, up to something like $30,000 per acre (it is now $300,000 to buy an acre you can plant grapes on) and the return on equity in your vineyard was getting into the mid single digits. I decided then one of the ways to get more return out of the investment was to make wine - I had been making wine all my life for other people, so why not? And we invested in the winery, and that was a very good move. We still sell a few grapes too. I produce about 350 tons here and sell about 100 of it to other wineries."◆ A pragmatic approach to quality in the vineyard"First off we're not fans of very old vineyards, we don't think they are the best way to make good wine. The problem is that as they get older they are kind of like us - they don't get healthier. And if you have a significant number of sick vines in the vineyard, you are going to get a lighter style wine. You can do it, I've got vineyards here that are 45 years old, but it requires a lot of work. When a vine gets sick you have to take it out, and then we replace it with a new vine, and you can keep the vineyard producing top quality. But due to the replants, you are getting less wine and the vineyards tend to become expensive. So when it gets to the point where they are no longer putting groceries on the table, we replace the whole block.We have 46 blocks in the vineyard, the smallest one is about an acre, and the biggest about five acres. I keep a record of every vineyard block, I know how much each is making, and I'm replacing one or two of those every year, and believe me I'm not replacing those that are making money.I don't have to do a lot of vineyard replacement in any one year, so it gives me fill-in work for my workers. We work here with all-year salaried staff, with 12 workers who do everything from plant the vines to put the wine in bottle. They are cross-trained so they really know all the jobs, and on average they have been here over 20 years. They are very experienced workers, and some of them live right here on the property. We are very proud of that workforce, they take good care of us, and we take good care of them.So there are a lot of things that go into the vineyard to make it work. If you look at the map (Hendry vineyard map) you will see that down by the Redwood Creek we have white wine like Pinot Gris and the Albarino - there is too much water there to make good Cabernet. So we've got a lot different growing conditions, we're got 11 different varieties in the vineyard, and it's not for the faint of heart, but if you're into this, it is really cool stuff. I can't think of anything I'd really rather be doing, it is a very interesting business."◆ Winemaking and evolving wine styles"I've been making wine since I was in college. I've been pretty much a student of wine, so I understood wine styles and what I wanted to do. I learnt very early on that the vineyard is by far that most important part of the winegrowing equation. You know, you can't go to the store and get 2nd class groceries and make a good meal. So the vineyard is absolutely critical in that equation.My wine styles are dry, we don't do anything that's sweet, we make wines that are thoroughly ripe, and don't use unripe grapes. We insist that the alcohol be in balance, it will much higher here that than it would be in Europe, because we have much more sunshine. I've elected to make bigger richer wines styles, but they have to be absolutely tight, with no residuals. In France we learnt how to get our grapes fully ripe and then remove the sugar before you ferment, and that is a key in our winemaking style*. Those are all things that I didn't have a clue about 40 years ago.Winemaking starts before you pick the grapes. We are essentially waiting, particularly when you are making red wine, the seed actually contributes more than half of what you have actually got in the bottle, so we basically only pick reds when the seeds reach full maturity, and I do that by tasting seeds. Ripe seeds give you the bigger richer wines.The use of oak is critical. You can make wine without oak, but the wine styles that people have got used to drinking, and value, particularly in big red wines, have contributions from oak. We use French barrels for all our wines - we don't have an America barrel in the winery - they allow you to extract more from the barrel without messing up the fruit. Of course wine styles have evolved, nothing stays really permanent. First off, the technology for making wine has advanced enormously since 1974.In the 60s we had very primitive technology, were fermenting in concrete fermenters, and doing some awful, dreadful things. Nowadays, it is just isn't me tasting. When wine comes out of the fermenter, it goes up to ETS Laboratories in St. Helena, which are probably the world's best laboratories, and by 4 o'clock in the afternoon I've got a email report back that not only tells me the simple stuff like the acids, residual sugar levels, pHs, malo acid, lactic acid and all that, but also an assay to spot brett spores, pediococcus and all those nasty things at very low levels, and we can actually take out all those bad actors.So those are technology things that we didn't have. Then at a certain point you've got to cut loose and say we've taken this as far as science can take it, and then you've got to say "OK, now the rest of this stuff, I'm going to do with my palate."WineryVineyard* Immediately after crushing and moving to tank, a valve is opened which lets out clear juice while preventing solids from leaving. 5-10% of the juice is drained off and replaced with an equal amount of water. Fully ripe grapes in Napa have high sugar levels and would result in over the top alcohol levels if some of the natural grape sugar wasn't removed in this way. The process became popular in Napa Valley wineries from the mid 1990's, especially for Cabernet Sauvignon, allowing fully ripe phenolics in the skins and seeds to give fine structure to the wine without being out of balance on alcohol.For Village Cellars, Hendry Ranch Wines is a great example of the 'it takes quality fruit to make a quality wine' approach to winemaking. Richard vividly recalls walking with George in the vineyards at Hendry over 10 years ago, and George explaining that: "Winemaking is like raising children. You can nurture and support them, but ultimately how they turn out depends on them." It's an insight into making wines and raising children that struck a very strong chord, especially as George