That involved another court battle, dating back to the early
1970s, when Doumani was one of the early renegades to start a little winery in
the not-yet-chic land where Charles Krug, Robert Mondavi, Louis M. Martini,
Beaulieu and Inglenook made what used to be known as table wines. Warren
Winiarski, a friend of Doumani’s who started a winery near the outcrop of red
rocks called Stags Leap, was also among this group. Both men thought they would
name their wine after the legendary stag that met its demise there. In 1986, a
judge decreed that they could both use the name—with strict adherence to
apostrophe placement. Doumani prefers not to bear grudges and he doesn’t let
business rule his life, which is why he commissioned Hundertwasser to begin
with. "I wanted to make something that was fantasyland and fun," Doumani says.
"Things were getting too serious in the wine business. And, as far as I’m
concerned, wine drinking is supposed to be social, fun and should never be taken
too seriously."
"Things were getting too serious . . . . As far as I’m concerned, wine drinking is supposed to be social, fun and should never be
taken too seriously." |
Which is also why he sold Stags’ Leap to Beringer in 1997 for a
reported $17 million. "It just got so big that I felt I was no longer part of
the process," he says. "It stopped being fun." He retained a 140-acre parcel
next door and built the new winery, which produces about 8,000 cases a year to
the old winery’s 50,000.
Doumani is a man about town in Napa Valley circles, although he
protests that he and his girlfriend, public relations executive Pamela Hunter,
no longer hold the fabled parties they used to at Stags’ Leap. "We had a manor
house there," he says. "Now we have just six, maybe eight people over at a
time." Vintner H. William Harlan, who also owns the Meadowood resort in St.
Helena, Francis Ford Coppola and restaurateur and vintner Pat Kuleto are
frequent guests for dinner and poker parties at the house, which has an
anti-Quixote, Zenlike atmosphere and a calming collection of Japanese weavings,
sculptures and pottery.
Doumani can also be found dining out with boldface-name
friends, often at the restaurants that belong to his daughter Lissa and her
husband, chef Hiro Sone: Terra in St. Helena, which they have owned for almost
20 years, and now Ame at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. Lee Iacocca once
lit up a cigar after dining with Doumani at Terra, so all of the other guests at
the table did as well. People still talk about how Lissa, who doesn’t allow
smoking in the restaurant, made hand gestures to her father, but couldn’t bring
herself to tell Iacocca to put out his cigar.
"When we first started this restaurant, everyone would ask if I
was Carl’s daughter, and I would say yes," says Lissa, who is the famous one
among four siblings. "It got to be that every day, someone would ask me. So I
had a pin made up that said, ‘Yes, I am.’"
Wine snobs might go to her restaurant and order Quixote to
acknowledge the vintner who made Petite Syrah respectable in Napa Valley (and
changed the spelling from Sirah). When others were only blending the Petite
Syrah grape (a child of Syrah and the obscure French grape Durif), Doumani
championed it as a varietal. As a wine, Petite Syrah is a deep, dark purple and
offers flavor without too much fruitiness, good structure with pronounced
tannins, and the ability to age for more than a decade. "Everyone thinks about
Cabernet Sauvignon when thinking of the Stags Leap region, but everyone should
love Petite Syrah," Doumani says. "It’s big, round, the tannins are soft and it
ages beautifully, getting more Bordeauxlike the older it gets. While my
neighbors were out there tearing out all their Petite Syrah in favor of Cab and
Chardonnay, I was planting more."
Tara Weingarten is a special correspondent for Newsweek in Los
Angeles, writing about food, wine, cars and travel.
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