I’m so glad to see Inglenook back in the news thanks to Coppola. Why?
Years ago when I first started photographing wine through the microscope, when Inglenook made great wine and still ‘lived’ in their original buildings, their PR director hired me to photograph 45 years of their cabs.
This was a very special tasting event with the Wine Spectator and who’s who in wine world, at least the Napa world. The year is 1985. It turns out that the Spectator had written the wrong date on their calendar and didn’t show up. Now there were lots of seats around the table for wine, dinner, you know the scene.
So guess who got invited to join in the festivities – yours truly – and they sat me next to the great Andre T who shared his opinions of the wines with me, a very novice taster. It was one of the highs of my early courtship with the soul and spirit of wine.
My wine image library contains the history of this event from the famous 1941 cask cabernet(the first Napa wine to score 100 points from the Spectator) to 1985 barrel samples from Napanook vineyard. More than that it taught me a lot about wine aging with visible clues from the inner world of wine. It also provided me with a new event – Can we see wine aging through the microscope for SWE done with Jay Corley, John Thoreen, and Rick Theis.
The above image is the 1968 Inglenook Cask Cab at 17 years young – still vital.
This is the legendary 1941 Cask Cab from Inglenook at 44 years old.
More of the story is in Wine’s Hidden Beauty.