It all started with Haynes Vineyard Pinot Noir. Well, maybe a bit before that. Back to the early ‘70s, when California wine was only just beginning to be taken seriously. Like, you wouldn’t be caught dead bringing a California wine to a dinner party—sacré bleu!—it could only be French.
Bill Cadman, who was raised in Oakland, was working as a specialist on the floor of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange in San Francisco. His trading calls were questionable, but San Francisco proved to be a great place to score good wine. He would often head to 10 Minna Street, all concrete walls and wooden floor stacks, to buy Leoville Las Cases for $120 a case. In 1971, he decided to chuck the stuffy stockbroker suit and headed to Napa with his wife Barbara to look for a harvest job. He was hired at Charles Krug for what he thought was his innate talent; later he learned they’d hire anyone with a pulse during harvest. He ended up operating both crushers at Krug that harvest, an experience akin to getting out of boot camp and going right to the front lines.
