Francis Ford Coppola has long owned a fabled piece of Napa property, responsible for producing world-class red wine long before California wine was even a thing. That vineyard was Inglenook, founded in 1890 by Gustave Niebaum, and in recent years the winery has been known as the Niebaum-Coppola Estate. Coppola’s been producing his Bordeaux-style Rubicon wines there since the late 1970s, with varying degrees of success. But now, with the help of a Bordeaux consultant and having acquired the Inglenook name for his own use, Coppola plans to return the name to the glory it knew with vintages like the 1941 Inglenook Cabernet, which was perhaps the first California wine that could have won at a blind tasting in Paris — something which didn’t actually happen until 1976. He tells the Chron that he may not live to see the vineyard fully mature again into what it once was, but he’s going to try. “In the wine field, it takes decades and I’m 72. So clearly I have 10 years, or maybe more, to make it happen.” [Chron]
