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Montelena and Marcoux shine at Benchmark Dinner

33 is the name of a brand of beer I used to drink in west Africa.

33 is the atomic number of arsenic.

33 also happens to be, in French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese, the word a patient is asked to say when a doctor listens to their lungs with a stethoscope (Trente-Trois… Trentatrè… Treizeci şi trei… Treinta y Tres… and Trinta e Três).

More significantly, to readers of this column anyway, the importance of 33 is this: it was the number of very lucky individuals invited to the annual Benchmark Wine Group dinner in Yountville last week.

Fortunately, for these 33, there was no beer, arsenic or stethoscopes present.

“Invited” is such a loaded word because 33 guests “were invited” but they each had to pay $185 to attend the event.

Benchmark Wine Group is one of the Bay-area wine merchants from whom I personally buy a lot of wine…. rare stuff, premium stuff, pre-arrival stuff, and cellared stuff from private collections. But always GOOD stuff. And, for the record, I never get a trade break or inter-winery discount; I pay full retail, or e-tail, like everyone else.

Dave Parker, founder of Benchmark Wine Group.
Hey, Dave, lose the tie! This is Napa Valley!

Benchmark Wine Group was founded seven years ago by Dave Parker, whose earlier claim to fame was that, in 1998, he launched the first-ever, continuous online wine auction house (Brentwood Wine Company). 

Dave’s even earlier claim to fame was success in the high-tech venture world. Some guys buy vineyards with their new wealth; others buy wine companies. Dave, who’s a maverick, did both.

Anyway, back to 33.  For as long as anyone can remember, Benchmark has been holding special event dinners like the one last week. The annual dinner in Napa Valley is held during the first week of June, to coincide with Wine Auction Napa Valley.

And so, 33 guests from Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Minnesota, Arizona, and nearby Bay-area towns assembled for a taste of the good life last Wednesday.

While there were not 33 wines served (too bad you missed that theme, Benchmarkians!) there were more than enough wines opened, all out of the Benchmark cellar.

Dinner was served at Bistro Jeanty, in trendoid little Yountville, which, in case you have been living in a cave, has the highest number of great restaurants on a per capita basis in America. Whitney Farris, from Benchmark, selected a wide range of young and aged wines from many countries to complement the fare.

Here’s what we ate and drank, with my tasting notes added:

Hors d’oeuvres
Gruyere cheese croquettes, pear and endive salad on endive spear

NV Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs

It’s always festive and refreshing to start a multi-course dinner with a great sparkling wine. For starters, this is the only time in the evening when there is no pressure to evaluate the beverage at hand. Why is that?

Another observation: Sparkling wine – and this Schramsberg is a really good one – acts as a sort of transmission fluid, helping lubricate social gears, ease guests forge new relationships, and awaken one’s palate for the courses to follow.

Entree
Salade de latitude or beet and mache salad 

2006 Aubert Vineyards Chardonnay, Lauren Vineyard WA96-98

A pale, straw-colored wine, with the hue of pear juice. Only paler. A very French-style Chardonnay, with good attack, a beautiful balance of acidity and fruit and great length on the finish. 93 points.

One of my observations from dinner, where guests assembled to judge wines, pair them with food, and really get into the analysis of what’s being poured:

EVERYONE AT THE SAME TABLE SHOULD BE POURED WINE FROM THE SAME BOTTLE.

I noticed – and experienced throughout the evening -- that wines poured for guests at our table often came from two different servers who descended on our table at the same time. Or when a bottle was emptied halfway through serving our table guests, the waiter went to fetch a fresh bottle, which was poured for the rest of the table.

This really makes evaluating wine – and sharing the experience with one’s tablemates – frustrating, if not downright impossible.

My glass of wine may have come from a challenged bottle, while the person sitting directly next to me may have a textbook-perfect example of the wine, poured from a different bottle.

Remember, folks: THERE ARE NO TWO IDENTICAL BOTTLES.
There is really just similar wine in similar bottles.

So, at the Benchmark dinner, I started to riff poetically about my Aubert and someone at our table, who was poured from a different bottle, had a totally different reaction to the wine than I did.  When we tried to share what we thought was a common experience, we each first thought that the other guy must have a lousy palate. In fact, I only discovered halfway through dinner that we had been drinking totally different wines with the same name, but poured from different bottles.

2002 Peter Michael Chardonnay, Cuvee Indigene IWC94+


Much more yellow than the Aubert, a New World bruiser with steroidal features: wood, spices, oak all nicely integrated but all of it shouting, cubed to the power of 3, certainly relative to the Aubert. Even so, judged on its own merit, this wine was also a 93-pointer. Or at least MY wine was. I am not sure everyone at my table had the same experience, as some were tasting Peter Michael Chardonnay from a different bottle.

First Main
Coq au vin or Daube de Boeuf

1996 Jadot Bonnes Mares WA94-96
A somewhat challenged bottle, producing a slightly tired wine with touches of saddle leather, sauerkraut, mushrooms on the floor of a forest, a bit of dankness, soy, and then a sweep of sweetness in the middle palate. My wine showed a hint of oxidation. When I tasted the wine served to another guest, poured from a different bottle, the revelation was dramatic. The second bottle was brighter, there were no hints of oxidation, the fruit was stronger, more focused and there were spices in the middle palate that just weren’t evident in my glass of this wine. Overall, I’d score the combo of these wines 92 points. Don’t ask about the math, or algebraic formula, to reach this numerical attribution – it’s lost in the scribbles of my dinner notes.

2004 Kosta Browne Pinot Noir, Cohn Vineyard WS97


Aromas of fresh latex paint (in a good way!) and of leather seats in a new car (also in a good way!). Had a Port-like attack, very syrupy, very BIG, very reduced. Concentrated flavors of fruit, chocolate, but almost a parody of what Pinot Noir should be like. This represents a style of winemaking, which produces over-extracted, over-concentrated, over-alcoholized wines. The finish on the Kosta Brown was mostly hot, rather than pleasant. 90 points.

Of the two wines served with the daube, the Jadot from my tablemate’s glass, was the most complementary. It fed into the rich dish, cleansed my palate, made me want to go back to the beef dish. The Kosta Brown behaved like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, attempting to Smack Down the daube and keep it down for the count of three. No let up, no relief. Just a bruiser.

Second Main
Tuna au Poivre or Filet au Poivre

1987 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon Estate WA98

I had six bottles of this wine in my own cellar and finished the last bottle years ago, when I thought the wine had hit its peak. When I saw this wine on the dinner menu, I thought, for sure, it would be over the hill.

But the wine poured at dinner exhibited monumental freshness – like the thing has another 10 years to go!

For me, this was the Surprise Wine of The Night. I had so few expectations about this 22-year-old California Cab, yet it exhibited a powerful, fresh nose, with loads of ripe black and red fruit. On the palate, it was delicious, hinting at roasted nuts, cherries, and blackberries. Very youthful. If others at the tasting read these notes and think I am on drugs to make these comments, all I can do is remind them: NO TWO BOTTLES ARE ALIKE and my Chateau Montelena was sensational. Period. 95 points.

1982 Gruaud Larose WA96

Let’s be clear about the filet au poivre. It should have been called “poivre au filet” – pepper with steak. Because there was so many freshly crushed black peppercorns on both the top and bottom sides of my filet that the fiery blackness obliterated the wonderful Gruaud that was in my glass. NOT a successful pairing.

I resorted to Damage Control to revitalize my palate – hunks of bread liberally smeared with butter.

My suggestion to Jeanty – lightly roll only the edge of the filet in crushed peppercorns, not the top and bottom sides of the filet, which provide too much exposure. The beef had way too much pepper for ANY wine that might have been selected to complement the fare.

In fact, the only beverage that might have complemented my “poivre au filet” would have been water forced through a fire hose.

But back to the Gruaud. Leather, pencil graphite, and rose petals on the earliest whiff. But underneath, and certainly evident over time, was the appearance of brett-y, sweaty, vegetal elements that ultimately result in this being the only sub-90 pointer wine of the evening. 89 points.

1996 Gaja Langhe Conteisa WA93-95
This wine, according to Parker (Robert, not Dave), falls well within the window of drinkability, yet the bottle poured at Jeanty was so tight, so young, so closed that there was little over which one might wax poetic.

The nose was tight. The early sips were tight, revealing little. The wine showed no characteristics to reveal origin or age. I found myself asking: “Is this one of those wines that is ageless… or never-ageable?”

Every once in a while, one finds a wine that just never, ever wants to evolve; it kind of gets stuck in time and is either unwilling, or unable, to mature (sort of like me). This Gaja Barolo might just be one such wine. At 13 years of age, there is not a hint of evolution, or movement. 90 points.

2003 Marcoux Chateauneuf du Pape, Vieilles Vignes WA99


Wine of the Night. I predicted it, because almost every time you pour a killer Chateauneuf du Pape, the harmonious Grenache-Syrah blend eclipses all the other wines on the table. This evening’s Benchmark dinner was no exception.

The 2003 Marcoux is still young. It exhibited bright ripe red fruit on the nose, and delivered a BIG Grenache bomb hit on the initial sip. This wine has so much fruit that it hides the 16-plus percent alcohol. The wine has layers of complexity, a rich, pillow-y middle palate which soars, and a finish that makes you beg the waiter to go find another short pour. 97 points.

Dessert
Crepe Suzette or Seasonal Bread Pudding


1932 Massandra Red Port 

Massandra sounds like an Internet radio station, something akin to Pandora. But, in fact, it’s a near-200-year-old winemaking collective near Yalta on the Black Sea, in the area known as the Crimea.

In the 1890s, seven football field-length tunnels were bored deep into a Crimean mountain, creating the region’s largest wine cellar.

Not long after, a certain Prince chose to cellar his private wine collection at Massandra, in the passively chilled underground cellars. The Prince’s library became known as “The Massandra Collection,” which contained thousands of wines from all over the world.

When rich folks weren’t storing wine at Massandra, they were making it there. These locally made wines were notated, as being from the “Massandra Collection,” though “being from the Massandra Collective,” is more accurate.

Wines from the Massandra Collective have always tended to be sweet. The area boasts 4,400 acres of Muscat, Tokay and Pinot Gris vines. There are also a handful of wines made from grapes that sound like the names of Japanese baseball players -- Ekim-Kara, Lapa-Kara and Metin-Kara, to name a few. (Aren’t these the Dodgers’ First-, Second- and Third-basemen?)

For dessert at the Benchmark dinner, two examples of really old Massandra Collective wines were served. Dave Parker had made it a personal quest to get them for the Benchmark cellar. Whitney chose to serve them at dinner.

The 1932 Port is the color of maple syrup. The use of the word “Port,” by the way to describe this beverage is somewhere between modestly inaccurate and poetic license. I, for one, think of “Port” as coming from Portugal and being made from the classic grapes from that region. I tend to treat the word “Port” as I do “Champagne.” Sparkling wines made from Chardonnay or Pinot Meunier grapes from other parts of the world should not be  called “Champagne.” Same, too, for Port, but this is only MY way of thinking.

So this 1932 Massandra “Port,” has none of the color, depth, or intensity of flavor of old, real Ports. (I am thinking specifically of the classic vintage of 1927, which produced “Ports,” of forehead-slapping intensity.)

By contrast, the Massandra is a weak sister (okay, brother, in these gender-challenging times). More like a “curio” from the past, than a “Port” from the past. But when you are lucky enough to be tasting a handmade, 77-year-old, artisanal wine – this is a time to reflect, a time to be humbled, a time to be thankful. Hallelujah. 90 points.

1923 Massandra Kuchuk Usen Madeira

The color of apple cider, this beverage tastes as though the bartender has mixed an old Madeira with some middle-aged tokay, and thinned out the concoction with some fresh Muscat. The bottles poured were imported by Sothebys, resold to Bonhams and bought by Benchmark. They’ve traveled a fair bit from their origin in the Crimea.

This Massandra “Madeira” (again, you can question the appropriateness of the term “Madeira” for a Crimean wine…) has touches of mint, spearmint, and pear. It is another “curio” wine, and I am grateful for the opportunity to taste such an old, rare, world wine. 90 points.

… and just when you thought it was over….

… Whitney brought out one more dessert treasure, another wine, which I  had never tasted. But this one from the New World.

2002 Sine Qua Non, Mr. K Noble Man.
From the ever-inventive Manfred Krankl, comes this sweet dessert wine made from Chardonnay plucked from the Alban Vineyard. The wine was sweet, young, deliciously acidic and, at the end of a very long, very vinous dinner, overkill.

The wine exhibited flavors of maple, and the juice you might get if you crushed fresh walnuts and removed the oils. Sounds weird, I know, but that’s what you find in the inventive wines of M. Krankl. 90 points.

If you were not one of the lucky 33 to attend the Benchmark Private Dinner in Yountville, fear not – your chance may yet come!

Benchmark hosts similar dinners in different cities across the country throughout the year.  In fact, Benchmark has just announced the schedule for the remainder of the year:

Minneapolis dinner September 24. 
Chicago dinner September 26. 
New York City  - the date is not yet firm, but the event will likely be held in October or November. 

You wanna find out more? Contact Whitney at [email protected].

If you’re a big shot with lots of friends, you might even invite Whitney into your home to conduct a private tasting – no matter where you live. 

“If someone assembles eight to 12 people, I will work with them to co-host a dinner in their home or at their favorite restaurant. I bring wine from Benchmark, and work with the chef, or caterer, to design the menu. The cost of such a private event, to cover the wines, ranges from $150 to $250 per head,” says Whitney.

Sounds like one helluva special birthday gift or unique surprise party. Just make sure you invite napaman!

Auction Napa Valley Gets Under Way…

Call this America’s best (fill in the blank)*.

*(Party? Annual wine auction? Charity fund-raising event? Four-day food and wine love-in?) Some how, each of these definitions is correct.

Whatever you call it, the 29th Auction Napa Valley is half over, having started Thursday. Guests paid $2,500 per person for full-attendance privileges. The climax is always a spirited live auction, which includes individual lots for wines, trips, and even cars, often surpassing $500,000-plus per lot.

Napa Valley Vintners, the non-profit trade association responsible for promoting and protecting the Napa Valley appellation, organizes this annual event to raise funds for local charities.

Since inception, the event, the country’s premier charity wine auction, has raised more than $85 million, pledged by thirsty bidders. While the wines they bid on generally leave the valley, their funds stay here to subsidize local healthcare, youth services and affordable housing.

Napa Valley Vintners, which represents 350 area wineries, invited napaman to attend the first half of the weekend’s events. So consider this a half-time update.

Thursday

 

Under the auspices of Napa Valley Vintners, many local wineries opened their doors for auction attendees. Some offered special events. But every winery poured its top wines and offered complementary appetizers. Auction guests zoomed around the valley, from 11 am to well after dusk, checking out the many winery parties.

Napaman used the opportunity to update tasting notes on the wines of three wineries.

First stop was Round Pond, in Rutherford, the home of judicious Cabernet.

Winemaker Brian Brown and Round Pond owner Miles MacDonnell.

Round Pond is a family affair, owned by a brother and sister team, Miles and Ryan (that’s a her) MacDonnell. They have owned the 360-acre property for some time, but until recently, sold all the fruit to top Napa Valley wineries.

A few years ago, the MacDonnell’s decided to keep five percent of their fruit to craft a signature blend for their own label.

The setting of Round Pond is glorious. The architecture of the main building is memorable, as are the wines.

2007 Round Pond Cabernet Sauvignon
I really liked the barrel sample of 2007 Cabernet, which is Cab and a squeak (three percent) of Petit Verdot. This wine, crafted by winemaker Brian Brown, is beautifully structured, expressive and not overpowering. When released this fall, it will retail for $60.

I would love to find this wine blindly inserted into the July Rutherford Dust Society tasting to which napaman is invited; it would be fun to see if I like it as much then and discover, too, if I can pick it out blind in a line-up of 20 unknown Rutherford Cabs. Don’t know how I’d like it then, but sure did like it Thursday: 94 points.

Next Stop – The Lore of Tor was in Store

I jumped at the chance to attend Tor Kenward’s open-house: More than a dozen different blends of Tor’s delicious wines were poured at one of my favorite victual venues in Napa Valley, Mustards Grill.

Amidst Mustards’ raised organic vegetable beds, Tor Kenward set up tasting tables.

Tor winemaker Jeff Ames and Brittany Savory pour the winery’s top Syrahs, and Cabs at Mustards Grill.

Napaman doesn’t generally love outdoor tastings; gusts of wind whip essential, compacted aromas out of the glass and the heat of a Napa Valley midday sun can makes one’s palate lazy. So my appreciation of Tor’s wines was probably challenged, but of the 13 wines I tasted, two really stood out:

2006 TOR Cabernet Sauvignon, Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard
Love the wine, don’t love the price. You expect a wine of this price -- $150 – to deliver the goods, and this one does. But in this economy, how many wine drinkers are rushing out to buy triple-digit wines?
I found this to be a sensuously rich – ethereal really – wine, filled with fresh ripe red fruit and a hint of Virginia tobacco (given Jeff’s roots, maybe it was Alabama tobacco?). Gawjus jus.  94 points.

2006 TOR ROCK Syrah, Hudson Vineyard
A thrilling wine. The best of the Syrahs poured, a truly pleasurable purple paean. I adore the intensity of this Syrah, the balance and elegance. And, oh yes, the price – back in the ballpark of reality: $60 for this 95-point wine.

Later the same day…

Julie Johnson, owner/winemaker of Tres Sabores

To round out the day, napaman visited a hidden Rutherford winery, Julie Johnson’s Tres Sabores. She hosted a party for friends, and loyal customers from around the country, offering five different wines to taste.

Her 2007 Pourque No? (the question mark is on the label) brought to mind a famous Paul Masson marketing line: “We will sell no wine before its time.” Because this 2007 wine is being previewed, and sold, before its time.

The background: Last year at Auction Napa Valley, Julie offered her 2005 Pourque No?, which was a delicious, solid, 92-pointer. This blend of Zin, Cabernet, Petit Sirah and Petit Verdot is always a crowd-pleaser, especially at the price: $25. I’ve even seen it for as little as $20 in the economic downturn.

After Julie sold out her modest production of 2005 Pourque No?, she introduced her 2006 Pourquoi No?. It was so good that she blew through her entire production before year-end. That was the wine Julie expected to offer guests at this year’s auction party, but there wasn’t a drop to be found in the realm.

So Julie bottled her 2007 Pourquoi No? slightly ahead of schedule to have product ready for the auction crowd (and for restaurant beverage managers, who love this wine and who hate to be out of stock, regardless of vintage).

The result is a wine that, after only a short spell in bottle, needs time to age, put on some fat, gain focus, and broaden its shoulders. The subtle sweetness of the 110-year-old Zinfandel, which Julie gets from Calistoga, and which constitutes 70 percent of the blend, is missing in this young wine. It’s there, but will need several months to show. There are muddled notes of raspberry in the 2007 blend, but the wine is nowhere near as bright and delicious as it will be if this wine is given a few months to recover from bottle shock.

(Many wines go through ‘bottle shock,’ a period when the wine, or some of its component grapes, appear to be dumbed-down; the wine is less exciting, offers fewer, sometimes no, regular flavor characteristics. Winemakers call this effect ‘bottle shock.’ It can occur two weeks, or two months, or even a year after bottling, and can last months in some wines, or as long as years in some Bordeaux wines.)

I look forward to revisiting this wine at the Rutherford Dust Society in the summer to learn how it is evolving.

Friday

Site of the 29th annual Auction Napa Valley – Robert Mondavi Winery

Some 2,500 people converged on the Robert Mondavi Winery for Friday’s indoor/outdoor food and wine fest known as Taste Napa Valley. It was a chance for guests to sample the very best food and wines of Napa Valley and to hobnob with the chefs and winemakers behind the glorious fare.

The day is a bit like a three-ring circus; you don’t know whether to be out at the stalls tasting the best food… or be in the Mondavi chai (where wine is barrel-aged) to see the 112 lots, which will be offered at Saturday’s Live Auction… or hang out in the fermentation room, where 120 wineries are pouring their (mostly) 2008 Cabernet blends from barrel.

Perhaps the best way to share what the day was like, is to present the elements in snapshot format:

Dozens of local restaurants participated, each offering a signature item. Rutherford Grill, where you will ALWAYS find winemakers converging, presented house-smoked salmon, served on pointed toasts, sauced with a remoulade.
 

Auberge du Soleil, the ritzy Rutherford resort, presented toasted rounds topped with an assemblage of fava beans, prosciutto, and Berkswell cheese (English sheep’s milk).


A novel way of presenting an innovative chilled treat – from whom else? The French Laundry. Chef Thomas Keller filled small paper cups with watermelon-flavored, shaved ice, drizzled it with olive oil infused with fresh garden basil, and topped the concoction with – are you kidding me? – chopped black olives.

Dale Ray, the new chef at Mustards Grill, and owner Cindy Pawlcyn, serve the restaurant’s classic smoked ribs.

Thomas Keller, owner of the French Laundry, Bouchon and Ad Hoc, all in Yountville, was present to hand out his butter-rich, super-dense, super-moist, brownie-like Chocolate Bouchons, a signature sweet at Bouchon Bakery.


Love the hat! Hiding beneath it is Lori Narlock, a public relations specialist in the wine industry.

Although bidding began a month ago on 112 auction lots offered only in an online format, guests at the Friday event were still making bids right up to cut-off time at freestanding terminals around the Mondavi property.
The top e-bid lot – for $$13,500 -- was for three 6-liter bottles of Arietta Wine, a case of Arietta library wines, and a private charity auction to be held in the winning bidder’s home, courtesy of winery owner and famed Napa Valley auctioneer Fritz Hatton.

Santa Rosa Caricaturist Doug Shannon sketched guests at the all-day food/fun/frivolity fest – Taste Napa Valley – held on the lawn, beside the vineyards, of the Robert Mondavi Winery.
 

Napa Valley Vintners converted Mondavi’s fermentation room into a full-bore tasting room, where 120 wineries presented their (mostly) 2008 Cabernet barrel samples. These were the wines on which guests bid for cases.
Pouring their glorious Cabernet above are Mike and Treva Harris of Harris Estate Vineyards.
The din in the fermentation room approached that which you’d experience on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier with jets taking off.  An appropriate simile – as bids for many of these wines headed for the stratosphere.

Full use was made of the Mondavi property. The 42 major auction lots for Saturday’s Live Auction were displayed in Mondavi’s chai, where earlier vintages of Cabernet barrel age.

Lot 1 of 42 lots gives an idea of the grandeur and size of the lots in the Live Auction. Lot 1 offers 135 bottles (!) of fine Napa Valley wine, plus a portrait to be taken by Napa Valley Vintners’ photographer Jason Tinacci, plus a special dinner, plus an album of photos.

No wonder Fritz Hatton is smiling – his lot of Arietta wines received the highest bid -- $13,500 – among 112 lots in the e-auction. Celebrating with Fritz (on left), are Anna Simons (Pope) and Mark Pope, AKA The Bounty Hunter.

Friday Taste Napa Valley event is a time for locals to bump into friends whom they haven’t seen for a while. It was great seeing these three amigos and catching up – Margrit Biever Mondavi and Tim Mondavi, partners in Continuum, their new winery project, and Genevieve Janssens, Director of Winemaking at Robert Mondavi Winery.

As napaman was not accredited to cover Saturday’s events, which culminate with the Live Auction, you’ll have to check Napa Valley Vintners website Sunday, after 3 pm, to get Live Auction results and the grand final auction tally.
You’ll find them at http://www.napavintners.com/trade/tm_3_releases.asp

No Wonder GM Went Broke… They Gave my Great-Grandfather $49 billion…

Well, that’s $49 billion in today’s currency, based on compounded interest at seven percent.

 What General Motors actually paid my great-grandfather, Louis Henry Perlman, was $3 million for his invention, at a time before there was any income tax.

Had Louis taken the money and left it in the bank (a stable, reliable one, at that) it would have propelled his heirs – me included – into the stratosphere of wealth shared by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. $49 billion is a lot of cash.

The invention that made Louis Henry Perlman wealthy?

Believe it or not: the spare tire.

Or the “demountable rim for motor-car wheels,” as it was called in 1906, when my great-grandfather filed his application with the US Patent Office. 

Until Louis Perlman invented the spare tire, early motorists had to pry a punctured, deflated tire off the fixed rim of a car wheel, replacing it with a new pneumatic tube. They then had to huff and puff, and inflate the new tire on the spot. The whole process was laborious and dirty.

Louis Henry Perlman, inventor, journalist, photographer – and my great-grandfather.

Perlman’s invention permitted motorists to carry a spare rim on their car, with tire affixed and already inflated. My great-grandfather’s invention enabled drivers, for the first-time ever, to take the wheel off the axle by removing  a few bolts. How ingenious. How simple. How quickly stolen by several manufacturing companies. More about this saga in a minute. First, the family lore.

Louis Perlman was a kindly man, according to stories my mother told. But also an eccentric man, a wealthy man, and in the end, a destitute man.

Louis H. Perlman, my mother, Anne, on the left, and her sister, Grace, at Montrose, NY, circa 1925 or 1926. 

I was inculcated with family lore about Louis Perlman whenever we visited the property in Montrose NY, which he had owned and which my grandfather maintained through the 1960s.

Montrose was a wooded, 55-acre estate which Perlman bought from former Secretary of State William Seward’s family with the cash that he made selling his demountable rim to General Motors in 1904. My family said that they first put it on their car, called a Welch, in 1906.

In addition to getting $3 million in un-taxed cash and GM stock, Perlman was also promised one new GM car each year for the rest of his life, without having to return any of the previous year’s cars.

I vividly recall the barn extension at Montrose, which workmen added to annually, to cover each new car, which my great-grandfather was given. There were dozens of one-year-driven models, lined up side by side, in the long barn extension, with an overhanging roof to keep the cars dry and clean.

My mother (left) and her older sister, Grace, at Montrose, NY, in front of one of their grandfather's GM cars.

 Along the way, family lore seems to have covered up some of Perlman’s strengths and weaknesses, as evidenced by some recently discovered historical material.

Lore may also have mis-attributed the source of Perlman’s wealth. It may not have come directly from General Motors, as my family said, but there sure as hell was major GM money in Perlman’s life; by 1916, my great-grandfather was president of the Perlman Rim Corporation, capitalized with $10 million of private money.

One of Perlman’s business partners was W. C. Durant, president of General Motors. Although they headquartered Perlman Rim Corp. in New York, the firm built the largest – and only exclusive – demountable rim plant in the world, in Jackson, Michigan. The plant, covering five acres, produced 5,000 sets of demountable rims every day, according to an out-of-print Who’s Who of American Industrialists. Enough rims to equip 1.5 million cars annually.

 

Louis H. Perlman and my mother, Anne, at the family home in Montrose, NY, beside the barn. 

Had great-grandfather Perlman just socked the dough away that he made for his heirs, of whom I am one, the family fortune today would dwarf the wealth of many of today’s Forbes-listed billionaires. But fate wasn’t kind to grand-pappy Perlman; he lost most of his wealth in the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing years of the depression and my grandfather was still paying off Louis’ debts in the 1950s, as my mother used to tell me.

But, oh! Was my great-grandfather colorful. Certainly as memorable as a Diamond Jim Brady, or an early Rockefeller, though Perlman’s story, unlike theirs, has been lost in space and time. 

Perhaps a few highlights of his career need to be added here, simply to set the record straight. (And to tease any would-be movie producers looking for a good story for the Big Screen; be sure to call napaman for the screen rights!)

My great-grandfather was born November 26, 1861, in Kovno, Russia. Louis was one of three children born to Lesser and Celia Perlman. Lesser, his dad, was a rabbi, who deeming it essential to seek a better life for his family, emigrated to America in 1862, several years ahead of the rest of the family.

Once landing in the US, Lesser moved across the face of the nation, a virtual serial spiritual seeker. He found or started new congregations in Cincinnati, then  in St. Louis and then in Charleston, SC. Within two years Lesser had saved enough funds to bring his family to America. They moved to Utica, NY, where Lesser found a newer, larger congregation.

In his father’s snaking spiritual shadow, young Louis also lived in Providence, RI and New York City.

The younger Perlman, my future great-grandfather, completed his elementary education at Christie Street Public School No. 7 at the age of 15 and then enrolled in the College of the City of New York, where he majored in stenography, bookkeeping and accounting. 

Perlman’s skills in stenography led him to a career in journalism and photography (I appear to have his journalist’s DNA and his entrepreneurial spirit… just not his money…).

Perlman was a co-founder of the Pictorial Associated Press, the first-ever agency to syndicate images and photos to newspapers across the country. My great-grandfather even took and sold the first half-tone illustration ever published in the New York Sun – a portrait of congressman Holman of Indiana.

While the idea of a demountable rim came quickly to my great-grandfather, the financial windfall from it did not. Family lore has it that Perlman got his cash up front from GM in one fell swoop. According to records, which have recently come to light, this was not the case.

In fact, Perlman had to litigate and scrape his way through appellate courts for years to get what was rightfully his from the start.

Although Perlman’s patent application for the demountable rim was dated May 21, 1906, a number of manufacturing firms began to infringe on the application. Records indicate that Perlman was (you should pardon the term) tireless in his pursuit of justice; he defended his patent application in court after court and after seven long, wearying years, at the appeals circuit level, he was finally granted, on February 4, 1913, US Patent 1,052,270 for “the demountable automobile rim.”

In October of the same year, after months of trying to persuade large manufacturers who were making demountable rims, and infringing on his patent rights, granddaddy Perlman sued the Standard Welding Company of Cleveland, Ohio, the nation’s leading maker of demountable rims in the US District Court of New York.

Back into the courts, Perlman waited for a verdict; it came two years later, in August, 1915, when the court ruled that Standard Welding had indeed infringed on the patent. Standard appealed the case but an appeals court, in 1916, ruled in favor, yet again, of Perlman and ordered Standard  Welding to pay my great-grandfather millions of dollars in back royalties.

With his earnings, Perlman decided that it was time to by a suitable, sizable tract of land. He chose Montrose, NY, a tiny hamlet that is actually within the jurisdiction of Cortlandt, a small town located, for those without access to Google Maps, near Croton-on-Hudson, in Westchester County. Now do you picture it?

Montrose had been owned in succession by two Sewards. First, by William H. Seward (1801-1872), who had been Secretary of State for Abraham Lincoln. Then by his son, Frederick Seward (1830-1915).

For the record: Seward the Elder was responsible for purchasing Alaska from Russia for $7 million. At the time, the seemingly goofy acquisition was called "Seward's Folly," or "Seward's Icebox."

 

WIlliam Seward, former Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln.

Frederick, the son, was a journalist and diplomat. Like his dad, he became politically active and was named Assistant Secretary of State, working under – who else? -- his father. Long live nepotism!

When Seward the Younger died, the estate was put up for sale. Along came my great-grandfather.

According to Wikipedia, the Seward Estate covered 30 acres, though I remember my parents telling me that it was a 55-acre estate. It had a stately, rolling, verdant, manicured front lawn that swaled from the huge main house down to the gray waters of the Hudson River, which lapped at the foot of the property.

The mansion, in which I spent summers with my own cousins and an uncle who was one year older than me, had a large dining room, and an adjacent restaurant-sized kitchen. Oh, and let’s not forget what else it had: that barn out back with the added-on-extensions to cover all of Louis Perlman‘s General Motor cars.

Louis was a reasonably private person and does not appear to have had many close friends. My mother always told the story that before he lost all his money in the Depression, Louis would go to New York City, hire a huge ballroom at the Essex Hotel, and invite upwards of 2,000 people off the street to join him for a festive party in the hotel. These were complete strangers.

I can’t determine whether this is strictly family folklore, but I can attest that it was told to me -- it’s what my family recounted when I was a boy.

Louis went on to lose everything in the stock market crash, and left family, not funds, as his only legacy. He had a daughter, Grace Helen Perlman, who was my mother’s mother, and he had a son, Jesse Burke Perlman, who was an ensign in the US Navy.

I remember my mother recounting stories about Jesse’s skills at playing cards, especially bridge and canasta. About the rest of the family, or Louis’ wife, I know very little. 

What any of this has to do with Napa Valley, I haven’t a clue. Except, perhaps, that I am the multi-generational byproduct of Louis Perlman and I live in Napa Valley…  and as I have no other place to tell this story, so it will be told here.