Lou Kapcsandy, Napa Valley Hero

Lou Kapcsandy is one of the Napa Valley’s foremost winery proprietors in the game today. His wines defy description and embody depth. A comprehensive tasting in November of 2008 revealed more to me than I’d ever expected to learn about the integration of philosophy and winemaking. Generally, a wine writer would be expected to wax prosaic about yet another iteration of the philosophy of winemaking. Not this author – I want to share the visceral items that struck me most about Mr. Kapscandy as well as his wines. We read and hear too much about how this rustic wine was born from an agronomist’s rootsy ideologies, and how that graceful pinot noir reflects the delicate personality of that oenologist. I’ve spent enough time with highly educated and well-travelled winemakers to integrate the passion of it all for myself. You can absorb anything you like as you gambol about the vineyards and formulate what the love of wine means to you. I simply want to tell you about a remarkable human being in the wine business whose life I find inspiring while his wines are some of the best you will find in the United States today.

Lou owns the prized State Lane Vineyard in the Yountville corridor of the Napa Valley, the parcel that provided Beringer Estates its prime fruit for two decades. California wine enthusiasts know the fundamental quality of this cabernet sauvignon, and those that recall the inaugural 1979 vintage tend to get a bit choked up when they face the fact that those bottles are probably consumed by now. All in all, not a bad piece of land, to have fun with an understatement. The acquisition of such a remarkable supply of world-class raw materials isn’t the point of focus herein, yet after I discuss the history of the man at the helm of this vineyard, we’ll see confirmation that good things happen to good people.

Lou’s past is a tapestry of incredible circumstances, narrow escapes and spectacular fortune. He grew up in Hungary and encountered the typical personal choices a young person must make in early adulthood, but he endured additional trials foreign to most of in today’s comfortable Western world. Hungary was dominated by Stalinist communists in those days. The Cold War was raging and the tribulations of Communist rule had its fierce grip on Hungarian citizens young and old. The working class had found a certain level of power against the ruling government and the conditions of what it means to live in a violent police state. Militias battled municipal security cells and executions were a reality. The citizens were winning their sovereignty back and were well on their way back to the freedom and self-regulation they’d earned near the end of the 19^th century. Then, the winds changed direction and the withdrawing Soviet troops were ordered to return to Budapest with a vengeance. After about three weeks in the fall of 1956, Hungarian citizens’ hopes vanished and those who weren’t killed were able to escape the country. A quarter of a million refugees found various escape routes, and one of these defeated but fortunate individuals was Lou. Looking back, one must consider whether defeat on one front can really imply defeat in all areas of a person’s life. Lou Kapcsandy proves the success of the human spirit, the juxtaposition of preparedness, skill and luck.

One of Lou’s talents was soccer. Once he found his way to Austria, still in hiding from government mercenaries, he realized that he’d been recruited – auctioned off behind his back, in fact! – to play soccer for Real Madrid, Spain’s formidable soccer team. This offer was not so good, given Spaniards’ ongoing problems with Stalinism at that time. Lou rejected that offer, as well as subsequent entreaties by professional soccer recruiters in Italy and Germany. All this time, as today’s version of headhunters were begging him to play his beloved sport on a national level, he was festering in an Austrian internment camp! For further information about the conditions refugees experienced in camps, one need only look to the abundance of documentation to realize what Lou’s nineteen months as not much more than a prisoner were like. He was sponsored by the International Student Union during this time, and they constantly sought opportunities for him to emerge into any suitable society that would afford him the basic freedoms he’d need to thrive on his own and find a niche in which to settle, autonomous despite having had his homeland ripped from him.

Lou found a way for him to come to the United States, albeit penniless, and his intellectual skills earned him an engineering degree and a subsequent post with Union Carbide in New York City. Just when the ironies seemed to exhaust themselves, Lou was drafted to the U.S. Army, but he didn’t yet hold citizenship. His marksmanship and skill with a hand grenade had been observed, though, because he’d been a fairly high ranking organizer of the citizens’ revolt back in Budapest. In just under three years, he received extensive training and went from a drafted infantryman to an 82^nd Airborne Division Green Beret.

Let’s fast forward through several successful years in the New York chemical business, the formation of a family, 25 years in the Seattle construction business, retirement in 2003 and many benchmark wine experiences in California. Lou forged friendships with the early Valley pioneers like Martini, Kornell, Heitz and Tchelistcheff, and he touts a certain ’68 to be the greatest cabernet sauvignon ever produced in California.

After reflection upon what he’d like to do in retirement, Lou made nearly half a dozen attempts to make vineyard deals, to purchase just the right piece of land that would enable him to create world-class wine on par with what he’d enjoyed the world over. In 1999, through a process of information sharing and intelligence, Lou was able to purchase the State Lane Vineyard. He had to perform soil tests secretly because of the immense pressure and intrigue of making an offer on historic land like this. The immaculate, tightly-spaced Bordeaux varietals occupy 15.5 sustainably farmed acres. Four primary wines are produced in an incredibly clean facility featuring a beautiful sorting table, an astounding cellar and a pristine barrel room protected by a high-tech alarm system. Kapcsandy’s Estate Cuvee resonated and built complexity on my palate that even exceeded the front- and mid-palate intensity that I thought couldn’t get more pleasurable. There are flavor components in all of these wines that defy logic, as there is no lavender or eucalyptus at the periphery of the vineyard. No fudge brownies either, but you’d just have to be there with me to have your own palate judgment regress like mine did. Smiles and wonderment replace stilted conversation about phenolics, and criticism fades to bliss when one takes in the sheer experience of tasting Lou’s wines with him. Of course, it also helps that his consulting winemaker is Denis Malbec from Chateau Latour in Pauillac, Bordeaux, France.

Lou’s knowledge and experience is solid, as evidenced by the most impressive wine collection I’ve seen in the western United States. He told me, “When people ask me how I could know what good wine should taste like, I show them my cellar.” Lou has the palate and the in-depth technical knowledge coupled with relationships throughout the Californian and European ubervinosphere to know no limits to what his grapes can produce. I think you’ll rarely meet a person with such rich history and life experience. I will not go the pithy route and say that you can taste Lou’s passion or that a time-lapse slideshow of the Hungarian years will addle your synapses while tasting his wines. It just happens to be the case that Kapcsandy wines are remarkable. That’s just a matter of fact. Yet the point I want to make about Lou is one that differentiates his persona from the constructs we’re programmed with as regularians. We go to wine country and are generally faced with a zany, mini-mall mindset underlain with the most disturbing departure from classicism, agricultural integrity and humility. The neon often reminds me of Branson, and I can’t tell you how many of you I’ve tried to help experience the real deal here among the vines of California.

Lou Kapscandy is genuine. He honors all people, and there’s no political discussion you can have with him that reveals any speck of –ism. I didn’t feel unworthy, imposing or lowbrow as this man invited me into his home and gave me two hours more than originally scheduled. Heck, as I met Mrs. K working on their family business at her desk that evening, it was me who felt overdressed. With such mileage and zest for life, such respect for humanity and the earth, I feel as though visiting with Lou and poring over his terrific wines was nothing short of inspiring and celebratory. When I asked him for permission to casually chronicle my memorable visit with him, he said, “I don’t know why. I’m not sure that I’m all that special. I just want to make good wine.”

There you go – some thoughts about a special man who makes great wine. I definitely got lucky, and it’s my aim to spread this luck to you.

~ Yours,

Christian Lane

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