| Tiburcio
Parrot Biography Interview of Jerome C. Draper, Sr. Prepared by the Napa Valley Wine Library Association This is an interview of Jerome C. Draper, Sr. at his home in St. Helena on May 15, 1976, re: Herman C. Hummel. Mr. Draper is being interviewed by Gunther R. Detert. Q. Mr. Draper, would you please tell us something
of the history of the present Draper Vineyard and
the old La Perla Winery? Q. Yes, please do. They had a date the next day with Mr. Mangels and his partner at the Solano Bank in Solano County. They said, “We will furnish the money.” Mr. Mangels and his partner were interested in mountain grapes, so it was agreed they would lend the money. Herman made one mistake in signing a contract because Mr. Mangels agreed to pay $20 a ton for grapes, and if they should go up he would increase the price, but he wanted t share the profit 50-50. Expenses were to be paid by the Hummels. The first two years they had the smallest crops ever, and it was to their disadvantage they had to split. The grape prices did go up the next two years, and they had to split the profits, but expenses were the same and the Hummels had to carry the expenses. They therefore wished to sell to get rid of that contract. It was then, ca 1943, the Hummels and I, Jerome C. Draper, came to an agreement they sell the Lower Ranch to me. Then the Hummels cancelled the contract, paid Mr. Mangels, and the Upper Ranch was their own. The Hummels continued to run the Upper Ranch (the former McPike Ranch). In 1970 Mr. Maytag, Fritz Maytag, became interested in the Upper Ranch so the Hummels sold out the upper Ranch to Mr. Maytag. When the Hummels took over both ranches for Mr. Lanza, they didn’t have a tractor. There were eight horses on the place, five on the Upper Ranch and three on the Lower Ranch, plus a saddle horse. Conditions were quite primitive. There was no electricity. Everything had to be cooked on a wood stove. The Upper Ranch had a little Delco plant with batteries, and they had to be charged every few days. On the Lower Ranch, there was no electricity at all, and they used coal oil lamps at that time. The road from St. Helena up to the Upper Ranch was not paved. Once or twice in the wintertime they would get stuck coming up. When they came to the place, there were some workers there. They were quite up there in age – mostly Italians. There were three over 60, years old, and one was 65, and another one around that age too. The men all lied on the Lower Ranch, and they had a cook there who cooked for the boys. They had to drive back and forth between the places. There were no tractors on the place, and when grapes were picked, they were hauled out on two big wagons drawn by horses. They brought the grape boxes to one place, one platform, where they stacked them up – and from there they were loaded onto a gondola that delivered the grapes to the winery. The first two years the grapes went to Napa – the former Migliavacca Winery – but Mr. Lanza sold that winery two years later, and from then on they went up to the Ukiah Winery where they were delivered for five or six straight years from both ranches. The Ukiah Winery was owned by the California Grape Growers Company. They had mostly common varieties of wine grapes – Green Hungarians, Golden Chasselas, Petit Syrahs, and some Alicantes and Grand Noir (similar to Alicantes). The Petit Syrahs were similar to their grapes in Caucasia. Golden Chasselas (called Gutedel) – they had a few of them in Caucasia too. When they took over the ranch, Mr. Hummel’s wife was quite surprised. When she didn’t see any electricity, she told, “I hope it won’t be for the rest of my whole life.” The Lower Ranch was sold in 1921 to Colonial Grape Growers Company. Colonial Grape Growers Company did run ranches – in 1921 when Colonial Grape Growers Company purchased the McPike Ranch and the Lower Ranch, Prohibition was on. Mr. Lanza had a brother in New York Who sold grapes to private people to make wine and it was very profitable. Colonial Grape Growers Company, which was owned by Mr. Lanza, Mr. Federspiel, Mr. Leichter and Mr. August Schilling, purchased first the Lemme Ranch, which is the present Draper Vineyards, and La Perla Winery. A few months later, they bought the McPike Vineyard. The McPike Ranch was divided into a lower ranch also, which was called the Kilduff Ranch, and the upper ranch was called the McPike Ranch. All of these properties were just off Spring Mountain Road – and they’re all next to each other going on up the hill. In 1921, the Colonial Grape Growers Company owned these two ranches. The upper ranch was mostly in white grapes – and when Prohibition started, the major prospect for black grapes was home winemaking. The preference was for Alicantes and Grand Noir, which were good colored grapes, and shipped well. In 1921-1922, sixty to seventy acres were grafted over to Alicantes and Grand Noir, and for three or four years the prices for Alicantes and Grand Noir were perfect, and it was very profitable. After Prohibition, Mr. Lanza and Mr. Federspiel split up. So Mr. Lanza bought Federspiel out, and Leichter dropped out, and left Colonial Grape Growers Company before 1933. Mr. Lanza bought Federspiel out and changed the name to California Grape Products Company. Mr. Lanza had as his partner Victor Repetto from New York. So Mr. Repetto had also wound up in Ukiah with vineyards, a winery in Delano, the winery in Napa too (which was sold two years later), and the Ukiah winery The first four or five years, after the Hummels took over the management of both places, the grape prices were very low. In 1935, he price was $12 a ton for half of the crop, and the other half was made into distilling material. In other words, it just didn't pay. But finally the winery business began slowly to progress. In 1937-38, Mr. Lanza told Herman Hummel that was the first year they made any profit from both places. In 1939, Mr. Lanza decided to sell both places So, Herman and his cousin met with Mr. Mangels and his other partner from the Solano Bank, who were interested in the grapes from both places. The Hummels agreed to buy the places and Mangels and his partner agreed to furnish the money to buy them. So, the first two years after they bought the Upper and Lower Ranches they had the poorest crops they ever did raise on both places, but they made enough money to pay off their debt. They were disappointed — when the war started in Europe the grace prices went slowly up — and in 1939 and 1940 the grape prices went up to $35, but they were bound by the agreement they had made with Mr. Mangels. The Hummel cousins bought both places from Mr. Lanza in 1939, about the time that Germany invaded Austria, and ran the ranches for three years. The first three years prices ran $21 a ton and they poor crops. Both places produced 450 tons. They barely made enough to pay the interest on the loan. They were both very disappointed and Herman's cousin was ready to pull out. So then, they decided to sell the Lower Ranch. They wanted to pay Mr. Mangels off and get rid of the contract. This was the famous contract where they divided the profit and paid the expenses out of half the profit. At that time, then, I met Herman and purchased the so-called Lower Ranch, from him and his cousin. La Perla Winery was closed in 1919 — after the commencement of Prohibition. The grapes were shipped back three–inch oak cooperage and that went on to Ukiah. The La Perla Winery and the Lemme property were operated by Federspiel and Mr. Leichter under the name of Colonial Grape Products. Later, when they sold out, the property was under the control of California Grape Products Company commencing with 1933, which was operated by Horace Lanza and Victor Repetto. Mr. Lanza — Horace Lanza — got into the business through his brother who was already a partner Federspiel – and his brother died so he succeeded to his interest. Mr. Horace Lanza, himself, was an attorney. There was considerable difference in the workings of vineyards between Caucasus and Napa Valley, particularly because the vines were planted more closely together on five-foot centers – and they couldn’t cultivate the vineyards with horses. They had to do it all by hand labor in the Caucasus. This was done primarily through Persian laborers. They were very inexpensive. They worked the ground once a year and then went back to Iran. These people lived very primitively. There were three or four in one room sleeping together, and they had to cook for themselves. In the Caucasus, the farmers there furnished the materials and the equipment with which the Persians worked. They came from villages in Iran that were about 125 or 150 miles away, and since there wasn’t complete railroad travel from their villages to the Hummel place in Helendorf, they had to walk a great portion of the distances, but they nevertheless came year after year and did the work, generally between February and April. Although the family vineyard property was between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, there wasn’t much moderating influence from the climate of these seas like we have here on the north coast of California. As a consequence, they irrigated three or four time a year in the summer. They had gravelly, light soil, and this had to be irrigated. They also had much more trouble with disease in the Caucasus, such as mildew and brown rot, particularly. Brown rot had to be sprayed two or three times in the summertime. Brown rot was caused by summer rains, and they had quite a but of rain in the Caucasus, so they had brown rot – fungus. Of course some years were good, and some years were bad. Once a year, the vines were spaded – all around the vines, and this was in the springtime. In the summertime, when they were irrigated, grass came up so they had to cut the grass before they could even harvest. They were actually very well kept vineyards – surprisingly so. The vines were started on stakes, and then as they grew, they bent back canes to the vine, and then they changed over to trellising and trellised the two canes. The growers were members of co-ops, and furnished the wine they made to the co-ops. The co-ops then proceeded to distribute this wine throughout Russia for consumption. They had growers from Azerbaidzhan, Georgia, Armenians, and Persians in their area. They had fertilizer available so they fertilized every other year. The Persians had sheep, goats and oxen, and they kept these animals in the lowland country during the winter and then took them up to the highland country in the summer. They made no use of the fertilizer that these animals left behind in the lowland country, so it could be bought cheaply. Every farmer had at least two horses, and between two and four cows to a family, so this was an additional source of fertilizer. The Persian were paid approximately 60 cents a day for their labor. They worked from daybreak to sunset. The Persians baked their own bread in a crude brick kiln, and made a kind of a bread called lavash. Their diet also consisted of cheese. The Persians also ate lamb, and one of their favorite things was the tail of the karakul sheep they had. It had a tail that weighed in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 pounds and was very fatty – all fat – and they loved this and prepared |
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