How Vintner Lindsay Hoopes Found a Silver Lining from the Epic Napa Fires

Photo credit Jillian Mitchell

How does a lawyer become a successful winery owner and product innovator? Lindsay Hoopes may have grown up in Napa on her family’s vineyard, Hoopes Family Vineyard and Winery, but being in the wine business was not her plan. 

Hoopes left the farm, traveled extensively, and earned degrees from Georgetown University Hastings College of Law at UC Berkeley and Trinity College in Ireland. She returned to California to work as a homicide prosecutor in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office (and was hired by none other than Kamala Harris.) 

 In 2012, after 8 years in a job she loved, her father became gravely ill, and she was faced with a major life choice. She left the DA’s office, came home, and took over the family business. But changing careers was not the only challenge she’s faced. We spoke with Hoopes to learn how her background as an attorney influences her role in the wine industry and how she’s looking to create something new from smoky grapes. 

What skills did you learn as an attorney (and working with Kamala Harris) that have been useful as the owner of a vineyard?

Lindsay Hoopes (LH): Kamala Harris educated me on navigating difficult public situations in a poised and professional way, keeping composure while still being a strong advocate. When you own your own company and are selling your family story, you are always in focus. I’m also advocating for small family farms on a regular basis with the board of Supervisors and Assembly people. I think I have an ability to communicate the farmer’s wants and needs in the language of the politicians and I don’t think there are a lot of people who cross over that boundary. I actually have to do a lot of interpretation on both sides. Like for the farmers, who wonder why a trade restriction isn’t illegal. I understand land use and regulatory things. It’s a different language and I can see both sides.

You have unfortunately had experience with smoke taint from fires in two harvests (2017 and 2020). What happened?

Photo credit Story of Eve

LH: In 2017, we thought we were going to be fine. We had already 50% of the harvest in. We actually harvested during the fire and right afterward and were able to get the grapes off the vine within a day or two. Because the grapes were almost mature and had very little hang time in the smoke, we thought we might escape the contact. When we sent them to a third-party lab, they could not detect either of the 2 undesirable compounds (really there are 23 different compounds in grapes, but only 2 you can test for). And since we couldn’t taste anything, we continued to process.  

In December 2018, we started to notice a smoky influence had come in, a restricted taste I call white ash. People hear “smoke taint” and assume it tastes like a fire. But it can appear in different ways, like an oily texture, a restricted fruit profile, very tight, like it has no life to it, like dead fruit. Because the smoke binds to sugar and during the wine process, sugar converts to alcohol, which volatizes the smoke compounds, so it actually activates these compounds that were hidden inside the sugar. Other things trigger these phenols too. Because of the heavy tannins in oak, there’s a belief that aging red wine in oak further exacerbates the flavor profiles. But there is no rule of thumb on when this is going to happen. We figured it was so faint, we could blend it out. But then in May 2019, we tasted “wet ashtray,” a very unpleasant flavor profile. And to add insult to injury, you actually can’t dump wine, you have to pay to have it repurposed! So I thought, I have to find a solution to this.

How did you find a way to repurposing it?

LH: I was looking at all options and new technologies. Then in May of 2019, I was in Kentucky and met Marianne Eaves, the first woman to earn the title Master Distiller, at Castle and Key.

Marianne Eaves and Lindsay Hoopes photo credit Jillian Mitchell

We were at a Female Tastemakers dinner. We have a lot in common. She’s a female in a very heavily male-dominated industry too. I loved meeting her and was joking around. I told her, “I’ve got a little problem. I’ve got some pretty smoky grapes. Do you think you can do anything with them?” She was interested and I said, “Let’s try to make something beautiful out of this.” They’re extraordinarily high-quality grapes in high quality process. How can we salvage this production? 

Cognac is brandy and brandy is made from wine and we had wine, so it was going to be some sort of brandy product. And people are constantly trying to add smokiness to spirits. Maybe we can marry these two seemingly conflicting worlds and create something interesting? We kept in touch and decided to play around with it and got along extraordinarily well. And we’re really excited about the product. It’s actually a new category that we’re calling Napanac. The product name is still being trademarked. Because it’s an unknown product, we don’t have to barrel age it any particular time, but we’re also playing around with which barrels we like the best and how long the maturation cycle is. I think we will release it at the end of the year because it’s already been aging for 4 years (including 2017-2019 aged in barrel predistillation here). 

What are the challenges to creating a completely new product? 

LH: One challenge is that winemaking and distillation require different equipment, different skill sets, different expertise. Most winemakers are not partnered with a master distiller. There are many differences between the two production cycles. Wine is a living product. We are very beholden to the grape. There’s not a lot we can do to turn a bad thing around. While in spirits, most of the flavor comes in whatever you do post-distillation. The difference is that in this program, we’re starting with something nice and making it better. But it’s expensive because you go through the winemaking process first, then the distillation. We also lose 85% of the volume in the process.