Shelton and Franzia first crossed in the 1990s when Shelton began getting calls from friends joking about Bronco buying the Phelps winery. Soon he found out why: Bronco had run an ad that mocked the idea of Napa terroir, and the picture in the ad showed the Phelps Vineyard in the heart of Napa Valley. (Bronco apparently didn't know that was the case when it bought the photo.) Shelton phoned Bronco. Franzia told him to buzz off.
Shelton recounts the story as he sits in his office at Phelps, in a beautiful building designed by a noted architect. On the shelf sit Phelps wines that sell for $45 to $200 per bottle. A hostess leads a wine tasting on the patio outside. Sheep graze in the vineyards below, part of biodynamic farming techniques to emulate the traditional European vineyard. "Fred Franzia and Joseph Phelps Vineyards are not even in the same industry," says Shelton. "The real danger of opportunists like Fred Franzia is that a lot of our brand strength is related to the association between place, style, and quality. If you misappropriate the name Napa and diminish that, then you are damaging my prospects in the marketplace."
Many of Franzia's loudest critics in Napa come from smaller wineries. The industry has undergone a wave of consolidation, and the 25 largest California wineries now ship 82 percent of the state's wine. Small wineries cannot compete with giants based on price, so they often seek niches as artisanal or boutique operations. The Napa address adds valuable cachet, and winemakers pay for it: Napa vineyards can exceed $350,000 per acre, versus an average of $10,000 in the Central Valley. The Napa Valley vintners--more than half of whom produce fewer than 10,000 cases per year--protect their name as one of their most prized assets and bolster it with PR, such as the slogan "To a wine grape, it's Eden."
Franzia dismisses this, of course, as Napa propaganda. "California wine shouldn't be divided up into these little oligopoly appellations," he says. "They try to create a myth to keep the consumer from buying other people's wine." Napa vintners beg to differ. "Why are so many people willing to pay $50 for a Napa Valley Cabernet?" fumes Dennis Groth, owner of Groth Vineyards and Winery in Oakville. "His implication is those rich guys up there are all cheating the consumer. Well, he's the one cheating the consumer."
Franzia cracks jokes about Napa being an auto parts store, and wonders why nobody sues over London Fog or Hawaiian Punch.
Animosity runs deep. Franzia has tried to have Groth removed from the board of the Wine Institute, an industry group. He cracks jokes about Napa being an auto parts store, and wonders why nobody sues over London Fog or Hawaiian Punch. When an appeals court ruled against Franzia on the appellation issue, Bronco surprised everybody by quickly releasing a $3.99 Napa Creek Chardonnay and Merlot, with Napa grapes, nicknamed Four Buck Fred. Franzia gave the impression of a guy who enjoyed a good fight. "These f---ing guys have no mind-games capability," he says of his Napa critics. "Guys like that are no challenge to me."
Despite Franzia's constant tweaking of Napa vintners, he may be helping them in a backhanded way. He's introducing consumers to good wine; they could well trade up as their palettes become more discriminating. "People love him or hate him, but they have to privately admit that he has introduced one hell of a lot of new consumers to wines that taste good," says Michael Mondavi. "Because of that, he has helped members in the industry who despise him."
And there's another hole in the Franzia-as-scourge-of-Napa story: He is a major player in the horse-trading of wine and grapes. "When I was looking for wine, Fred would be one of the first people I would call," says Richard Grant Peterson, a longtime Napa vintner. "I knew that if he had wine I could use, it would be priced fairly, good quality, and the deal I made on the phone would be good." In fact, Franzia did business with many Napa wineries even as the vintners association was embroiled in litigation against him.
Some even turn to Bronco to bottle their wines. In southern Napa County, where the valley opens up into a broad plain near San Pablo Bay, stands a Mediterranean building with a red tile roof, a bubbling fountain, and flower beds. No sign advertises its identity: Bronco's Napa bottling plant.
Wine arrives in tanker trucks from Ceres and elsewhere and moves out again within 24 hours with a Napa bottling address on the labels. Inside bottles clink along conveyors where they are cleaned, filled, corked, labeled, and boxed in seconds. Bronco officials say they bottle for Napa wineries such as Beringer, Markham, and others that they decline to identify. "This line will put out about 240 bottles per minute," says Bob Stashak, the plant's general manager, as he stands beside one of the three lines. "They're running 24 hours a day, five days a week. When we get to the holidays, we kick in with a sixth and seventh day."
In January, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Bronco's final appeal. Franzia had exhausted his legal options. The Napa vintners celebrated by putting out a press release that said, "Corks are popping at wineries throughout Napa Valley." Franzia sat in his office in Ceres, shook his head, and called it a case of government protecting a Napa oligopoly. "Shame on them for thinking that's a victory," he said. "What they've done is hurt the free enterprise system and made bad law."
He's not done with Napa. On the desk sits a plan for another development on 85 acres near the Napa bottling plant. He stabs a finger at the map. "We're going to put another winery in here, a glass plant in there, and a warehouse in here. We'll have office buildings. We've got it all laid out."
His prediction for the next five years: more volume, more labels, more success. He talks of a new wine called Napa River, made with real Napa grapes, that will sell for less than $5. Critics claim that such prices cannot be sustained, but Franzia repeats one of his maxims: "I make money at it or I don't do it."
The dustup over the legal case has eclipsed the fact that Bronco already has several other labels made with Napa wines purchased on the bulk market. And a big harvest of 2005 bodes well for Bronco. "Many people," says Franzia, "are holding excess inventories in Napa that don't want to sell them--yet."
