50 Years of Volker Eisele Family Estate
Volker Eisele was, as usual, among the vines. There was probably work to be done on the house, and certainly work to be done on the ancient Chiles Valley winery he and his beloved wife, Liesel, had acquired—he could see it in the distance—but Volker was contented by the presence of nature, by the absence of industrialism, and thousands of miles from his German birthplace. It was 1974 and he had, at long last, found a place he could call home. The original 19th-century vineyard orientation was perfect, and he poured himself into restoring it. He fertilized the vineyards with his footprints until he knew every inch of the sacred land. He’d walk the riparian corridors, clearing the creek beds, purging the invasive species to restore the ecosystem that had thrived in this place for thousands of years before he—or anyone else—had arrived.
The land itself was something out of a fairy tale. Volker and Liesel were well aware of how unique their surroundings were up in the Vacas mountains, just 10 minutes from Calistoga but a world away from the buzz that was dominating the Napa Valley floor. It might have been 50 years ago, but it was only 41 years after Prohibition had all but annihilated the American wine industry, and two years before an article by George Taber in the back of TIME magazine would turn a spotlight on this 30-mile-long valley that would transform it almost overnight from a calm agricultural utopia into one of the world’s most bustling, famous and crowded winegrowing regions.
At their Chiles Valley home, time was marked only in growing seasons. The vineyards clung to steep hillsides, flowing out onto the flats in one contiguous wave of viticultural perfection. The near-constant Pacific Ocean breezes kept fresh air moving across the land and vines, and the diversity of plant life was reminiscent more of an isolated rainforest than of northern California. A place this special seemed destined to remain isolated from developers, yet it held an almost magnetic attraction to those who held the earth in the highest regard.
Not far away, Jose Nevarez rode his horse along the eastern side of the Napa Valley, the sun high overhead and the trees along the creek offering only intermittent respite. Far from his home in Durango, Mexico, Jose had, like so many before him, traveled north in search of opportunity. He tracked the water upward, into the Vacas Mountains
In awe of his surroundings, Jose felt as Volker and Liesel did, and knew this was a place he’d like to make his home if only he could find a way. As he made his way along the creek, he came upon Volker Eisele, as usual at work in the soil. Jose at first had difficulty pronouncing, “Volker Eisele,“ in part due to the delicacy of Volker’s own native German. Volker had some interesting ideas about farming grapes and making wine. For one thing, he was committed to abstaining from the use of chemicals. He and his wife had made this decision against the advice of a handful of other grape farmers as well as that of an advisor at the University of California, Davis. At that time most people seemed to agree that without an unhealthy dose of poisons to fend off weeds and insects, one could not grow much of anything. Volker and Liesel were determined to prove them wrong, and Jose decided to help them do it.
In Germany, from where Volker had immigrated in the early 1960s, there was very little open land left to farm, while America was notoriously vast and fertile. Volker was working on a PhD in sociology at Berkeley, where he met Liesel, who was earning her master’s in art history, and who along with her mother had a small weekend house located in the quiet orchards of the Napa Valley. While visiting one weekend, Liesel and Volker discovered an old winery up in the mountains of the Chiles Valley on the side of the valley where the sun would rise each day. Francis Sievers’s winery had been called Lomitas Vineyards and had been used to make Zinfandel grapes into wine. Established by Sievers in the 1870s, the vines had been largely spared from the phylloxera epidemic that swept through the valley in the 1890s and were primed for a new era of care and transformation.
Liesel, Volker and Jose formed a bond, and set to work replanting those ancient vineyards, replacing the Zinfandel with Bordeaux varietals. Not long after, the wines of Napa became world famous and the quiet valley floor below them began to bustle with energy, people and bulldozers clearing out fruit orchards to put in more vineyards. As the number of wineries in Napa climbed steadily from a few dozen into the many hundreds, the quiet pace of life up in the Chiles Valley remained more or less as it had been. As Volker and Jose worked together, producing exceptional fruit without the use of chemicals, the Volker Eisele Family Estate began turning the carefully nurtured grapes into wines that wowed the palate. The high elevation, marine fog and cool ocean breezes contributed to a long growing season resulting in wines of balanced fruitiness, bright acidity and structured tannin. Their dedication to the land and commitment to eco-friendly practices led them to producing some of the best Cabernet in the Valley every year, and their operation soon earned a reputation among consumers for consistency and quality.
Volker and Liesel’s son, Alexander, was born in 1969, and by the time the terraced vineyards that hung above the ancient winery were thriving, so was he. At the age of 6 Jose taught Alexander to drive the old yellow Caterpillar D2, and soon little Alex was helping prepare the vineyards, disking the cover crops back into the soil every spring. As a boy, Alex learned the intricacies of the land, the nuances of the earth and soil; he watched as his father worked tirelessly to remove the European blackberry bushes from along the three creeks that surround the property. The invasive, non-native species attracted all variety of pests, and removing them allowed native trees and plants to regrow. Volker explained to his son that those native species would be good homes for owls and other creatures that would in turn help in their vineyard by hunting the rodents. Part of growing up the son of Volker and Liesel Eisele was learning about the delicate balance of the ecosystem they inhabited and understanding his role in it. Alex watched everything that his parents did, paying close attention so that one day he could assume the lead.
Alex met Catherine in 2001, when some mutual friends invited them for dinner at their home in St. Helena. “They set us up,” recalled Catherine, who confessed to being attracted to Alex’s tractor-driving skills. They fell in love while walking through frost-covered vineyards under a full moon, and in 2005 they were married.
Today, Catherine and Alexander Eisele do all they can to instill the same deep-seated respect and appreciation for the land in their two children that Alexander’s father instilled in him. Alexander and Liesel speak German to the children, Simon and Tristan, while Catherine speaks to them in English and Pedro Nevarez, who took over when his uncle Jose retired years ago, and his family speak to them predominantly in Spanish. The boys help out in the vineyard by “testing” the grapes, by getting dusty, and by the promise inherent in their very being so that, 50 years after Volker and Liesel Eisele resurrected this precious ecosystem high in the Chiles Valley AVA, it has a bright future before it in the next generation.
