of running a small company. I’ve seen places where it has turned ugly and unpleasant, bringing out the worst in everyone involved. Fortunately, our story is not one of a family business spinning out of control. From day one Dad maintained that family and business were separate. He set a tone that valued hard work, authenticity, creativity, forgiveness for mistakes, collaboration, and high standards. If the story of Shafer Vineyards is one of success, it’s owed in large part to my dad and the core values he championed.
It wasn’t until I sat down to work on this book that it struck me how deeply intertwined our story is with the history of Napa Valley. Again, being so focused on keeping all the plates spinning here, I’ve only recently been struck by the realization that forty years have flown by, and we’ve woven our way into this tapestry. From our arrival here in January 1973 through the next four decades we were in the middle of the mix—doing business and forging friendships with some people you know of, others who have not yet claimed a spot in the history books.
We’ve lived through the Valley’s highs and lows (and there have been a lot of both). We’ve seen the changes, been a part of them, and in one or two cases have even sparked them. Sometimes the story has been a drama, sometimes more like a comedy. However you label them, these have been some of the four most tumultuous decades ever seen here. It’s been a wild, thrilling, and sometimes heartbreaking ride.
For some here in the Valley, their stories started back in Mexico, Germany, Italy, France, Argentina, or other exotic places. Ours began in Chicago.
ONE
John Shafer
Up until 1973—when he was forty-eight years old—very little indicated that John Shafer was a future Napa Valley vintner. If you know where to look in his life story, you’ll find some key moments of foreshadowing here and there, but it’s all pretty subtle. Even now it’s startling to realize how it all could have gone in such a different direction, and the story of our hillside vineyards could easily have belonged to someone else.
Dad was born in 1924 and spent most of his childhood in a small northern suburb of Chicago called Glencoe, to this day a secluded enclave of arts and affluence. His mother, Adeline, hailed from Peru, Indiana, where she was a schoolmate of music legend Cole Porter. My dad’s father, Frederick Shafer, was born in 1886 in Booneville, Indiana, into a family of strict Methodists. They didn’t have a lot of money, but he was an exceptionally hard worker and mechanically inclined, traits that got him into Purdue University, where he earned an engineering degree. My dad still remembers his father, a lifelong teetotaler and upright citizen, heading into the gray dawn in a felt hat and three-piece suit to attend to business at Imperial Brass Manufacturing, the Chicago brass foundry where he had worked his way up to the office of president.
My dad was born in a time of economic boom. Small investors across the country were pouring money into Wall Street. Credit was easy. Wealth was within reach for a whole new generation. It was an era in which the phrase “safe as banks” was coined.
Then came the sickening free fall in 1929 from which the nation did not truly recover for a decade or more. Banks closed. Credit dried up. Despondent moneymen ended it all by leaping from their office windows. The national unemployment rate hit a catastrophic 25 percent.
The Depression formed my dad, as it did many of his generation. Yes, his family enjoyed a level of financial stability, but poverty and uncertainty were everywhere. Dad remembers people coming to their door begging for food. Even if the Shafer family had a bit of money, it wasn’t something they spent ostentatiously. On the contrary, Frederick was well known for only buying things on sale.
Throughout his life, Dad, the Depression-era kid, has distrusted the booms and planned for the inevitable busts and has always been a fan of understatement, character over pizzazz, the solid long-term idea over short-range sizzle, qualities I would see play out later as he launched and then managed our winery.
As a teenager Dad attended New Trier High School, which was a fertile environment for a young mind. The alumni include a who’s who of American public life, such as actors Charlton Heston and Ann-Margret, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, writer Scott Turow, chef Charlie Trotter, and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, to name a handful.1 Dad remembers a boy named Roy Fitzgerald in the class behind his, a solitary, quiet kid who hardly anyone knew. When this kid grew up, Hollywood renamed him Rock Hudson and down the road he and Dad would have their own connection to Napa Valley (we’ll get to that).
During a summer in high school, Dad worked in the foundry of his father’s brass works. In those torturously hot, backbreaking, dangerous working conditions he befriended men of all backgrounds from Chicago’s great melting pot—immigrant Poles, Latinos, and African Americans, whose grandparents had experienced both slavery and emancipation. In the heat and noise he learned a lifetime’s worth about people whose lives were filled with struggles far different from his own.
After graduating from New Trier, Dad entered Cornell University in September 1942 and, at the urging of his father, signed on to major in engineering, a career that they both saw as a source of solid, steady income.
Over Christmas break that year, as a college freshman, Dad volunteered for service in World War II, enlisting in the Army Air Corps. His call to duty came in April 1943. Part of his flight training took place at Davis–Monthan Army Air Corps Base in Tucson, Arizona. While there, he met Bett Small, whose father owned the Tucson Citizen, the local newspaper.
She had attended the University of Arizona and had gotten a job with American Airlines in the early days of air travel. Dad and Bett went out together as often as possible and quickly developed a special affection for each other. Her house happened to lie on the flight path of the air base and when Dad was landing at night, coming in low over her rooftop, he’d flick the plane’s lights on and off.
Dad received his wings in June 1944 and turned down an offer to become a flight instructor, choosing combat instead. His crew went to southern England, where they became a replacement crew flying B-24 bombers in the 445th Bomb Group with the 8th Air Force. Once there, he discovered that film star Jimmy Stewart was wing commander, in charge of a number of bomber groups. Dad remembers how surreal it was to hear that unmistakable voice from Hollywood in his headphones, conveying commands as they flew over the dark English Channel on missions to Germany.
At the age of twenty, Dad was the oldest of his flight crew. All the other crew members—the radio operators and gunners—were draftees with just six weeks of training under their belts; many were fresh out of high school. Here he was in a similar position as in the brass factory: thrown in with guys of every background and disposition—this time under even more dangerous and stressful circumstances. Dad not only had to do the job right, but also had to protect the lives of these men, kids really, who looked to him for leadership.
John Shafer, 1945, with the B-24 bomber he piloted while stationed in England.
I think a person finds his or her moral center under these conditions. In short order he was faced with the issue of doing what was right versus doing what was expected. During a practice flight exercise with the squadron in the skies over England, one of his crewmen got violently sick, and Dad made a judgment call—he pulled out of formation and returned to the air base to get his crew member emergency medical attention. His superiors soundly dressed him down for this, but Dad held firm. It was an exercise, not the real thing, and his first duty was to the well-being of his crew.
After the war he returned to his engineering degree program at Cornell and before his senior year married Bett. And
