March 31, 2003
"Napa's Don Quixote"
By James Laube

"Just look for the gold-leaf onion dome," Carl Doumani says nonchalantly, as if it were nothing unusual. "You can't miss it."

Sure enough, once you veer off Silverado Trail and enter the heart of the vine-carpeted Stags Leap District, the gold-leaf onion dome comes into full, shimmering view. It sticks out above a narrow tree-lined road at the foot of the rugged rock outcropping that is Stags Leap, home to Doumani's first winery, Stags' Leap Winery, and now his second.

Welcome to Quixote, Doumani's fancy new digs. Quixote takes its name from Cervantes' idealistic hero -- a man inspired by lofty but impractical goals. If you're wondering if that sounds a little bit like Doumani, you're on the right track.

From a distance, the shiny dome glimmers under a brilliant winter sun. Part of the winery is underground, built into a hillside. Its roof is an earthen garden, planted with trees, flowers and shrubs. It leaks when it rains.

But it's not until you get much closer -- actually stand on the pathway next to Quixote -- that its quirky, idiosyncratic architectural lines command your full attention. No part of the new Quixote winery is straight. Not the doors. Not the floors. Not the windows. Not the walls. Then you notice its subtle nuances -- the deliberately cracked pieces of tile and brick and the oddly shaped windows, none of which are the same size or configuration. "I thought things were getting too serious [in Napa Valley]," Doumani, 70, says with a sly grin. This is his presentation of serious fun.

Quixote represents more than just a striking architectural work; it is also the vinous reincarnation of Doumani, one of Napa's more outspoken vintners and better-known wine contrarians. In a valley long famous for Cabernet Sauvignon, Doumani has always championed his favorite wine, Petite Sirah, and those two varieties -- Petite and Cabernet -- will be his focus at Quixote.

His vision for Quixote began to take form in the late 1980s, when Stags' Leap, the winery he founded in 1970, had grown too big for him. Production was headed toward 50,000 cases, and Doumani realized that he wanted a much smaller operation that better suited his needs and management skills. That's when he discovered a photograph of a public housing apartment building in Vienna. The architect, the late Friedensreich Hundertwasser, had designed an Antonio Gaud'-like high-rise complete with quirky crooked lines, trees literally growing out of windows, the brilliant use of multicolored (and fractured) tiles and a gold-leaf onion dome.

"The minute I saw that [design], I knew that was what I wanted," said Doumani, and the dream began to crystallize. In the ensuing years, Doumani and Hundertwasser tweaked the design. "He wasn't a wine drinker, so he didn't know much about designing a winery," says Doumani. While the costs run well into the millions, Doumani says he never kept track of the expenses; that would have spoiled the fun.

But before he could devote himself to Quixote, Doumani needed to divest himself of Stags' Leap Winery, a process that took another decade, ending with the sale to Beringer Wine Estates in 1997, for a reported $17 million. Although his wines were always excellent, Doumani never enjoyed the fame or notoriety of his more famous neighbor, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars. Selling Petite Sirah and Chenin Blanc was challenging in a market clamoring for Cabernet and Chardonnay.

Doumani has always had a mischievous side. When he came to Napa in the 1960s, he established a maverick reputation in the buttoned-down social atmosphere of the valley. He helped found GONADS, the politically incorrect and irreverent all-male Gastronomic Order of the Nonsensical and Dissipatory, a social club devoted to eating and drinking. His all-night poker games and love of expensive Cuban cigars and Mescal sparked gossip; he even started his own Mescal company called Encantado, and built a winery in Oregon called Benton Lane devoted to Pinot Noir.

Doumani retained nearly 150 acres of land following the Stags' Leap sale and has some 27 acres in vine, a mix of Petite and Bordeaux varieties that will go into Quixote, his best wines, and a second label called Panza, after Quixote's sidekick. The winery was built to make 8,000 cases.

The debut wine, the 1999 Panza Stags' Leap Ranch (89 points, $36) is a Petite Sirah brimming with earthy, leathery cherry and wild blackberry. The 1999 Panza Cabernet (NR, $40) is in a more classic Napa Valley style, a balanced mix of cedar, currant and black cherry.

The big star, the 2001 Quixote, won't be released until 2004, but it's from a great vintage and is very dense and deeply concentrated, the kind of wine Doumani the cigar smoker is known to prefer. Along with reaffirming Doumani's love of chewy Petite Sirah, Quixote will make another statement. Doumani will bottle it with a screw cap. He's tired of his wines being ruined by bad corks, so in true anti-establishment fashion, he's joining a small but growing cadre of winemakers eschewing cork in favor of twist-offs.