From Pioneer Roots To Pioneer Wine Marketer
Printed in the Marketplace Magazine August 2008
A new company featuring seven Napa Valley winemaking families has been
formed by Napa native Daniel Capp to distribute some of California's
best wines in the vast and expanding Chinese marketplace.
Aside from being owner and managing director of the California-Asia Wine
Exchange, Capp is also the great-great grandson of David Hudson -- one
of America's most illustrious pioneers, one of Napa Valley's first
sett lers and grape growers, and one of the original 33 men who organized
the Bear Flag Revolt, the first step toward wresting California from
Mexican rule.
Capp is also a pioneer in his own right. By embarking on a
trans-continental mission to establish some of California's top wines in
the huge marketplace of China, he is continuing his family's pioneering
tradition that began before the Civil War and the California Gold Rush.
As a longtime agriculturalist, grape grower and vintner, Capp, 66, is
uniquely suited to use his deep knowledge of the California wine
industry to forge new relationships with the Chinese government in
marketing wines from Napa, Sonoma and Lake Counties.
Raised on a farm and educated in viticulture, Capp joined the U.S. Navy
during the Vietnam era and then earned a bachelor of science degree in
agricultural engineering in 1970 from California Polytechnic University
in San Luis Obispo. A year lat er he became involved in the startup of
Napa Valley's Franciscan Winery, helping to plant its first vineyards.
Since he and his wife Marguerite began growing grapes in 1973, Capp has
supplied fruit to upwards of 25 Napa Valley wineries, including Robert
Mondavi, Beringer, BV and Sterling. However, by 2005 corporations had
taken over most of his customer wineries. Capp was forced to make his
own wine, which he did through his own firm, Lakeside Wine Co.
Through such notable labels as Interlude, featuring Cabernet, Merlot and
Barbera wine using grapes from their vineyard, the Capps developed a
reputation among small, independent vintners and formed the
California-Asia Wine Exchange in an effort to market top-quality
California wine in China.
Each of the seven California vintners involved in the Wine Exchange run
independent, family-owned operations. In addition to Twin Creeks
Vineyard/Lakeside Wine Co., owned by the Capps, the group includes Napa
Valley vintners Volker Eisele of Chiles Valley; Mario Andretti; Bill and
Roxanne Wolf, owners of Eagle Eye Wine and Alpha Wolf Vineyards of
Gordon Valley; Bill Hanna, great-grandson of famed naturalist John Muir
and owner of Muir-Hanna Vineyards; and the Kirkland Family of Kirkland
Ranch. The Exchange also includes Lake County vintners Clay and
Margarita Shannon, owners of Shannon Ridge Vineyards and Winery.
Born in Napa's Park Victory Hospital in 1942 and raised on his family's
Napa County farm in Gordon Valley, Capp is determined to continue his
family's pioneer tradition by venturing into the vast Chinese marketplace.
Capp's family tree over the past 200-plus years includes more than a few
historic figures. His great-great grandfather David Hudson was born to
Julia Ann Catron, whose father, Johann Jacob Kettenring-Catron, fought
in the Revolutionary War, and whose Tennessee family raised h er nephew,
John Catron, a soldier under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. John
Catron later directed Martin Van Buren's presidential campaign in
Tennessee. Nominated by President Jackson to serve as an associate
justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Catron was confirmed by Congress and
served on the nation's highest court from 1837 to 1865.
David Hudson, a Missouri native, left Indians Creek in the spring of
1845 at the age of 25, with his brother William, in the first wagon
train to cross the Sierra Nevada. The brothers began the journey in a
train of more than 400 wagons, and later joined up with a train led by
Capt. John Grigsby and William B. Ide. The other wagon train members
strenuously objected to their splitting off, but the Grigsby-Ide group
did so anyway. They planned to head for California where there was land
available from John A. Sutter. The original train was one of the largest
to cross the plains over the Ove rland Trail. The Hudsons traveled with
their brother-in-law, John T. York of Tennessee, and York's wife,
Lucinda Hudson -- the sister of David and William.
The Yorks and the Hudsons arrived in the Napa Valley in November 1845 at
the ranch of George C. Yount, the valley's first white settler, who
guaranteed safe passage on Nov. 19. They spent their winter where
Calistoga now stands, with York building the first cabin and Hudson the
second. The newcomers survived by cutting timber and hauling it to Dr.
Edward Turner Bale's mill, which was under construction.
York and the Hudsons became firmly involved in the Bear Flag Revolt in
the spring of 1846. In response to threats from the Mexican government
to oust all settlers, they joined the Bear Flaggers at the Bale Mill. On
June 14, some 33 Bears seized Sonoma, marking the beginning of the end
of Mexican rule.
Hudson returned to the Napa Valley a year later and began buyi ng land
northwest of St. Helena. His first plot, just north of York's land in
St. Helena, was purchased from Dr. Bale for 50 cents an acre.
Hudson married Frances Griffith, the sister of Bear Flagger Calvin C.
Griffith, in December, 1847. They raised six children, including Rodney
J. Hudson, who became a Lake County Superior Court Judge; Livonia,
Elbert, Luella, Ada and Robert Lee Hudson, Daniel Capp's
great-grandfather, born in St. Helena in 1865.
Hudson and York mined for gold in El Dorado County in 1848 and returned
to Napa with funds to buy more land. Hudson bought 2,787 acres along
Santa Rosa Creek. Also, he briefly owned White Sulphur Springs, which he
may have discovered with York, while hunting.
Hudson planted the first vineyard in St. Helena in 1849 with Spanish
mission grapes from Buena Vista Vineyard. That vineyard was later sold
to his foreman, Jacob Beringer, who was also Charles Krug's winemaker.
* *
Hudson built a substantial house in 1852, when he and his wife started a
family and helped raise two of the Graves children -- Lovina and William
-- who had survived the Donner Party. The Hudson House is used today as
a kitchen and banquet facility known as the Beringer Winery Culinary
Center. When the Beringers purchased the land in 1875, they moved the
Hudson House to its current location. In its place, the Beringers built
the majestic Rhine House.
Charles Krug had founded the first operating winery in the Napa Valley
and crushed mission grapes grown by Hudson, by 1861.
Hudson built a home in Guenoc Valley, part of Lake County, in 1873-74,
and planted more vineyards. He later sold "The Homestead," as it was
called, to Lily Langtree.
Hudson farmed, tended livestock and raised his family in St. Helena
until 1875, when asthma forced him to sell 215 acres to the Beringers
and move to Lake County, wher e he purchased 1,200 acres in Coyote
Valley, near Middletown.
Hudson died June 10, 1888, in Loconoma, Lake County, and was buried in
St. Helena. His wife Frances died in 1923 at Lakeport and is also buried
in St. Helena.
Shortly after Hudson's death, his son, Robert Lee Hudson, a Southerner,
married Annie A. Rose, a Northerner. Annie had the distinction of having
two grandfathers who escaped from the Confederate-run Libby Prison in
Richmond, Va., during the Civil War.
On her mother's side was Godwin Scudamore, a native of England who
joined the Union Army in 1862 and was imprisoned at Libby for nine
months before escaping through an underground tunnel on Feb. 9, 1864.
On her father's side was Colonel Thomas E. Rose, the leader of the
historic prison escape, which involved digging under the prison walls
for a distance of 60 feet. Of 109 escapees, 59 rejoined the Union Army,
including Scudamore and Rose; 48 w ere recaptured and two drowned in the
James River. Col. Rose is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in
Washington, D.C.
Robert Lee Hudson and Annie A. Rose had five children, including
Frances, who married Joe Capp, an Italian who had changed his name from
Giuseppi Caporicci. They settled in Napa County's Gordon Valley. Two
Capp sons, Fred and the younger Robert Lee, were soldiers in the Pacific
during World War II. In 1945, Fred was killed fighting in Okinawa;
later, Robert was ordered to sift through the ashes of Hiroshima.
Robert Lee Capp married Naomi Leah Swanson of Oakville, a small town in
the heart of the Napa Valley. Her father, Emil, built the historic
Oakville Church.
Daniel Capp is their son, the great-great-grandson of David Hudson.
An environmentalist, Daniel Capp co-founded the Save Suisun Creek
Alliance, a group of farmers, ranchers, environmentalists and
politicians, to protect water reso urces in Napa and Solano counties, in
1997. The effort resulted in federal legislation that enhances steelhead
habitat and preserves clean drinking water. He also was a founding
director of the Suisun Valley Grape Growers Association, in 1998.
The Capps made their first trip to China in March 2008, meeting coaches
and athletes from China's Olympic teams, and making contacts with
Chinese tourism, trade and transportation officials.
On July 4, 2008, Capp represented the California wine industry in a
presentation to Chinese officials and the expatriate community in China,
in the U.S. embassy in Beijing, China. His told the gathering that his
goal is to establish the fact that California wine -- and especially
wine from Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties -- is among the best in the
world and should play a significant role in China's developing interest
in wine.
Some 163 years after David Hudson used wagon trains to blaze a trail
across the plains to California, his great-great grandson could very
well use wine to bridge the Pacific en route to the great marketplace of
China.