Unoaked

A wine that has been fermented and aged in stainless steel or concrete tanks, barrels, or eggs, instead of oak. This style gives the wine more clarity and purity of fruit.

The Academy Award-winning film, The Revenant (2015) starring Leonardo DiCaprio, about a frontiersman on a fur trapping expedition is partially based on:

A. Writings by an early Napa Valley pioneer

B. The life of an early winemaker in the Pacific Northwest

C. A myth of revenge from the Piedmont region of Italy

D. A California miner who became famous during the Gold Rush and eventually became a judge

Napa Valley’s first non-Native American settler, George Calvert Yount was a fur trapper and a friend of fellow fur trapper Hugh Glass, the subject of the film The Revenant and the book of the same name. Some of Yount’s writings helped inform the true story of Glass and fur traders in the West. Yount settled in the Napa Valley in 1838 and his first production of “wine” was allegedly fermented in cowhides hung from trees. In 1860, Yount hired a young Prussian immigrant named Charles Krug to help him make better quality wines. Krug went on to found his own winery, Charles Krug, in 1861. After Yount’s death in 1865, the United States Postal Service renamed the town where he lived “Yountville” in his honor.

“Based on chemistry, DNA, ancient texts, art, ethnography and experimental archaeology, it’s clear that as humans, we are set up as biological creatures to drink alcohol.”

—Dr. Patrick McGovern
Director of Biomolecular Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania, speaking at the Origins of Wine Civilization conference at San Francisco Wine School this month.

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