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A new company featuring seven Napa Valley winemaking
families has been formed by Lakeside Wine Company
owner and 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 settlers 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.
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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. |
Dan Capp (right) in China
with trade partners |
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 later 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.
Dan and Marguerite Capp (right)
with
Brian and Deborah Stevens (left) and
Mario Andretti (center) at the Andretti Winery
Dan's Pioneer Roots
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 her 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 Overland 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 buying 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, where 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 were 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
resources 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.
Daniel L. Capp
Beijing Tel: 8610-62973910
U.S. Tel: 707-254-1922
info@Cal-AsiaWineExchange.com
Napa Tel: 707-224-4575
madcapp@woodenvalley.net
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