Wine Enthusiast
By Jim Gordan
Second-generation grape grower Mark Neal grew up in Napa Valley helping his Greek grandmother make compost for the family garden and his father plant vineyards, build barns and fix tractors. Those were the beginnings of a long career in conscientious farming for Neal, now 65. He became an innovator in viticulture and green farming, leading by example on his own properties and others that he managed, including Martha’s Vineyard in Napa, the legendary site of Heitz Cellar’s most collectible wines since the 1970s.
Working with his dad beginning in 1968 at Jack Neal & Son Vineyard Management, which he now owns, Neal pioneered or popularized practices that have become standard in Napa Valley and beyond: night harvesting, dual driplines for irrigation and converting vineyards to certified organic and certified biodynamic status. In late 2022, his Howell Mountain estate winery, Neal Family Vineyards, became the first in Napa Valley to become certified by the Regenerative Organic Alliance.
Last fall at harvest time, the wide-spaced vine rows here on the land where he was raised appeared simply tall and bushy. Looking closer, especially after veraison when red wine grapes turn their dark color and white wine grapes turn golden, the unusual nature of Neal’s setup became clear. Red grapes and white grapes occupy the same trellis, but with the red ones on top and the white ones below.
Neal planted a white-wine vine in between each red-wine vine, so that the trunks alternate. The red vines, in this case, Cabernet Sauvignon, are trained up high where they get lots of sun, and the white vines, Sauvignon Blanc in some blocks and Vermentino in others, are trained on low wires in the dappled shade below.
This dual-trellis vineyard yields twice the tonnage of grapes that the land used to, and with similar high quality, Neal says, yet the cost of farming both together is only less than 50% more. With the Cabernet Sauvignon leaves on top shading the white grapes below from sunburn, it’s possible to create a relatively cool environment in this warm appellation.Neal returns to the question of yields and wine quality when I visit with him again at the Neal Family Vineyards winery on Howell Mountain, where his wife, Laura, and daughter Demitria also work. The vineyard here is an organic, biodynamic and Regenerative Organic Certified property, where the family’s resident herd of sheep grazes the cover crops in spring and the emphasis is on building healthy soil.
The expansive winery and cave are adorned with graceful copper light fixtures and other copper furnishings designed and welded by Neal himself. He is both polymath and jack of all trades, equally deft at handling soils, plants, metals and machines.
