Andre Tchelicheff was already the elder statesman of the wine industry when I first met him almost 25 years ago. I had recently joined Chateau Ste. Michelle and was visiting the cellar with my VP of Sales. “The Father Of American Wine,” he whispered, almost reverently, as we approached an elfin figure in the hallway. He introduced me to the winery’s oldest consultant, Andre Tchelicheff, a person whose reputation I was well aware of while still at Gallo. “I’m on a mission,” Andre confided to me, and that was to teach the newcomers, and some of the old dogs as well, that fine wine was made as much by the heart as the mind. He was almost 80 years old when I met him that day, and had been with the winery since the original owners invited him to “Ste. Michelle,” as it was called in the 1960s.

Andre Tchelicheff, “The Father Of American Wine”, and Allen Shoup

He was only five feet tall or so, but had a stately bearing and powerful dark eyes that could hold you transfixed as he spoke. I quite enjoyed the soft Slavic-structured metaphors that this old White Russian Revolutionary constantly used to dramatize his points. His accent and old world syntax often required sympathetic listening, but the effort was well rewarded.

Fleeing the Red army, Andre was still a young man when he finally ended up in France. There he studied winemaking and viticulture. In the late 1930s he immigrated to the United States, and gave this country a preview of what subsequently became a growing trend in American wine craft - he created Beaulieu Vineyard’s, George de LaTour Reserve, a classic Bordeaux-style blend from a single vineyard in the Oakville region of Napa.

Andre had already left BV and was consulting for other vintners when he became involved in Ste. Michelle’s first vintages. He immediately recognized Washington’s potential, and I think that’s what kept him coming back. He guided close to thirty vintages from concept to fruition. He was both an enologist and a viticulturalist, which was his first love.

As CEO of Chateau Ste. Michelle I, over time, grew very close to Andre and his lovely wife, Dorothy, and remeber when we celebrated his 85th birthday. I knew for many years that one did not deal with Andre without dealing with Dorothy first. He could not survive the rigors of the business without her love, caring and understanding. She was his business partner as well as his soul mate. She did the planning, typed the reports, arranged the travel, the accommodations and, most importantly, guarded both his time and his health.

A few years before he turned 85, Andre convinced me to buy Conn Creek, a winery that had fallen on hard times. In the ‘70s, this winery had been known for some of Napa’s greatest Cabernets. Andre considered ‘Napa’ and ‘Cabernet’ to be synonyms. We immediately ran into trouble with this acquisition. The Conn Creek winemaking team was struggling to overcome the disadvantages of our absentee management. We also encountered a natural resistance to changes in management style, what was then seen as the audacity of Washington folk trying to advise Napa Valley folk on how to make wine.

So I went to Andre (with Dorothy’s permission) to see if he would take over the Conn Creek winemaking for a couple of years. He told me he would think about it. A few weeks later we sat face to face in my office, I leaning forward in a wing back chair, and he ensconced (comfortably, I hoped) on the couch facing me.

Even with close friends Andre rarely strayed from old world formality when discussing business. “Mr. President, you must understand,” he said, wistfully gazing in my eyes, “this is a young man’s job… if I were only ten years younger I would leap at this job.” He animated the word, ‘leap’ with emphatic body language.

“But,” he continued, as he started to lean back, “I am too old to do it right…and I fight this person everyday to make this not so…but this person will not let me win. Everyday this person struggles to hurt me ( he clinched his fits and grimaced).” I was alarmed, not knowing who he meant, but then realized the person he was fighting with was Mother Nature. He fell silent, then added, “I do not have the strength to any longer be a winemaker… I can only teach”

“But Andre,” I said, “we don’t need brawn. We’ve got brawn. We need your brains... your leadership. …we have young people to do the physical work.”

Andre smiled with that elfish twinkle and reached over to pat my knee. His voice was now filled with sympathy. “Ah, but you must understand fine winemaking… you can not leave it to others … it is like raising beautiful babies. You must climb the barrel racks every week and check them…they must be seen and smelled and touched to know how they behave. You must talk to the wine… my legs are too weak to climb the ladders… I can not reach them to talk with them”

I groped for comebacks. “Andre, the younger legs...they can climb up the barrels and bring the wine down to you.”

He dismissed it with a hand wave. “No, no, you do not understand …you must see the bung of the barrel…is it clean? Was it put back right? Is the barrel properly topped? Are there any leaks? You must climb up to see things and smell things. Will those things talk from the glass?”

Andre did not need to taste the wines to discover they were poor. He could tell by the cleanliness of the cellar. He was convinced that good wines cannot come from dirty cellars. If the winemaker takes short cuts on cleanliness, he will take short cuts on the other minute details that differentiate bad wine or average wine from good wine.

In the end, Andre consented. But he wouldn’t take the title of Head Winemaker…he did not want to deflate the egos of the younger winemakers. We created a nonspecific title, Director of Enology or something like that.

Months later I saw Andre at a wine event that took place in that wonderful setting, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Laguna Nigel. He was there as the recipient of another Lifetime Achievement Award, one of a hundred such honors bestowed upon him the world over. As my wife and I were mingling, Andre approached us carrying a glass of a famous Napa Cabernet.

“Smell this!” he said with no small measure of disgust. “Can you imagine? There is no excuse.... this is just laziness.” The aroma contained subtle hints of dirty oak and bacteria, something a novice might pass off as ‘personality.’ (I know many who brag about their complete vertical collections of this particular wine). Andre walked away and I asked Dorothy how he was doing. She said he was “doing better.” "Was he sick?" I asked.

“They didn’t tell you did they? He fell off a ladder on to the barrel racks at Conn Creek. He told us at the hospital not to say anything to you.” Dorothy rolled her eyes toward the ceiling in resignation. “We’re not going to change him, you know.”

Andre died at the age of ninety three. He was surveying the vineyards two weeks before. He expressed his concerns about the grape conditions to Mike McGraf , our Villa Mt. Eden winemaker, the day before he died.