ABOUT JACK L. DAVIES, OUR FUND'S NAMESAKE
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Jack L. Davies was a successful Los Angeles businessman in 1965 when he bought the 220 acre Jacob Schram property in Napa County. Schramsberg, the name of the winery built in 1862 on the property, achieved notoriety in 1883 when Robert Louis Stevenson, in his book “The Silverado Squatters”, wrote long and lovingly about the winery, the wine, the owner Jacob Schram, and the Napa Valley.
However, in 1965 after years of neglect, all of the buildings on the property, the wine caves and the vineyards were all in need of repair, restoration or replacement. Over the next thirty-three years Jack and his wife Jamie not only rebuilt the facilities and restored the vineyards and caves, they also established Schramsberg as the home of an internationally acclaimed sparkling wine.
In 1972 President Richard Nixon chose a 1969 Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc to toast the normalization of United States’ diplomatic relations with China during his historic trip to Beijing.
While he was busy restoring the vineyards, winery and related facilities, from the beginning Jack found time to become involved in local proposals and issues concerning agriculture’s role and its future in Napa County. In 1967 he served as chairman of a citizen committee formed to support the creation of the Napa County Agricultural Preserve.
The controversial aspect of the Preserve was that it established agriculture as the highest and best use of over ninety percent of all the land in the unincorporated area of the Napa Valley. Jack circulated petitions supporting the creation of the Preserve and appeared before the County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors to speak in favor of it. The Agricultural Preserve established in 1968 remains today as the heart of Napa’s wine industry.
Jack continued until his death in 1998 to be an active participant in every major agriculture-open space issue and program facing the county. The Jack L. Davies Fund was created to continue his work and his vision to preserve agricultural and open space in Napa County.