California winemaker, importer Robert Haas dies at 90

On the day Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Sidney Haas was the 12th applicant (and, the family says, the first independent store owner) licensed by New York state to legally sell alcoholic beverages. He proceeded to transform the Manhattan butcher shop founded by his uncle, Morris Lehmann, who had immigrated from Germany in 1870, into a wine and liquor store.

“My dad was a bit of a maverick,” Sidney’s son Robert said.

Twenty years later, when the store’s chief buyer in France, Raymond Baudoin, died suddenly, Sidney Haas dispatched his 27-year-old son to Europe to promptly find a replacement. Fortified with two years of college French, Robert Haas, a Navy veteran and Yale graduate, fell in love with France and revised his objective.

“I discovered I didn’t want to replace Baudoin,” he told Wine Enthusiast magazine in 2005. “I wanted his job.”

Robert Haas, a maverick in his own right, helped expand the store into what would become — after being sold to a rival in 1965 — Sherry-Lehmann Wine and Spirits, one of the best-known wine retailers in the United States. He also founded Vineyard Brands, a leading wine importer. And, at 62, he embarked on a high-risk, long-haul venture as a California vintner.

Propagating grapes from France, the winery, Tablas Creek Vineyard, founded in 1989 with the Perrin family, the Rhone Valley wine producers, now turns out about 30,000 cases a year.

“There’s very little that is more a declaration of your optimism than starting a vineyard in your 60s,” said Haas’ son Jason, the general manager of Tablas Creek.

Robert Haas died at 90 on March 18 at his home in Templeton, California, in the wine country of San Luis Obispo County. The cause was complications of pneumonia, Jason Haas said.

Heralding what became known as the “Rhone Rangers” era of cultivating French vines in California, in 2000 Robert Haas was the first American elected president of the Académie Internationale du Vin, an industry promotional and research association.

As early as 1960, Craig Claiborne described him in The New York Times as “widely traveled and knowledgeable.”

In 1988, The Wine Spectator wrote, “By one estimate Haas has been responsible for bringing more fine Burgundy to this country than any other importer of our time.”

Robert Zadok Haas was born on April 18, 1927, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn in New York to Sidney Haas and the former Harriet Bailey, a homemaker.

Raised in Scarsdale, New York, he remained a loyal Brooklyn baseball fan and was a good enough shortstop to get an invitation from a scout to an open Dodgers tryout while he was attending Scarsdale High School.

After one semester at Yale, Haas enlisted in the Navy during World War II and served stateside. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale in history, politics and economics in 1950 and went to work in the family wine store, M. Lehmann.

His first marriage ended in divorce. His wife, the former Barbara Glenn, survives him. Besides her and their son, Jason, he is also survived by two children from his first marriage, Daniel Haas and Janet Conway; a daughter from his second marriage, Rebecca Haas; his sister, Adrienne Sands; six grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

After joining his father’s business, Robert Haas persuaded him to sell futures on wine that was practically still fermenting. Two decades later he founded the importer Vineyard Brands in Vermont, which represented Burgundy and Bordeaux brands like Château Lafite and Château Petrus. He also promoted California wines from the Napa and Sonoma valleys.

Haas’ relationship with the Perrin family began when he was an importer. While in France, he met Jacques Perrin, the family patriarch, and his sons, Francois and Jean-Pierre. They developed the label La Vielle Ferme in France and then agreed to partner in a California vineyard.

There, they found a former alfalfa farm where the “terroir” — the environment, including the weather, topography and the soil’s limestone base — closely resembled conditions in the Rhone Valley.

Vine cuttings were imported from France in 1989 and quarantined for three years by agricultural officials to make sure they were disease-free. In 1992, Haas and his partners built greenhouses, propagated the first vines in 1994 and began selling grafted vines and budwood to hundreds of other growers.

Tablas Creek Vineyard winery opened in 1997, flanking the eponymous rivulet in the Paso Robles hills about 12 miles inland and midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The winery focused on grapes like Grenache, mourvèdre, roussanne, counoise, Grenache blanc and syrah, and introduced the 1,200-gallon wooden foudres, or vats, popular in France. The operation struggled at first but turned a profit in 2006.

Haas was armed with a discerning palate that could distinguish astringent from vegetal from just a dram during a wine tasting. He was also blessed with a gift for gab.

“Buying wine is not like buying Tinkertoys,” he told Wine Spectator. “You have to understand that the man just spent a whole year of his life making that particular crop, and he’s not going to part with it without some show over it. There’s some discussion necessary.

“Even if there’s nothing to talk about,” Haas said, “there’s something to talk about.”